The words for ‘one hundred’ in Indo-European languages exemplify an ancient sound change – the centum/satem split (the Latin and Avestan words for ‘one hundred’ respectively).
Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed as having three ‘series’ of velar consonants – palatal velars, plain velars and labiovelars (*kj, *k and *kw respectively). However, in nearly all daughter languages, these three series collapsed into two. Languages on the centum-side of the split merged the palatal and plain series to be left with *k and *kw and those on the satem-side merged the labiovelars and plain series to give *kj and *k.
It was thought to be the case that the centum/satem split represented an ancient dialect division of Indo-European languages. Most centum-languages are found in the west whilst most satem-languages are found in the east. However, a number of problems with this view exist. Tocharian is a centum-language but is (or was) the furthest east of any Indo-European language. There is also evidence that some languages kept the three series distinct in certain environments longer than others, e.g. Luvian (an extinct IE language spoken in Anatolia).
This, plus other evidence, suggests that the centum/satem labels are better viewed as descriptive shorthands which are used to label mergers which occurred independently in various Indo-European daughter languages (although this view raises problems of its own as well!).
Grimm’s Law was highly successful at predicting the forms of Germanic words but there were many exceptions. However, the discovery of Verner’s Law showed that exceptions might just be apparent; sound change is still ‘regular and exceptionless’, you just have to look a bit closer for the regularities.
An example of one such ‘exception’ is father, from above.
Note how Latin pater (which retains the /p/ and /t/ from PIE) shows up as father in English. IE /p/ > Gmc /f/ as predicted by Grimm’s Law, but IE /t/ has not come out as /θ/ instead we find /ð/. More telling are examples of related words which have the predicted sound in some cases but not in others! For example, English birthandburden are both related but show different outcomes of what was historically the same consonant.
Karl Verner noticed, however, that the unpredictable instances correlated with the position of accent in PIE. Sanskrit retains much of the earlier accent system which Germanic has subsequently changed. Sanskrit pater retains the accent following the /t/. Verner noticed that Germanic results from Law A were voiced unless they were immediately preceded by an accented syllable (in which case they would be voiceless) – this is Verner’s Law. Subsequently many of these Germanic voiced fricatives became voiced stops (thus leading to birthandburden). Germanic also underwent an Accent Shift whereby the position of accent changed. This annihilated the conditions for Verner’s Law but left the results of it unchanged, i.e. the results went from being conditioned and predictable (phonetic) to unconditioned and unpredictable (phonemic).
Verner’s Law also helped to explain cases of /s/-/r/ alternations, so called rhotacism. That is /s/ was pronounced as [z] by Verner’s Law unless preceded by accent. This [z] sound then underwent rhotacism to become /r/. Old Latin shows flos-floris‘flower’, English shows was-were etc. Many of the results of Verner’s Law have, however, been lost through analogical levelling. Latin underwent levelling to yield flor-floris‘flower’ and many English dialects have levelled the was-wereparadigm (as has Modern German), i.e. you might hear people saying ‘we was, you was, they was’.
Verner’s Law was and is a fantastic example of how powerful the comparative method is when applied carefully and rigorously. It also gave a great confidence boost to the Neogrammarian Hypothesis which says that sound change is regular and exceptionless. But that is not the end of Verner’s Law…it’s still around in places. When you next come across execute and executor/executive, think carefully about where the stress falls and how you are pronouncing the <x> in those cases – you might just see Verner’s Law in action!
Grimm’s Law (also called the First Germanic Sound Shift) refers to changes which affected the stop consonants in what became the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European language family (Proto-Germanic being the ancestor of all Germanic languages, i.e. Gothic, German, Yiddish, Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch, Afrikaans, Old English, English etc.). There are in fact three series of changes which changed some aspect of the articulation of the IE stop consonants whilst retaining the same number of distinctions (number of phonemes).
Law A: IE /p t k/ > Gmc /f θ x/
Law B: IE /b d g/ > Gmc /p t k/
Law C: IE /bh dh gh/ > Gmc /β ð γ/ (which later became /b d g/)
Exactly when this happened is not known but we can at least work when the Laws may have taken effect relative to each other, e.g. Law A cannot have happened after Law B because otherwise we would expect IE /b d g/ to show up as /f θ x/ in Germanic.
For example:
Latinpater > Englishfather, German Vater(German orthographic <v> is pronounced /f/)
Greektri > English three
Latincord- > English heart (English /h/ descends from earlier /x/)
Sanskritbhratar > English brother, German Bruder
These are standard but selective examples. Standard in the sense that you’ll find them in text books; selective in that we cannot simply look at one language and expect it to faithfully represent changes which happened hundreds of years ago. Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have undergone changes since Proto-Indo-European and English and German have undergone changes since Proto-Germanic. Modern German shows evidence of a Second Germanic Sound Shift which changed the Germanic stop consonants again! English did not undergo this change as it had already separated from the language that was to become German (compare threeanddrei,daughterandTochteretc.).
The word we use today for ‘bear’ comes from Old English. It literally means 'the brown one’. The interesting bit shows up when, looking back, we used to call bear something different. The exact word has been lost to time (though some people have tried to reconstruct it from Proto-Indo-European roots, which brings forth results like *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), but what we do know is why it was replaced by what is, by all accounts, a euphemism.
We actually have a word for what happened, it’s called Taboo Deformation. It happens a lot in language, as you’ll see if you follow this blog for any period of time, especially if I ever get around to doing that series on words for genitalia.
Anyway, what happened was, superstition arose that saying the name of a bear was bad luck, would bring it forth or make it more difficult to hunt, and over time, people began to use a nickname instead of the word. This became so widespread that no one called the bear by its original name anymore, and now the new name has so completely superseded the original word that no one knows what that word is anymore.
This actually happens with a lot of animals, presumably due to the same superstitions. All deer were originally called 'hart’; their name now comes from the Proto-Germanic word for 'wild animal’. In French, 'goupil’ was the common word for fox, but 'reynard’– the name of a fox character from popular medieval fables– was used as a euphemism to the point where it’s now commonplace.
Hilariously, the old word for 'rabbit’– coney– was replaced because 'coney’ was beginning to be used as slang for another word, and thus deemed no longer respectable. This happened around the 1900s. If you’re confused, 'coney’ used to be pronounced rhyming with 'money’. We have reverse-engineered it completely inorganically so now we pronounce it as rhyming with 'phony’.
I’m not quite sure why, but I tend to use this wordquite frequently. I feel as though sadisn’t quite broad enough to encompass the “dispirited depression” I find in melancholy.In Old English, the word more exclusively referred to an illness associated with too much black bile in one’s body, a substance which was believed to have been secreted by the spleen.
The contemporary emotional meaning appeared in the Middle English as melancolie,a direct borrowing from the Old French, which was adopted from the Ancient Greek melankholía.This word is a compound of the two terms μέλας melas “black, dark, murky,”and χολή khole“bile.”
Interestingly, although this literal translation for the Greek is “black bile,” which we can see resurfaces in the English traditions, it was used more closely to the way we use melancholynow, as “atrabilious, gloomy.”
To circle back to a previous note, we can trace back μέλας a little further to the Proto-Indo-European root mel,meaning “to grind, hit,” but also “dark, dirty.” The other half, χολή, can be attributed to ghel, meaning “gold, flourish, pale green, shine.” Although it has this seemingly pleasant definition, it is cited as being the ancestor for many languages’ terms for “bile, gall, fury, rage, disease, etc.”
“A luminous phenomenon that consists of streamers or arches of light appearing in the upper atmosphere of a planet’s magnetic polar regions and is caused by the emission of light from atoms excited by electrons accelerated along the planet’s magnetic field lines” - Merriam Webster Dictionary
I’m sure to someone with a different degree, this makes sense, but I interpret aurorato mean exclusively, “pretty northern lights.”
The English comes from the Latin word Aurora,the name of the Roman goddess of dawn. She is called the daughter of Hyperion and Euryphaessa, who assisted in bringing the sun to shine in the mornings.
The Proto-Indo-European root is au̯es-, meaning “to shine, gold, morning, etc.” Interestingly, this also birthed the Greek word Ἠώς Ēṓs,a parallel of the Latin word, and the Greek name for the same deity. From ἠώς, we have eastandEaster,both of which make sense. The dawn rises in the east, and the word Easter is a derivative of a Germanic goddess of the dawn.
The Moirai, or Fates, are the three goddesses of the Greek pantheon who determine the path of human destiny. With such a role, they are considered both goddesses of birth and of death, arriving when a person is born to assign them their fate, and again when they die to end it.
The oldest stories called them one collective power of Fate, namely Aisa:
Aisa - Αἶσα, the abstract concept of “fate,” related to the verb αἰτέω aitéō, which is “to ask, crave, demand, beg for”
However, in later accounts the three individual deities were separated, each performing a certain function, to form the trio of the Moirai:
Moirai - Μοῖρα, from the Ancient Greek μοῖρα moîra, “part, portion, destiny,” the verb form is μείρομαι meíromai, which means “to receive as your portion, to accept fate,” possibly from the Proto-Indo-European root smer-meaning alternately, “to remember, care for” and “allotment or assignment”
In Theogeny of Hesiod, they’re called both the children of Zeus and Themis, but also daughters of Nyx, the night:
“Also she [Nyx] bare the Destinies and ruthless avenging Fates, Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who give men at their birth both evil and good to have, and they pursue the transgressions of men and of gods: and these goddesses never cease from their dread anger until they punish the sinner with a sore penalty.”
Clotho - Κλωθώ, from the Ancient Greek verb κλώθω klótho,which is literally “to spin (as in wool or cotton), twist by spinning;” the youngest fate and the spinner of the thread of life
Lachesis - Λάχεσις, related to the Ancient Greek verb λαγχάνω lankhánō,which means “I obtain, receive by drawing lots, assigned to a post by lot,” the root for which may be the noun λάχος lákhos,“lot, destiny, fate;” the second fate, measurer of the thread of life
Atropos - Ἄτροπος, literally meaning “unchangeable,” compounds the prefix ἀ- a-(”gives it’s host the opposite of the usual definition, similar to English un-, as in wisetounwise”) and the verb τρέπω trépō,which is “I turn,” likely from the Proto-Indo-European root trep-, “to turn or bow one’s head (possibly out of shame);” the eldest fate, bearing the sharp shears which sever the threads of life, also known as “inevitable”
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I love words ending in -escence. It makes the whole thing feel ethereal and oddly immaterial.
For example, we have the word efflorescence,meaning “blooming, apt to effloresce, being in flower.” It’s borrowed in its entirety from the French, which is itself from the Latin efflorescere, “to bloom, flourish.” The Latin is a compound of the prefix ex- “out of” andflorescere “to blossom,” from the Latin noun flos, “flower.”
The Proto-Indo-European root for flosis apparently *bhel, which means “to thrive or bloom.” Interestingly, it may be a variant of another form with the same spelling meaning “to blow or swell.” Regardless, this seems to be the ancestor whence such words as flora, flourish, bloom etc, as well as Irish bláth “flower,” and Old English blowan “flower.”
An adjective meaning “characterized by pleasantness, friendliness, sincerity, or comfort, reviving.” The original, but now obsolete definition was “something relating to the heart;” this has since been transferred onto the word cardiac, leavingcordial with the specifically figurative and whimsical sentiments.
Both the English cordial, and its identical French cognate come from the Latincordialis, which is itself from the Latincor, meaning “heart or soul/spirit.” The possible Proto-Indo-European root is *kerd, “heart,” from which we get many modern words like French cœur and Spanish corazón.
Another English definition forcordial is the less common noun version referring to “a liqueur or sweet tasting medicine.” This is from the 1600s, which I think makes some sense relating to its adjective form as something that revives, invigorates or comforts.
Part two of random dinosaur names I’m not sure why I know, but I do? Titanophoneusis a mouthful, but it very specifically means “giant murderer…”
So, in the first half of this compound we have titan,which in our modern English means “large, grand,” but with the connotation of “something or someone gigantic in power or size, greatness of achievement.” This is from the Ancient Greek Τιτάν titan,which refers to the race of mythical, pre-Olympian giants. There is no real consensus I could find on pre-Greek roots for the word, but some possible origins include Ancient Greek τίτο tito,meaning “sun, day,” τίσις tisis “retribution,” or the Ionic Greek τίτης títēs, “avenger, punisher.”
In the second half we have phoneus,from the Greek φονεύς phoneus which is literally just “murderer.” This is a derivative of the term θείνω theínō, “to strike or wound,” itself from the PIE root gʷhen, “to hit.”
What makes this whole thing funny is that apparently when the fossils of titanophoneusare compared with other dinosaurs, they were not exactly the biggest or fiercest which have been discovered. Tyrannasaurus Rex fossils are supposedly much more intimidating, though admittedly these and other competitors for scariest dino lived at different periods. Still, I like the fact that an archaeologist felt the need to spice up their findings by describing some bones as belonging to a “giant murderer,” like they’d uncovered an ancient crime scene, but it was just a fairly average dinosaur trying to make its way in the world.
Apparently this is a more dialectally isolated term, but in some dialects of Scottish English (among others), this means “a song or poem, a strain of a song or a repeated verse,” which I quite like.
Anyways, there is an Old English term for “poems or song” which is alternately recorded as either leoþorléoð.Within the language at that point, there were several nice compounds such as léoðcræft,“poetry, the craft of song” andléoðorún“wise counsel or advice sent through song or poems” (which was apparently a thing they needed a word for?)
This is most often attributed to the PIE root leu-, an onomatopoeic root for expressives and interjections. Interestingly, this is also the base for the Latin term laudāre, which through a separate linguistic thread gives us the modern English term laud, “praise, glory, reknown, etc.”
Before I explain some of the really cool history of this word, I’ll divvy it up into its etymological parts:
Firstly,disasteras a whole was borrowed from the Italian diasastro,a compound of two halves: the prefix diswhich is similar to its English cognate and simply means “not, undo, against,” while astromeans “star,” from the Latin astrumof the same meaning. The Greek basis for the Latin, ᾰ̓́στρον astron,had a broader definition coming from the synonymous ᾰ̓στήρ aster,and could refer to the stars or planets, constellations, the sun and celestial bodies more generally.
ᾰ̓στήρ is also interesting because it is also noted as being able to mean “songbirds, starfish, flame or light, honorable persons” and possibly “blue daisies.”
At the root of all this is the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed root for star, ster, which is also connected to the Greek term for “lightning.”
Hopefully with this background, the semantics might make a little more sense. Although we tend to use the modern dictionary definition, which is “a sudden calamity or misfortune,” the older sense the word is derived from is “an unfavorable aspect of the planets or stars” in the astrological sense. Before the advent of astronomy as a science, the purpose of the practice of astrology was more so focused on looking for guidance and predictions regarding human life and activities. If the stars appeared to point to a negative outcome, it could be called a disaster, a dis- (negative, poor, undone) aster(position of the stars).
We also have a few other English and Latin terms which pull on these same ideas, but appeared through other layers of morphological construction. Namely, we have “lucky star,” “ill-starred,” and “star-crossed” as well as “astrum sinistrum,” which literally means “unfortunate star or misfortune.”
Vespertineis a beautiful word meaning “of or related to the evening.” It is an old word, from the Middle English vespertyne,which is “belonging to evening, evening dew.”
The Latin form from whence the English comes, was vespertinus,meaning strictly “evening.” This is an adjective version of the noun vesper,which was used to either describe “evening” or “the evening star,” an entity we now recognize as the planet Venus. The Latin was a cognate to the Ancient Greek ἕσπερος hesperos,of the same definition, which is visually a little closer to the Indo-European root, u̯esperos, “evening.”
Interestingly,vesperwas also adopted into English apart from it’s descriptive form, and has been used to refer to the “evening star” as well as “church services held during the evening.”
Origin: Aureate “golden or gilded” comes from Latin aureus “golden,” from aurum “gold.” The further etymology of aurum is uncertain, but there are two competing theories—one with a phonological similarity that lacks a semantic resemblance and the other with a semantic similarity that lacks a phonological resemblance. Aurum may be connected to aurōra “dawn,” from a Proto-Indo-European root, ausōs-, of the same meaning, from the root aus- “to shine”; the definition would have shifted from “shining thing” to “gold.” If this theory were true, aurum would be related to Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn known for her rosy-tipped fingers, as well as to east and Easter, originally a Germanic goddess of springtime. An alternative theory connects aurum to aes “brass, bronze, copper,” from the Proto-Indo-European root ayos- “metal,” which is also the source of English ore. Aureate was first recorded in English in the early 1400s.
“Though Frost maintained that “nothing gold can stay,” some goodness remains, the play concludes. But the poet may have been right after all; whatever small measure of aureate glimmer and substance here is, ultimately, fleeting.” - MAYA PHILLIPS, “REVIEW: STUCK IN MAINE IN ‘NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY,’” NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 9, 2019
Pike(the weapon) and pick (the tool) come from the Middle English pik/pyk andpic, respectively, all via the Old English piic, “pointed object, pickaxe.”
The verbs pickandpeck also come from Middle English, in this case pikenandpicken, respectively, all via the Old English pician “to prick,” and perhaps from the Old Norse pikka.
Pickaxe is often thought to be a compound word of “pick” and “axe,” but is actually from the Middle English (13c) picas,ultimately from the Medieval Latin picosa. In 15c it was altered via folk etymology to include axe. Axe itself is from the Old English æces/æx, via the Proto-Germanic akusjo, via the Proto-Indo-European agw(e)si-.
In some Middle English and Early Modern English dialects, pickandpitch were synonymous. Because of this, we also have pitchforkandpiggyback. Pitchfork was originally pic-forken in Middle English (13c), and piggyback was originally pick pack (1560), from the act of pitching a bag over one’s shoulder.
Pickle (15c) is unrelated, and of uncertain origin.
Toothpick is Early Modern English, but Old English had toðsticca, “tooth-stick.”
Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, and hymen, the part of the vulva, are related words– though not for the reason you might think. Both ultimately derive from the Proto-Indo-European syu-, meaning “to sew,” and both come to us via Greek. The god is probably named for this original sense (figuratively sewing two people together), but the general Greek ὑμήν instead means a “thin skin or membrane.”
