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The History of English Podcast
Bonus Episode 5: Odds and Ends
In this bonus episode we explore a few odds and ends which didn’t make into the earlier episodes. We examine the Old English words related to knowledge and wisdom. And we also look at the original terms for the … Continue reading →
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Hi everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of the History of English podcast. This is bonus episode five, Odds and Ends. And as that name suggests, this is a brief bonus episode dedicated to a few bits and pieces which were left out of the last few episodes for one reason or another. Odds and Ends is also appropriate because it foreshadows the next few episodes of the podcast. End is an Old English word used by the Anglo Saxons, but odd is an Old Norse word brought to Britain by the Vikings. So in the phrase odds and ends, we have a combination of Old English and Old Norse. And that mixing of English and Norse words is going to become a common theme over the next few episodes when we begin to look at the Vikings. The next full episode of the podcast, episode 42, will focus on the ancestors of the Vikings. Unfortunately, I don't have that episode ready yet, and I probably won't have it ready for a few more days. So I decided to go ahead and put together a quick bonus episode to hold everyone over until then. I want to begin by noting that the next episode will not only look at the ancestors of the Vikings, it will also explore the historical setting and background of Beowulf. For scholars of the pre Viking period of Scandinavia, Beowulf is actually a valuable resource. While the story itself is certainly fictional, it's set in Scandinavia during this early period when very little is known about the region with any certainty. And even though the story is most famous for the battles against monsters and dragons, the poem also contains numerous references to historical people and events. And some of that information has actually been confirmed by the few other historical records which do exist from that period. And keep in mind that the Scandinavians didn't become fully literate for a few more centuries, so they weren't keeping their own history during that earlier period. So Beowulf is one of the few somewhat contemporary accounts of life in Scandinavia during the pre Viking period. So we're also going to explore what Beowulf has to say about the history of that region. And speaking of Beowulf, I'm also working on a special series dedicated to the poem and the language of the poem. It'll be similar to the way I've examined the language of Cadmun's Hymn and the Ruthwell Cross inscription and Ethelbert's Laws of Kent. But obviously Beowulf is a much larger and much more famous text, so I'm working on a separate series dedicated to that poem and again, the language and the history of that poem. And I'll have more information about the series next time. So until then, let's explore a few odds and ends which didn't make it into the last few episodes for one reason or another. And let's begin with some more English compound words. And specifically, let's look at the original names for the fingers. In the episode where I discussed marriage terms, I noted that the ring finger was sometimes called the latch finger or medical finger. Well, the first finger was called the sheeta finger, which was literally the shooting finger. But I haven't been able to find a definitive reason why it was called the shooting finger. My assumption is that it had to do with shooting arrows. Of course, we sometimes use a similar term today. We sometimes call it the trigger finger. After the Normans arrived and Latin influence increased, English developed another compound word for that first finger. Since it was the finger used for pointing, English borrowed the Latin word indicara, which meant to point out it's the root of the modern English word indicate. And it gave us the word index. And the finger became known as the index finger, which is a good example of the marriage of Latin and English. Index is Latin and finger is Old English. In Old English, the middle finger was called the long finger or the long man. But the Greeks and the Romans had this gesture where they would stick up the middle finger as an insult, like we still do today. It was a phallic gesture and it too passed to the Anglo Saxons. So the middle finger was sometimes called the rood finger, and another later word for it was the fool's finger. As I've noted, the third finger was sometimes called the latch finger or the ring finger, just like we do today. And the fourth finger or little finger was. Was called the ear finger because the Anglo Saxons used it to scratch their ears. The term pinky is actually a very recent 19th century word borrowed from Dutch. And in case you were curious, the name of the thumb has been retained since Old English. It was called thuma by the Anglo Saxons. And as I noted, the word finger is a native Old English word which goes back to the original Germanic language. And there are some scholars who think that it's cognate with the word five because there are five digits on each hand. But not everyone accepts that connection. So that little bit of etymology about fingers got left out of the earlier episodes. And I also recently discussed the spread of learning and scholarship in Anglo Saxon Britain, especially in Northumbria. And I discussed the history of the words learned. And last, but I didn't really have time to discuss the history of our words related to knowledge, specifically knowledge and wisdom. So let's look at those words, because we have lots of cognate words in modern English related to those two words. And let's begin by returning to compound words. As we know, compound words were sometimes used in poems as stock phrases or to satisfy the required alliteration of the poem. These poetic compounds are called kennings, like bone house for body and whale road for sea. Well, this word kenning, was actually borrowed from the later Scandinavian languages, and it was derived from the Old Norse word kenne, which meant to know or recognize or to call someone's name. And it was in this later sense of calling by name that it came to be used to describe poetic compound words which were used as euphemisms. But even though the word kenning is a modern English word borrowed from the Scandinavian languages, Old English actually had essentially the same word, which was Canaan. Both Old English and Old Norse had inherited the word from the original Germanic language. And just like the Norse version, the Old English version also meant to know or to have knowledge of something. And that Old English word Canaan ultimately produced the word can, as in having the knowledge or ability to do something. The past tense of can was and still is could. So could is also derived from the same Old English root word. Another variation of the word was coutha, which was an adjective which meant known. So something that was known or familiar to you was kutha. And something that was unknown, strange, or unusual was uncoutha. Now, khutha eventually died out, but the negative version, uncouth, still survives in modern English. Another variation of that original Old English word was cunning, meaning someone or something that has great knowledge and skills. And another related Old English word is keen, K, e, e, n, meaning clever or wise. So can, uncouth, cunning and keen are all cognate, and they all relate to some aspect of knowledge or knowing. And not only do they relate to knowledge or knowing, they're all actually cognate with the word know. You notice that little K at the beginning of the word know, K, N, o, w. Well, it's there because it was once pronounced in Old English. It was kanawhen. And that word is ultimately derived from the same Indo European root word which produced those other knowledge words, can, cunning, keen, couth, and uncouth. They all ultimately derive from the same Indo European root word. And thanks to Latin and Greek, that word has produced lots of other words in Modern English. The original Indo European root word was. It had that guttural consonant at the beginning. When it was unvoiced, it became a K sound. And that's what happened in the Germanic languages. But when that consonant sound was voiced, it produced a g sound. And that's what happened within Greek and Latin. And this is actually one of the rules of Grimm's Law. That's how English has a cur from Old English with a k sound and agriculture from Latin with a g sound. So that root word produced kno in English as in know and knowledge, but it produced gno in Greek and Latin. And that gno root is incredibly common in modern English, and it still retains its original meaning of knowledge in most of those words. The Greek version of that root word gave us gnosis, again, relating to knowledge. It gave us words like gnostic and agnostic. The prefix pro was added to that root word and gave us the word prognosis, meaning future knowledge or prediction. And the prefix dia was added to give us diagnosis. Mean, meaning knowledge of the cause of a problem. Again, the gno is derived from the same root as the kno, w in English. So the only difference in those roots is the sound shift between the unvoiced k sound in English and the voiced g sound in Greek and Latin. Another Greek word with that root may be a little bit of a surprise. The word gnome, G, N O M, e. It was originally a knowing remark. In the 16th century, it was generally believed that there were four natural elements, air, earth, water, and fire, and each one of those was inhabited by a spirit. The word gnome was used as the name for the earth spirit, and from there we got the sense of the word gnome as a creature that guards underground treasure. But it was originally a Greek word derived from the same gno root. So that's Greek, but what about Latin? Well, the same root passed into Latin as well, and Latin also used the same gno spelling. So gno meant knowledge. But what about a lack of knowledge? Well, the Romans used the prefix n meaning not, and it produced engno, which is very awkward to pronounce because you have the letter combination ngn in there. So over time, this combination was slurred, and it simply became igno, and it produced the word ignorant, meaning lack of knowledge. And from there, it later produced the word ignore. Now, as we saw, the Old English version of that root was kanawan, with that awkward k sound at the beginning. And English later just dropped that initial k sound altogether, and it became no w, but pronounced with the n at the beginning. Well, Latin did the same thing with the gno root. When it appeared at the beginning of a word, just like English, they dropped the initial G sound and let the n sound serve as the initial consonant. So something that was very worthy of being known was noble, a Latin word derived from that same root. Other Latin words where the g sound was dropped at the beginning include notion, notice, notify, notable, and notorious, all derived from that g and o root, but without the awkward g at the beginning. Some of these words were then given specific Latin prefixes, but when that happened, it meant that the g sound was no longer at the beginning of the word, there was a prefix there. So in some cases that g sound could actually be retained and simply tacked on to the end of the prefix. So Ko + our root GNO gives us K, no, but in normal pronunciation, that g sound was shifted to the end of the first syllable and it went from khno to cogno. And that construction gave us words like cognizant, cognition, recognition, and recognize. Again, all words having to do with some aspect of knowledge or understanding. So as you can see, that simple little word know, has lots of cousins in modern English. And you can also see how the vocabulary of English has expanded over time. And it also illustrates how limited the vocabulary of Old English was. Old English only had the native Germanic versions with the k sound, kan, kuth, uncouth, cunning, kine, and no, which was originally kanawan. But Latin and Greek gave us lots of other related words, gnostic, agnostic, prognosis, diagnosis, gnome, ignore, ignorant, notion, notice, notify, noble, notorious, cognition, cognizant, recognition, recognize. All of those words made English much more expressive. So the Anglo Saxons used that word kanawhen, meaning to know. But they also had another word which meant knowledge, and that word was wisan. And that produced our modern words wise and wisdom. So kanawan and wisin gave us knowledge and wisdom. And just as kinawhen has a lot of related words in English, so does wisin. The original Indo European version of the word was weed, and it meant to see. Wed produced that word wisun in Old English, meaning to acquire knowledge. It also produced the adjective wies, which meant knowledgeable, and wis became wise. In modern English, the connection to the original Indo European root word meaning to see is that wisdom or knowledge is something you acquire by seeing and observing the world around you. The Anglo Saxons took that word wis or wise, and put one of those standard suffixes on the end. Wis plus dumb became wisdom, the state or condition of being wise. And the same original Indo European root word produced the Old English word wit. And we still use both of those terms together, sometimes to refer to someone's Wit and wisdom. Remember that the words wise, wisdom, and wit all came from a common root word which meant to see. And it led to a sense of acquired knowledge. And we can see the dual aspect of knowledge and seeing in another word derived from wit, which is the word witness. A witness is someone who has knowledge of something, usually acquired by seeing or observing an event. So those are the Germanic words derived from that original word weed. But that Indo European root word also passed into Latin. And you may recall that the W sound shifted to a V sound in late Latin and early French. So with Late Latin, we have the word vidra, which meant to see. And from that Latin root word, we get words like vision, video, and visage. The Latin root word also produced the Latin word vis, meaning base. The front part of the helmet which protected the face was a visor from that same root word. And when information was exchanged face to face, it was literally vis a vis, a phrase which has been borrowed directly into English. So all of that means that words like wise, wisdom, wit, witness, video, vision, visage, visor, and vis a vis are all cognate. They all derived from a common Indo European word which meant to see. And there's actually one more word in modern English which came from that same original root word, weed. That word comes to us via the early Greeks. In Greek, a suffix was sometimes added to the end of the word weed, and it became. And the Greeks took that version of the word, and they eventually dropped the W sound at the beginning. The result was the word edisha, and that word passed into English as idea. And in the word idea, we once again see how a word meaning to see became associated with thought and learning. If you see something in your mind, you have an idea. So thanks to those original Indo Europeans, we have lots of modern English words related to learning, knowledge, thought, and wisdom. So I hope you found all that etymology interesting. I didn't have room to fit it into the earlier episodes. So before we move on to the Vikings and other concerns, I wanted to present that information to you. Next time, we'll continue to look at the history of English, and we'll turn our attention to Beowulf and the other ancestors of the Vikings. So until then, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast. Sa.