Talk:List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English

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Why only Old High German?[edit]

Why only Old High German? Wouldn't it be helpful to add Gothic, or Old English, or reconstructed proto-Germanic?--172.209.172.236 06:21, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, Gothic isn't directly related to English as it's an East Germanic language, and English is West Germanic. I just chose OHG as I believe it's the closest predecessor of (Old) English and the root words are in my dictionary of etymology. Proto-Germanic would be a good idea, if you have the root words and know how to make the symbols, the same for Old English. The only trouble might be that the list could get hard to read. (Does anyone know how to add colour to columns?) Anyway, go ahead and add whatever you have.
The Latinate side could also be improved by adding French, of course, that being where a lot of the Latinate English words come from. I didn't add it because of the problem of clarity, with all those same-coloured columns. Saintswithin 12:28, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
But OHG is not a predicessor of Old English either, I mean it might be found earlier, but it's not a direct ancestor, more of a cousin. So I agree with the anonymous comment: we should be using Old English or Proto-Germanic. Heck, even Gothic would be better than OHG: it's not as closely related to English, but it is extremely close to Proto-Germanic. Some day when I have more time, I may "be bold" and edit this myself. --Iustinus 22:41, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
True, the words come to English from French, but I think the Latin roots are better. After all, what could be more Latinate than Latin? I think the Latin is somehow "purer". But then, I'm quite partial, as I haven't studied French and am thus against it. :-) -- 66.44.3.209 02:39 17 Aug 2005 (UTC)
Actually, most of the romance words in English come from Norman French, abit removed from French (especially modern French). Then there is another grouping of Latinate words which came in via the Grammar school boys (Grammar schools of the late medieval being schools which taught latin grammar, and which required students to speak grammar at all times), and the ecclesiastical coinages, from around the same period (late Tudor England onwards). The first lot, the Norman French, had a rather different historical journey from the second lot, the second lot being rather closer to Classical Latin (actually most are Church or Medieval latin, but the difference here is not so great). The Norman French borrowings have a little more fanciness than regular Germanic English because Norman French was the language of the English ruling class (and law etc) for about 300 years. Most the food words come through this path. The second group (borrowed in from about 1400 to 1700) are fancy not so much because they represent the ruling classes, but because they represent learning. Then there's a few other words which come in from other places, like /piano/ (from Italtian), and others which are similar because they actually come from a common germanic/italic root even a proto-Indo-European root.
I think that it would be worth noting the path of derivation (NF vs Latin vs other).
On a second related point, the Germanic in English comes from several dialects, from both the North Germanic group (Norse) and the West Germanic. Old English had a few differing dialects. Northern English dialects tend to have a little more Norse and a little less Anglo-saxon, than the south-east. There are Norse and Saxon cognates which both made it into English, skirt and shirt being the famous examples. So, again some more information regarding the exact derivation of the Germanic, unless someone wants to go the whole hog and put in the proto-Germanic reconstructions. But that probably cannot be done.58.107.79.77 14:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Give - Donate, Hear - Audio, See - Video, Write - Scribe, Food - Cuisine, Read - Literature maybe...

"Throw" is not a good example, since it originally meant "turn", "Warp" would be better, I think...=S

Questions about specific words[edit]

"Nostalgic/Homesick"[edit]

I don't speak English as a first language, but I speak Portuguese, which is Latin-derived, and I have a very good comprehension of it. It's absolutely clear, the way I see it, that many words used as examples in those columns may come from similar "intentions" or "feelings", but do NOT mean the same at all.

The most fragrant example is "homesick x nostalgic": one refers to a distant place present, and the other to a distant time in any given place. They are absolutely different in their meanings, as you can't say you are "nostalgic" when away from home for a few months or "homesick" because you remember a time past and maybe wanted to be back then. It's very much a "apples and oranges" example.

There are others, but I don't mean to put myself into a discussion about a language that's not my own.

Of course what you are talkign about isnt' the meaning of the words in Portuguese or Latin, but in English. You do have a point. In fact, most of these words do have subtle or not-so-subtle differences in meaning: English (like other languages) tends to come up with distinctions when two words basically mean the same thing, whether or not there was a distinction previously. In its original use, "nostalgic" did mean "homesick" but they've grown apart (and I bet they miss each other!)
But even so, I don't see a need to change the chart. We've got a mix of words that didn't mean the same thing in Latin and Old English, but do in Modern English, and words that did mean the same thing in L and OE but don't quite mean the same thing now. Both types are of interest to me, at least. --Iustinus 22:02, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The article doesn't claim that the meanings are the same, just that the words are connected. Here's the entry for "nostalgia" at dictionary.com:
nos·tal·gi·a ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-stlj, n-)n.
1.A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
2.The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Saintswithin 11:19, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(The original Portuguese-speaker of the first comment) Thanks to both for your replies. Through them, I could understand the intentions behind the list, as it refers to roots and not necessarily to current meanings. You made it clear and you're right on that. Turns out the entry was removed anyway for not even being Latin... Just for general information, we use the word "nostalgia" in Portuguese too, and on a daily basis, meaning "the missing of better times that are now gone" or something like this.

Nostalgic removed[edit]

Here is the row I've removed from the article:

(OHG heim + sioh) homesick nostalgic nostos + -algia

The word nostalgic has nothing to do with Latin: it's a pure-blooded Greek coinage.

Adam78 16:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Produce"[edit]

Re: Old Norse geta + Gmc *ut get out produce pro- + ducere

Adam, you asked if this should be "pull out". Well, "ducere" actually means "lead", so literally, "produce" means "lead out". I don't think "get out" is really the equivalent of "produce", but neither is "pull out" - how about "lead forth", "bring out" or "draw out"? "produce (v.) 1499, from L. producere "lead or bring forth, draw out," from pro- "forth" + ducere "to bring, lead" http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=produce&searchmode=none Saint|swithin

"Corporal/Corporeal"[edit]

While both corporal and corporeal can be used to indicate something 'of the body' (i.e. derived from latinate corpus), I cannot say I have come across non-root usages without the additional 'e'. Corporal has a number of different meanings that muddle its usage here a bit, esp. corporal punishment, which might seem to indicate that the word could be taken to mean 'of the body, particularly that of a child'. Whereas corporeal (at least I believe) is relatively unambiguous. Just searching one versus the other on WP gives the military use of 'corporal', but the intended use for corporeal, and a quick search of Google brings up six pages that are utilizing different meanings of the word. Granted, there is a full context surrounding the word as to its intended use here, but for demonstrative purposes corporal is usually only used in this sense as an alternate root for corporeal in more complex ideas (e.g. corporal mortification of Opus Dei, or corporally weakened vis-a-vis corporeally weakened).Jay the Despicable 08:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Gift"[edit]

I am seriously thinking of deleting that entire line, because Gift is nowhere near our English 'gift'. It means poison, giftmull is toxic waste, giftzahn (poison tooth) is fang. source: Collins Germ: German Dictionary Collins Germ, imprint of Harper Collins, copyright 2000. I wanted to use a better dictionary, but that is what is at hand, and it seems a basic usage. It seems that the original compiler specified that words change meanings over time.

I have sent this list to others in order to help them find synonyms, and I happened on this as I was looking to refresh my German for a trip. I saw 'Gift' glaring out at me, and that was a word that I remembered--it was an important word to rememember, where other words could be forgotten. And it is not a good thing to go into a drugstore/chemist and ask for poison,when one really wanted a small present for the girl next door.

Katydidn't 08:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)katydidn't[reply]

Gmc *giftiz gift present prae- + essere Katydidn't 09:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The word "gift", with a small "g", is the modern English word with Germanic roots synonymous with the Latin-rooted word "present". The word "*giftiz" on the left is a reconstruction of the Germanic word that our "gift" is thought to have developed from. The page title and explanation make it clear that the word on the left is the etymology and not a translation. There is no suggestion that the modern German word "Gift" means the same as the modern English word "gift".
You might like to know that actually, the modern German word "Gift" comes from the same source, Middle High German gift which really did mean a gift; the modern meaning is a semantic loan (Lehnbedeutung), borrowing the meaning of the Ancient Greek word dosis, literally a "gift of medicine". The meaning as in English is retained, incidentally, in the modern German word Mitgift, a dowry. Saint|swithin

Macrons[edit]

I added vowels w/ macrons to indicate long vowels in Germanic and Latin. Latin's long vowels come from a Latin-English dictionary I have. I also modified at least Germanic words to correlate w/ the latest etymologies presented at http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html from the American Heritage Dictionary, fourth edition. Note that voiced stops and fricatives, such as d and ð, are allophones of the same phoneme, /d/, in Germanic. As a result that should be spelt as such despite occasionally giving different representations in later Germanic languages.

Now they are no longer visible on non-Unicode compliant browsers. Is there any HTML way to display a macron, sort of how é will display an accent-marked "e"? (And I don't mean the &unicode-number-here;) That way, maybe it will display semi-correctly on w3m. I'll look into this. -- 66.44.3.209, 18:38, 17 Aug 2005 (UTC)
A good example with no connotative difference that I am aware of is hawk/falcon (FR:faucon). --belg4mit 71.192.58.23 16:45, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Norse[edit]

Do we have some sort of List of English and Norse equivalents in the English lexicon, such as shell=skull, shirt=skirt etc.? dab (ᛏ) 12:03, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

numb=taken, wort=root, warp/throw=cast, hide=skin, heaven=sky, shear=score etc. A problem here, as well, is that many of the original English words have been removed or shifted in meaning. 81.232.72.148 23:03, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
wrath=anger, starve=die, wave=billow, bridegroom=husband (The list is still a big mess of words' modern and original meanings...) 81.232.72.148 23:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think these last two posts have missed the point that dab (ᛏ) was making. (Shirt/skirt) and (shell/skull) same the same etymological roots. The wave/billow-type examples share semantic meaning, but not a common etymological root. I think both types of lists have merit and I would contribute to both, but it's important to keep the two lists separate.--Hraefen 22:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I thought he wanted a similar list as this one. In this list, the examples are quite mixed, though. I can spot a few cognates going back to the same root, although the main bulk seems to be unrelated:
brotherly=fraternal, cow=bovine, first=primary, (fatherly=paternal), fox=vulpine(?), 
hound=canine,  know=recognize, length=longitude(?), motherly=maternal,  
motherly=maternal,  new=novel, nightly=nocturnal, wolf=lupine(?)

85.226.122.237 21:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Farm animals and meat[edit]

An interesting point that could be made in this article: Because the Normans were the ruling classes of England, and the Anglo-Saxons were the workers, English words for meat are often different name to the animal, because it was the Anglo-Saxons who reared the animals, but it was the Normans who would consume it. 

Pork comes from Pig
Beef comes from Cows
Mutton comes from Sheep (although obviously eating Lamb is more a lot more popular now)
Venison comes from Deer
And poultry is usually only used in connection with food
Yeah, I heard about that theory, but I also read that the distinction is a more modern one, and it wasn't used like that in the actual Norman era. 85.226.122.205 18:34, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Poultry might be derivtaive of FR:poulet, and in French volaille is used to refer to poultry (or fowl). --belg4mit 71.192.58.23 16:41, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More in-depth etymologies?[edit]

Since this page is entirely about word etymologies, I was wondering what y'all'd think about expanding those sections to be more informative about the words' histories. In particular, it could be interesting to see how different words in one language (PIE) changed in meaning over time in two different daughter lanbguages and eventually became synonyms in English—or, even more interestingly, those words where the Germanic and Latinate have the same PIE root, changed from each other in meaning over time, only to re-converge in English, substantially altered in form. And it won't be much of a leap from what we're doing now, since there are already a number of reconstructed forms on the list. Here's a sample of what it might look like:

Germanic source Germanic Latinate Latin source
Old Norse angr ("sorrow") > PIE *angh- ("painful")
Old English wræþþo > PIE *wer- ("to twist") 		anger
wrath 		rage
ire 		Late L. rabia > L. rabiēs > rabere ("to rave")
L. īra > PIE *eis- ("passion")
WGmc *aiskōn > PIE *ais- ("to wish") ask inquire L. inquirere > in ("into") + quaerere ("to seek")
Old English bæc > Gmc *bakam back (n) dorsal Late L. dorsalis > L. dorsualis > dorsum
Middle English biginnen > WGmc be + *ginnan begin commence Late L. com + initiāre > L. initium ("beginning") > PIE *ei- ("to go")

-Silence 17:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it would make the article lose some focus. Could be interesting, though. Should "be-" and "co-", etc. also be derived from PIE roots, in that case? 惑乱 分からん 12:36, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Automated pywikipediabot message[edit]

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 08:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed words?[edit]

Why are the removed words worse than the others? Too large semantic shifts? 2nd, I don't think we should use PG forms for words such as talk (unclear origin) and mistake (loanword), anyway. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 18:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

EH?[edit]

What purpose, exactly, does this page serve? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.131.91.145 (talk) 06:06, 25 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

English vocabulary is largely drawn from German and Latin because historically they were two different languages, and as a consequence there is a lot of redundancy. This list documents that. Quantumelfmage (talk) 03:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of words to be added[edit]

Before I found this article I had begun making a wordlist of my own, as I had a lot of writing/typing to do (and a soft-spot for Plain English and Anglish). It can be found here.

I would like the page to be a kind of "to-do list" for this article. You're welcome to add more words, although I'd prefer the layout to be kept the same (a plain list without the etymologies).

Thanks. ~Asarlaí 21:43, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kangaroo Germanic??[edit]

In the "doublets" section, animals subsection, "kangaroo" is listed as a Germanic word. Really? Ancient Germanic peoples had knowledge of kangaroos?? Did they visit Australia then?? I always thought kangaroo was supposed to be derived from an Australian Aboriginal word. --Smcg8374 (talk) 13:00, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed kangaroo, along with tortoise and ostrich - according to Online Etymology Dictionary, one of the sources listed for this article, these are not Germanic in origin. --Smcg8374 (talk) 05:09, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perform Germanic??![edit]

Perform has Latin origin : PERFORMARE (PER: do it well or scrutinizingly, and FORMARE > to give a form) 12:42, 8 May 2013. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.144.65.85 (talk)

Refer to the Etymology section of [1]. The short of it seems to be: no, '-form' does not come from Latin, it's a derivation related to 'frame'. Anglom (talk) 20:42, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Updating the Proto-Germanic[edit]

Would anyone mind if I updated the Proto-Germanic words listed to be more in-line with the Wiktionary standard? To be clear, I don't mean linking to Wiktionary, but replacing the infinitive ending '-an' with '-ą', and so on. Anglom (talk) 20:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Words with Germanic origins that came into English through French[edit]

I think it would make sense to separate the words that were originally Germanic but nevertheless came into English through French/Norman from those that came directly from Old English (or Old Norse). Since putting them into a separate column would be difficult due to the layout of the table, perhaps a footnote should be added to them. Perhaps something similar should be done for words borrowed from Latin directly into Old English or even into Proto-Germanic, such as street. --- Wikitiki89 (talk) - 15:23, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree: abandon, allegiance, rank, buoy, herald, guide, burgeon, regard, banquet, gallivant are French/Norman derived words. Etiquette, chagrin, chic, guise, boulevard are even French words, not English ones. 41.221.193.173 (talk) 13:52, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Latinate or germanic?[edit]

I don't see the logic of having words such as boulevard as "germanic", especially when you say street (a word which was in PG!) is latinate... I'm going to transfer street, as it is clearly a germanic word, but I'm not sure what to do with the many French loanwords with some distant germanic origin

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