Thursday, November 2, 2017

Bear

Bear

I’ve always assumed that — like most homonyms — the verb to bear & the noun bear came from different sources & managed to land in English with the same spellings but different meanings. 

Apparently not. They each come from a Proto-Indo-European word which had two different meanings.

So, those who study steaming heaps of Indo-European languages in order to manufacture a proposed earlier language (Proto-Indo-European), came to the conclusion that way back in some imagined time & place, something shiny & brown was called *bher-, AND to carry or give birth was to *bher-.

Why not? Every language includes words that look & sound the same but mean different things. Why not this imagined language of the distant past?

The meaning shiny & brown gave us these modern words:

brown
brunette
bruin
burnish
beaver

And look what the meaning to carry or give birth bore:

through Germanic languages
birth
burden
bairn

through Old English (look for barr)
barrow
wheelbarrow


through Greek & earlier Latin (look for for, phor, fer, or phag)
fortune
semaphore
euphoria
metaphor
odiferous
pestiferous
esophagus

through later Latin for the most part (look for pher or fer)
periphery
peripheral
paraphernalia
circumference
proliferate
fertile
conifer
refer
prefer
infer
confer
transfer
offer
differ
aquifer
ferret

I can hardly bear it.

Comments? You know what to do.



Big thanks to this week’s sources: the OED, Etymonline, Collins Dictionary, Merriam Webster, & Wordnik.

6 comments:

  1. Do you suppose those Proto-Indo-Europeans had Teddy bears? Maybe they saw one in the cradle with the kid and couldn't tell them apart? No. Probably not. :-)

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    1. A fine question. I find the invention of a language & culture based on research to be fascinating. There's probably an etymologist somewhere who could tell us what the Photo-Indo-Europeans probably called their teddy bears.

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  2. I want to let you'all know that I'm am seriously considerint joining the Apostra'fee Protection Societys' Web'site.

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    1. Excellent. Perhaps you can take a page out of Ellen's Uncle Newt's book. He only joined societies or organizations that were obscure or likely to fizzle away soon: the Johnnycake Preservation Society & the Oughtred Society were two of his favorites (William Oughtred invented the slide rule).

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  3. When I use the word "bear" as in "I must bear this burden" I always want to spell it differently. It just doesn't seem right. But then I was helping my 9 year old with spelling yesterday and he gave me a look like, "Are you sure? That doesn't seem right." quite a few times. It's a challenge, this glorious language of ours.

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    1. Hi Christine -- You're right. No question about it, this language of ours is a bear (sorry about that).

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