Some Interesting Old English Words

2. Some Interesting Old English Words • Drēam • Bill / Bile • Gafol • Cwelan • Bad

3. Lost Word: Dream drēam: • joy or bliss revelry, rejoicing 2. music

4. Lost Word: Dream drēam-cræft: the art of music drēamere: musician “ swa mæg eac se dreamcræft ðæt se mon bið dreamere ” Thus music makes musicians (medicine makes doctors, rhetoric makes rhetoricians). OE translation of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy “You may say that I’m a dreamer”—John Lennon People speaking Old English would say that.

5. Lost Word: Dream As joy, drēam was replaced by a French loan: “joie.” As music, drēam was replaced by a Latin/French loan: musica, which came ultimately from the Greek idea of the Muse.

6. Found Word: Dream The Oxford English Dictionary shows the last use of “dream” meaning “music” in 1330. “Dream” inexplicably appears in its modern sense (a vision during sleep) in 1250. The Oxford English Dictionary notes: It’s possible that one day someone just dreamed up the word. “It is remarkable that no trace of dréam in this sense appears in Old English; yet it is clear that it must have existed, since the Middle English form drêm is regularly derived from it, and could come from no other source.”

7. Interesting Word: Bill/Bile In Old English, the word “bill” meant a sword. The word “bile” was related. It meant the beak of a bird, which for some birds resembled a sword. The word “bile” was replaced with the Latin word referring to the body fluid. Ultimately, “bill” lost its meaning and took on the meaning of the word “bile.”

8. Lost Word: Gafol gafol: • a payment or tribute made to a superior • a debt • rent owed to a landlord

9. GafolGale “Gale” in Modern English was contracted from gavel and meant a periodical payment of rent. Its usage died out in the 19th Century.

10. GafolGavel “Gafol” merged with the French word “gabelle” (meaning tax) to form “gavel” which meant a payment. “Gavel” became a verb, meaning to divide up land (the British laws for Celtic land inheritance were called “gavelkind”). “Gavel” then became a noun again, referring to a president’s mallet. Judge Reinhold’s Court

11. GafolGavel (disclaimer) All of that makes logical sense, but some etymologists argue that the word “gavel” meaning mallet actually comes from words in German and referred initially to an actual tool that a mason used.

12. Interesting Root: Cwelan cwelan: to die cwellan: to kill cwellere, cwellend: killer cwyld: disease cwalu: murder

13. Interesting Root: Cwelan From these death-related words, Middle English received: quale: meaning death, now obsolete qualm: meaning death, now obsolete (this may be the root for the modern “qualm”—a sudden sickness) These words probably never lasted because of the Latin “qual-”, which created words like quality and qualify—more about logic than death.

14. Interesting Root: Cwelan The word “quell” (meaning “to put an end to”) derives from “cwelan.” More interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t show “kill” as explicitly related to “cwelan.” “Kill” it argues first appears in Middle English. Words that sound like “kill” in Old English have very different meanings: cyle: cold; cylen: kiln; cyll: a leather bag.

15. Etymology: “bad” The etymology of the word “bad” is a mystery. The word “bād” in Old English meant an expectation, but it had no connotations as to whether the expectation was good or bad.

16. Etymology: “bad” So where does bad come from? Possiblities: “bæddel” meant a hermaphrodite. “bædd” could be a derivative of this, a demeaning way to refer to someone. The Oxford English Dictionary leans toward “bad” being originally used in names of people and places. The connotations of these people and places became so negative that their names became the very opposite of “good.”

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