Wordplay

[cjsmith]

[Poll #1100080]

I was something like thirty-eight when I had a sudden insight that these words might be related. I felt phenomenally stupid for not having seen it before. It's not like I've never studied a Romance language or somehow never in my life encountered that scent for soap.

Then I started telling friends, and so far, they've all responded with variants of "What do you mean, obvious? How the @#$! would you come up with something like that? Weirdo."

This is the kind of thing I wonder about a lot. Is there any relationship between the endings of "lavender" and "provender"? How many pairs of words used to follow the pattern "bear"/"birth" (verb -> vowel change + "th" -> noun) before we dropped those usages, and just how much does "death" count as one of the last remaining examples? If a pantler had charge of the pantry (bread = pan), and a hostler worked at a hostelry, did a butler (bottles, wine) ever at any time in the language have anything like a "butry", and are "gentry" or "gantry" even remotely related to this pattern?

Um, sorry, I'm just kind of like this. :-)

Comments

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

You didn't have a checky-box for "I hadn't thought about it, but I bet my husband has." Rondo and Jacob both *love* to think about the origins of words, and the way various words are connected. Rondo doesn't even use his etymological dictionary any more -- he just goes directly to his Greek and Latin dictionaries.

I like that you're kind of like that. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Rondo doesn't even use his etymological dictionary any more -- he just goes directly to his Greek and Latin dictionaries.

Lavender is an excellent example of why that could trip a person up. Etymologists link it more closely with livid, if you can believe it, than with lavare, although they do also admit of the second link. Isn't that just wrong? :-)

word play

[justetthon.livejournal.com]

I like that you're kinda like that also. This interests me as well... where words come from, what we think of them, etc. Fun stuff!