Re: Word connections - malaise and sit

At 5:49 am -0700 24/5/01, Tom Pullman wrote:
>--- Daniel44 <Daniel44@...> wrote:
>
>>'Mal' obviously means 'bad' but what about the ending '-aise'?
>>
>>My guess is that it comes from the verb s'asseyer (I hope the spelling is
>>ok) which means 'to sit'.
>
>I think the "-aise" is related to English "ease"
Spot on.  English _ease_ is indeed from Old French _aise_.  The word is
cognate with Italian _agio_, Provençal _ais_ and Portuguese _azo_.

>rather than
"asseoir" (you're thinking of "asseyez"). Changing the initial vowel _and_
the next consonant (from /s/ to /z/) would be a strange thing to happen.

Yes, as well as dropping the -se/-sey- part - bizarre indeed.

French _asseoir_ is, of course, derived from Latin _assede:re_ <-- ad +
sede:re.   And the verb _sede:re_ is cognate with out English _sit_.
--------------------------------------------------

At 2:01 pm +0200 24/5/01, daniel andreasson wrote:
>Daniel44 wrote:
>
>> And this brings us onto the English word 'sit'. Is it just a
>> coincidence that the colloquial word 'to shit' is almost
>> identical? After all, you have to sit down in order to ...
>> you get the idea.
>
>Err. "Shit" is a common Germanic word (Sw. _skit_, Ger.
>_scheiss_) which comes from an IE-root meaning 'split,
>separate, divide'.
Yep - the root *skid, found also in Latin, with nasal infix in the present
stem: scindo:, scindere, sci:di:, scissum (<-- *skid-to-)

>"Sit" is another common Germanic word (Sw. _sitta_,
>Ger. _sitzen_, Isl. _sitja_), related to the Latin
>word _sedere_ also meaning 'sit'.
From root *sed

>I'm pretty sure those words aren't related, but feel
>free to correct me.
No need - you are quite correct.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================