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Re: Word connections - malaise and sit

From:Tom Pullman <tom@...>
Date:Thursday, May 24, 2001, 12:49
--- 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" 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.
> >So 'malaise' could be translated as 'bad sitting'. In English we have such >an expression: 'this just doesn't sit well for me'. >
That's expressing the idea of something not fitting in well with one's circumstances, I think, not a general feeling of undefined discomfort. And more generally, languages tend to use their words for "stand" rather than "sit" to talk about states: in both Spanish and Irish the verbs for "being something temporarily" (a bad description but it's something like that) developed independently from the verb "stand": Spanish "estar", Irish "tá". == Tom Pullman "Dochuala as borb nad légha." _____________________________________________________________ Visit http://www.freeservers.com to get a Web site with a personalized domain and Web-based email

Replies

claudio <claudio.soboll@...>time and place
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