Re: THEORY: counterpick (was: Re: THEORY: picking nits)

At 1:18 pm -0600 12/7/99, dirk elzinga wrote:
>On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, BP Jonsson wrote:
[snip]
>> What about "foible"?  Neither neologism nor onomatopoetic.  Probably
>> French, tho!
Certainly French.

It comes from Old French 'foible' which, at one time was pronounce
/fOjbl@/.  Later, as we know, the diphthong changed from the falling /Oj/
to a rising /wI/ which soon became /wE/ and remained so until the
Revolution popularized the Parisian /wA/.

/wE/ indeed had a tendency to lose the /w/ in some dialects, so we find a
later Old French form 'faible' which came into English as /fEbl@/ and gives
modern adjective 'feeble'.

Indeed, the same Old French words gives English triplets:
1. foible (noun) - a weakness, a penchant, a failing.
2. faible (noun) - the part of a foil blade between the middle & the point
(i.e. the weak part).
3. feeble (adj.) - weak, vacillating, lacking force.

Whence came Old French 'foible'?  From a colloquial Latin *fe:bile(m) which
arose by dissimilation from 'fle:bile(m)' "lamentable", an adjective
derived from 'fle:re' (to weep, lament).

Now ain't that interesting?
(Sorry, folks; etymologizing is a little foible of mine :-)

>I would syllabify "foible" as [foi.bL], where [L] is a syllabic liquid.
So would I and, I'm pretty certain, that's how most English speakers would
intuitively divide the word.

Ray.

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