Re: English oddities

> Date:         Mon, 10 Jul 2000 17:59:14 +0200
> From: Mangiat <mangiat@...>
> I was wondering in the last days where the word 'TIME' is from. AFAIR there
> isn't any other Germanic lng. which has an -M in that position. German
> itself has ZEIT, Dutch 'TIJD' (not sure of it - it might be TEID - never
> understood Dutch diphthongs : ). English cognate should look like 'TIDE'.
> The strangest thing is that this word exists, but is translated as 'marea'
> (Gosh, once I knew the German word for that, but now... Bumme? - hope that's
> not a badword, at least). Anyway it seems once upon a time it meant 'time'
> as well, exemples are 'noontide' or 'yuletide', quite obsolete, I know, but
> they're on my little dictionary. So, how's it possible? Where's the -d gone?
> Where's the -m from? When did 'time' displace 'tide'?
According to my diccy, time/tide is an old doublet in Germanic. Danish
has tid = E. time, Da. time = E. hour.

'Replace' is probably the wrong word --- the manings of the two words
just specialized in different ways in the different languages.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)