Re: English oddities

>From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>Subject: Re: English oddities
>Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 16:56:23 -0400
>
>Mangiat wrote:
>
> > I was wondering in the last days where the word 'TIME' is from.
>
>It's a borrowing from Old Norse.  There are many such words that have
>been borrowed and then semantically differentiated from their native
>counterparts: time and tide, skirt and shirt, etc.
Wait a minit! 'Time' and 'tide' both exist in Old Norse ("ti'mi" and
"ti'd"); how can English 'tide' then be the "native" counterpart of foreign
'time'?

Where does this 'time' come from? Just Old Norse? Is it a modified form of
'tide'? A special Scandinavian invention, like "dreng" (for example),
perhaps originating from non-IE substratum?

Oskar
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