Re: [conculture] Re: Greetings!

FFlores wrote:
> does that
> mean most English words beginning with sk- are Scandinavian
> borrowings?
Right.  Almost all sk- words are Scandinavian, and a number of sc-.=20
That's why there's so many sh-/sk-, sc- pairs like skirt/shirt and
scatter/shatter.  An interesting set of cognates is skill and shield,
scale, shell.  They come from Proto-Germanic *skel-, *skal-, meaning
"divide, separate, split".  Skill comes from the idea of "being able to
make distinctions, wise", which came to mean the ability to do a certain
task.  Shield etymologically denotes "a flat piece of wood produced by
splitting a log or board".  Shell comes from the idea of "a covering
that splits off or is peeled off".  It's immediate Germanic ancestor was
*skalj=F4.  The word "scale" in the sense of a balance, comes from Old
Norse sk=E1l, "bowl, drinking cup".  Scale in the sense of what's on a
fish comes from Old French escale, which came from proto-Germanic
*skal=F4, derived from *skel-, *skal-.  Scale in the sense of "gradations=
"
comes from Latin scala, ladder, and is completely unrelated.  Other
relatives of this productive base include "scalp", "school" (in the
sense of school of fish), shale, shelter, and shoal.

As for "shirt/skirt", both come from proto-Germanic *skurt, meaning
"short" (ancestor of "short"), the idea being a "short" garment, one
that stops at or just below the waist.  Thus, the Anglo-Saxon is closest
to the original meaning.

--=20
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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