Daniel 44 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been thinking a lot of late about word origins and the interesting
> connections between words.
>
> I want to share two examples I've thought of:
>
> 'Malaise' - obviously a French word, though I'm not entirely sure of its
use
> in everyday modern French. In English, we use it to mean 'sickness' or
'bad
> feeling'.
>
> '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'.
Italian has 'malessere' /mal'Es:er(e)/, from mal+ essere (to be).
Could it be a loanword? Whence is it attested?
Luca