From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2845
Date: 2000-07-12
----- Original Message -----From: Piotr GasiorowskiSent: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 1:00 AMSubject: Re: [TIED] Re: Etymological Riddles (Solution: Part Two)Just a couple of afterthoughts about Dienstag. I wrote:High German Dienstag and Low German/Dutch dinstag are not; their original meaning is apparently "assembly day" or "council day" (dingsdag). But there was also Old High German ziostag 'Tiw's day' > Middle HG ziestac, surviving in modern Alsatian Dsischdi.First, there's a small typo above. The word in brackets should be Dingstag if it's to look echt German. Secondly, some of you may not be familiar with the older meanings of German Ding and English thing. Before the word assumed its modern general meaning 'object, entity', it referred to a spectrum of more specific *things* like 'affair, cause, legal matter, trial, Gerichtsversammlung, council, assembly'. Old English had the verb thingian 'plead a cause, advocate'. You may know that the oldest fuctioning parliament on earth, that of Iceland, is called Althing ("all-thing") 'general assembly' (and they have the Folketinget in Denmark).I'm not sure why Tuesday, of all days, should have been the one for council meetings. A very likely reason is Tiw/Tyr's function as the god of law and justice (in addition to warfare); apparently assemblies proceeded more smoothly under his auspices. If this guess is correct, the following historical sequence can be deduced: (1) Roman Martis dies was calqued as "Tiw's day" by the Germani; (2) this gave rise to a tradition of holding assemblies on Tuesday in order to secure Tiw's protection; (3) in some dialects "Tiw's day" was renamed "assembly day"; (4) the tradition was forgotten but the name remained.Piotr