From: tgpedersen
Message: 52095
Date: 2008-01-30
>becomes
> tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > BTW it's interesting as Arnoud points out that Germanic -VwV-
> > French -VvV- *trewa > trève, since English does somethingsimilar in
> > inherited Germanic vocabulary, eg wave.Off the top of my head, as usual. But it seems to me English has a
>
> How do you analyse <wave>? I think the standard etymology derives
> it from ME waven < OE wafian 'to wave'. In ME it partly fell
> together orthographically with the nearly synonymous <wa3en,
> wawen> from OE wagian 'to move backwards and forward, totter,
> shake', since a spelling like <wauen ~ waven> was ambiguous.
> Still, neither of these verbs had an original /w/, and OE wafian,I'm not so sure it's that simple. Dutch has wapperen "flutter" (eg.
> in particular, comes from the root *webH- 'move to and fro'.