From: tgpedersen
Message: 60184
Date: 2008-09-20
>Yes.
> At 4:33:59 AM on Saturday, September 20, 2008, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 8:13:00 AM on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, Jonathan
> >> Morris wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>> I have a copy of V's book (can I have my money back?)
> >>> and was waiting until my time in Purgatory to read it
> >>> but was prompted by your query to read the entry on
> >>> knife, et al.
>
> >>> It's so transparently bullshit that it hardly deserves
> >>> comment - but for the sake of due diligence:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>> 2. On the one hand, V says the word must have passed
> >>> into Old French late (p441) because you don't get
> >>> 'chanif' but 'canif' - (which, btw shows a profound
> >>> ignorance of Picard, which preserves k, and you'd expect
> >>> to find canif if the word was coming from the Germanic)
> >>> then it's borrowed from Old French into Middle English
> >>> and from there into Old Norse, with "Old English/Old
> >>> Norse bilingualism in the Danelaw contributing" (p.439)
> >>> (sic). So it's unlikely to get to England before 1066,
>
> >> To be fair, there are a few OE words borrowed from OFr
> >> before the Conquest; <prut> ~ <prud> 'proud' comes to
> >> mind. But there certainly aren't very many.
>
> > ON pruðr,
>
> Should be <prúðr>.
>Yes.
> > ODa., Da, Nw. id.,
>
> I presume that you mean identical to <prud>, not to <prúðr>.
> > OSw prudher.DEO, which I checked:
> > But it's a word in p- and may be loaned directly from that
> > substrate..
>
> Just once it would be nice if you'd do a little basic
> research before mounting your hobbyhorse. The Romance
> derivation of the OFr word is perfectly straightforward.
> Lat. <pro:desse> 'to be of value, be good' gave rise to
> post-class. Lat. <prode> 'profitable, advantageous, useful',
> attested in Vetus Latina (Luke 9:25, <quid enim prode est
> homini>; Vulgate has <quid enim proficit homo>), whence OFr
> <prod, pro, pros, prot, proz>, <pru(d), prut> etc., <preu>,
> and so on, with senses 'courageous, valiant, good, noble,
> just, prudent, wise, profitable, advantageous'. Lat. tonic
> /o:/ (free) became Gallo-Romance /ou/ and eventually
> OCentralFr /eu/ (Fr. <preux>); in Picard, Walloon, and the
> Western dialects, however, it was levelled to /u/, whence
> the OE <prut, prud> (which, given the <-d> forms, looks like
> a very early borrowing).
>
> There is also no difficulty in taking ON <prúðr> 'fine,
> magnificent, stately' to be a borrowing from OFr or OE; the
> former is perhaps a bit more likely, given the semantics.
> (The earliest attested sense of the OE word is negative,
> 'proud' in the sense 'arrogant, haughty'.)
> [...]Well, if I should list as exceptions all the people it doesn't make
>
> > Jan de Vries: Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch
> > under hn-
>
> > 'Wörter mit dem anlaut hn- haben im germ. stark affektive
> > bed.; sie wechseln mit solchen, die mit gn- und kn-
> > anfangen. Im allgemeinen sind es germ. sonderbildungen,
> > die sich nur ausnahmsweise auf idg. grundformen
> > zurückführen lassen'
>
> [...]
>
> > The first quote makes one suspect we are dealing with
> > words of a substrate.
>
> It makes *you* think so.