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Posted By: wwh luck - 01/23/04 07:46 PM
I just saw name "Gluck" and wondered if it could be in any way cognate with "luck", so I searched. Here's what I found:

hi there, do you know the etymology of luck? if so, please send me any information on the word. Thanks you! Lia Rottman
luck - 15c. from M.Du. luc, shortening of gheluc "happiness, good fortune," of unknown origin. Perhaps first borrowed in Eng. as a gambling term.From: (02-28-02) See also: Elizabeth Barham
http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/l2etym.htm http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entries/02/l0280200.html




Posted By: Wordwind Re: luck - 01/24/04 07:49 PM
In reply to:

Perhaps first borrowed in Eng. as a gambling term.


Ahh, and lucre has to do with financial matters...

Posted By: wwh Re: luck - 01/24/04 08:09 PM
lucre

SYLLABICATION: lu·cre
PRONUNCIATION: lkr
NOUN: Money or profits.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Latin lucrum. See lau- in Appendix I.
WORD HISTORY: When William Tyndale translated aiskhron kerdos, “shameful gain” (Titus 1:11), as filthy lucre in his edition of the Bible, he was tarring the word lucre for the rest of its existence. But we cannot lay the pejorative sense of lucre completely at Tyndale's door. He was merely a link, albeit a strong one, in a process that had begun long before with respect to the ancestor of our word, the Latin word lucrum, “material gain, profit.” This process was probably controlled by the inevitable conjunction of profit, especially monetary profit, with evils such as greed. In Latin lucrum also meant “avarice,” and in Middle English lucre, besides meaning “monetary gain, profit,” meant “illicit gain.” Furthermore, many of the contexts in which the neutral sense of the word appeared were not wholly neutral, as in “It is a wofull thyng . . . ffor lucre of goode . . . A man to fals his othe [it is a sad thing for a man to betray his oath for monetary gain].” Tyndale thus merely helped the process along when he gave us the phrase filthy lucre.




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