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In his wwftd the other day, tsuwm noted what he referred to as a bit of fanciful etymology: sneeze is apparently an alteration of fnese
due to misreading or misprinting it with the
old-style s (which looked like an elongated f)
after the initial combination fn- had become
unfamiliar.Not quite what AHD3 has to say about it. Apparently the f fell off the word for what would seem to me to be obvious reasons and the s got tacked on in its place some time later by analogy with words like snort and snore. A transitional form nese is reported. http://www.bartleby.com/61/96/S0509600.htmlAHD3 is a little more explicit than this from AHD4, but you have to go to the brick and mortar dictionary for that.
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Carpal Tunnel
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all of that doesn't explain why fnesen was altered to snesen, and OED offers up the fanciful explanation, and I did characterize it as fanciful, thereby terminally ending my chances of ever getting a job from Jesse Sheidlower.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'll have to dig up the B&M etymology from AHD3 when I get home.
But as far as that goes, just trying it with my very own mouth, I can easily imagine fn shifting to sn without the need of any orthographical explanations.
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Carpal Tunnel
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An etymology not to be sneezed at. Who knows where that phrase came from?
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"An etymology not to be sneezed at. Who knows where that phrase came from?"
Dunno, but German for sneeze is niesen.
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German for sneeze is niesen
The Germanic root is fneu-s. Interestingly, snore and snort were the words that AHD3 suggests as the model for the addition of s to the ME form nesen from the OE fnesen. These words are related to fneeze and the OE was fnora. AHD3 doesn't bother explaining why *that f turned into an s.
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