My granddaughter asked me this question, I had no idea what to tell her. Can anyone help?
Thanks for the welcome, any ideas?
I'm more or less waiting for our resident geniuses
zmjezhd or Faldage. They are probably already working
on it. The reason I wait, is because it is a good question,
and they have the wherewithal to find the answer. They also
have a working knowledge of PIE, the proto-language of most
of our words in our language. For me
I'd have to just start with a dictionary and mess around
on sites I have bookmarked, hoping to find an answer.
They have the ability to almost pull the answer out of a
hat. I will be following the thread however. For the
time being, what was behind the question? Was your
granddaughter just curious about how the word sounded, does
she like trees, or does she do this often with words.
This is the right site for searching.
>any ideas
because tree is so old and has so many cognates in other languages, it may be hard to say much more than "tree is a very old word (ca. 825CE) which has many cognates in other languages."
O.E. treo, treow "tree" (also "wood"), from P.Gmc. *trewan (cf. O.Fris. tre, O.S. trio, O.N. tre, Goth. triu), from PIE *deru- "oak" (cf. Skt. dru "tree, wood," daru "wood, log;" Gk. drys "oak," doru "spear;" O.C.S. drievo "tree, wood;" Serb. drvo "tree," drva "wood;" Rus. drevo "tree, wood;" Czech drva; Pol. drwa "wood;" Lith. derva "pine wood;" O.Ir. daur, Welsh derwen "oak," Albanian drusk "oak"). [online etymology dictionary]
Now usually zmjehzd comes in to tell where somewhere along the line from PIE* deru- "oak" to tree, the d became t. ( I always like that part)
From tsuwms etymology-list of words it seems that the Old Germanics, Frisians, Sweeds, Norse and Goths turned the deru-word from d to t > to the "tree" direction. The east European languages stayed close to the first and oldest word "deru". (as did Old Irish and Welsh) I like those things.
Enough stuff to make up a nice story for grandaughters. :-)
One place to look up such things, if you don't have a dictionary with good etymologies, is The Online Etymology Dictionary. Their entry on
tree is
here.
from PIE* deru- "oak" to tree, the d became t. ( I always like that part)
Yes, tsuwm's pretty much nailed it. I'll give some other cognate words: druid (from Irish), true, Greek δρῦς (drus) 'oak', δόρυ (doru)'spear', Polish drwa 'wood'.
No to the question. Well, English tree was written down long after it had been first used. The question doesn't mean much to me. It has cognates in other IE languages, like a lot of other words in English. Our earliest records of English are from roughly the 9th century. It is thought that our word for 'tree' came from the (reconstructed) word for 'oak' in PIE (proto-Indo-European, a language we have no written records of). There are plenty of examples of this sort of semantic broadening or narrowing of meaning: e.g., deer is related to german Tier 'animal'.
That is kind of where I would have started. Nice to know I am
learning things here on this site.
A Tree poem.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914
One of the many we had to memorize back in high school.