Again and against - Wordsmith.org

In another thread (http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=120544"withershins and deasil"), the German "wieder" meaning "again", and "wider" meaning "against" were mentioned. These two words share a common origin, even though the semantic connection is not obvious.

The English forms are parallel, but different - "again" and "against" were once interchangeable in use, as for example "among/amongst" or "while/whilst". Both come from the same root as German "gegen" meaning "against".

The French have "encore" for "again", which is surely a close relation of Italian "ancora". In turn "ancora" suggests a tempting interpretation of "anche ora": "also now", but another possibility may be something like "(ad) hanc horam" - "(to) this time" (or some other preposition that takes the accusative). None of these are related to "contra", which is the root for "against" in these languages. "Contra" itself is mystifyingly described by the OED as "abl. fem. of a compar from com, cum with", but it looks like it's from "cum" + [some 1st declension noun?]. Latin for "again" is "iterum" which means something like "going over", and is a cousin to English "other".

By the way, the French don't shout "encore" to request a repeat performance - they shout "bis", which is Greek.

The words "again" and "against" are themselves in use in three non-standard ways in Ireland.

First: Meaning "not now/later". A person may say "I'll visit him again" even if they haven't yet done so once!

Second: Meaning "before". Example: "You'd better finish your homework agin your father gets back". This one is listed by the OED as an archaic meaning of "against". Archaic it may be, but not extinct!

Third: Meaning "in case". Example: "We should buy a fire blanket agin the chip pan goes up".

Very interesting.

the French don't shout "encore" to request a repeat performance - they shout "bis", which is Greek.

Sorry, but bis is good Latin for 'twice'; cognate with Greek dis, Sanskrit dvis from PIE *dwis.

"Contra" itself is mystifyingly described by the OED as "abl. fem. of a compar from com, cum with", but it looks like it's from "cum" + [some 1st declension noun?].

Prepositions, and other particles, are strange bits of words. The idea of a comparative of a preposition may seem strange, but English has nigh, near, and next and others.

The 't' in against is epenthetic; the form in Middle English was againes. Again from on + gean 'still, again' (cf. German gegen).

Prepositions are often from adverbs originally, so if 'in' meant 'inward' you could have 'inter'. In Latin especially a lot of the prepositional forms have some sort of comparative element: in-tr-a, in-ter-ior, -nal; ex-tr-a, ex-ter-; ul-tr-a, ul-ter-; prae, prae-ter.

Similar connections are round with Latin 're-' and English 'with'. 'Re-' means (1) again and (2) back. 'With' originally meant 'against', as in 'withstand', and then replaced 'mid' (German 'mit'), which didn't survive Middle English.

Perhaps the original idea was 'in the opposite direction', and this gave the 'opposed to' sense of words like 'against', and the 'back' sense, and then from changing direction and going back to something you get the 'once more' idea. The later meaning of 'with' would come from things like ladders being with walls, extended to general location.

A look at a Greek dictionary shows their prefixes 'palin-' and 'ana-' seem to have a similar variety of uses.

I have something lurking in my JDM� about the modern sense of with coming through the phrase fighting with.

If the t in against is epenthetic, how about the t in amidst and whilst?

What would you say about "unbeknownst"?

'With' originally meant 'against', as in 'withstand', and then replaced 'mid' (German 'mit'), which didn't survive Middle English.

Both wieder and wider are cognate with with. Mið lost out in English and wid in German. Prepositions and preverbs (or whatever you call the prep-like things that have attached themselves to verbs in IE lgs) are one of the hardest things to learn in a foreign language, mainly I believe because they are the left overish bits after nouns and verbs have been accounted for.

The suffix -(t)er shows up in different places in the IE lgs. Comparative versus nomen agentis suffix. Is the -ter in father, mother, brother different? or a different use. What about in dexter and sinister. About in-: it can be used in the sense of 'in(side of) / within' something, 'not' something (cf. our un-, and an intensifier as inflammable (cf. re- elsewhere in this thread).

If the t in against is epenthetic, how about the t in amidst and whilst?

Yep (along with nope, with epenthetic 'p'), both whilst (from whiles) and amidst (from admiddes, cf. mid 'with').

I'd never really thought of it before, but there are more than a few words ending in this -st, like unbeknownst and amongst. Is it somehow related to the superlative suffix? Or is it a purely phonological development? Thanks Hibernicus for a really fascinating thread.

I suppose the modern sense 'comparative' is too specific. 'Directional', perhaps? That might account for all those direction words like 'inter' and 'dexter' having it. Then there's Latin 'alter', 'uter', English 'other', 'either', etc.

I would have guessed the ma-ter, bhra-ter, pa-ter, dhugha-ter ones were different, maybe agent nouns, related to Latin -tor, and neuter instrument nouns: arator = ploughman, aratrum = plough. But if the experts can connect them, who am I to argue?

The two in-s are only the same in Latin: one's English 'in', Greek 'en', the other's 'un-' and 'a-'. But I know you know that. :)

Walde, in his Latin Etymological dictionary, suggests that alter 'one (of two)' is a comparative without the -yo- of the positive alius 'another, other'. Other words are alteruter 'one of two, either' and altroversum 'on the other side'. Uter 'which (of the two)' and its sibling neuter 'neither of the two'. The two Latin ins come from the same reconstructed root, but different grades: in 'in' from the full grade *en and in- (privative suffix) from *n. I'm not as sure about the in (intensive prefix) as in inflammo and inclutus.

I tend to think of comparison as somewhat logical (like in set theory), but I like your idea that it could be directional. There's definitely a spatial component to prepositions and adverbs.

Dear jheem: so when you take a pet to the vet to be deprived of his/her posterity, the pet comes back
"neither of the two". I never heard the etymology before.

Yup, the "two" referring to masculine and feminine grammatical genders. Not the other two little witnesses that got removed. It seems that PIE had two genders: animate and inanimate which map roughly to non-o-stem masculine/feminine and neuter. Later, what became the feminine developed out of neuter plurals reanalyzed as abstract nouns, e.g., bona 'goods'.

Some folks get bent out of shape when historical linguists talk about grammatical versus natural gender, charging all kinds of PC tippytoeing, but there are many languages that have grammatical gender (ultimately from Latin genus 'kind') that does not map at all to natural (biological or sexual) gender. For example, Kiswahili (and other Bantu) languages have a whole passel (more than 10) of genders, and gender concord not only between adjectives and substantives, as we're used to in IE lgs, but also between verbs and nouns. The genders are marked with prefixes (cf. mtu and bantu 'person' and 'people').

And there's that -st again in the preposition post 'after'. Aft, after, aftest?

way coolest.

hey, maybe one of you megalangs could put together a little list of all the acronyms, such as PIE, and MnE(or whatever that was...), and Jackie could sticky it up in I&A...
just a thought...

It occurred to me to wonder what bitches are "spayed".
spay

PRONUNCIATION: sp
TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: spayed, spay�ing, spays
To remove surgically the ovaries of (an animal).
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English spaien, from Anglo-Norman espeier, to cut with a sword, from espee, sword, from Latin spatha. See spathe.

I used to have a colleague named "Spadea" - something about
swords in his ancestry?

Notice also that modern "�p�e used to be "espee"

Aft, after, aftest?

Oth, other, othest?

Not to prolong the absurd, but two out of three look interesting:

both, bother, botherest

...sorry. Really couldn't resist.

Notice also that modern "�p�e" used to be "espee"

And the e is prothetic. And after a while, the s was no longer pronounced, and it even dropped out of the orthography, but it left its trace in the accent.

Your spay got me to thinking of scalpel: L scalpellus, scalpellum, diminutive of scalper, scalprum 'chisel, knife' (from earlier *scalp-lo-) from scalpere 'to scratch, carve'; cf. Gk skalops 'mole'.

In reply to:
cf. Gk skalops 'mole'

So the scalpel is related to the animal, linguistically at least, with one slicing and the other scratching. Again, as usual, jheem, very interesting.

So the scalpel is related to the animal, linguistically at least, with one slicing and the other scratching. Again, as usual, jheem, very interesting.

Ta, WW. Yes, linguistically, or at least lexically, the words for the animal and the instrument are related to an earlier root whose meaning is glossed as 'to cut'. It's also related to shelf, and without the s, to half. There's a whole bunch more words (like shield and shilling) that are in the *skel- family, too.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE465.html

Dear jheem: could fact primitive men used skulls as (convenient, not gruesome) drinking cups have influenced some of these words?

>>>By the way, the French don't shout "encore" to request a repeat performance - they shout "bis", which is Greek

Um, yes we do. These French do anyway. You'll notice that there is a world of difference (perhaps the expression should be 'an ocean') between the Franch French and the Canadian French.

That is why I generally add "In French Qu�bec" to all my statements since we are very different from the France French and the Island French.

Bis is used to mean "repeat" in written song lyrics. Otherwise, bis means a kiss, i.e. "donne moi un bis" (give me a kiss).

So if a whole audience is shouting "bis, bis, bis" to someone on stage, there better be smootching going on

there better be smootching going on

And, I guess, bis in French usage may be related to the obsolete English buss meaning "kiss". I suppose.

I'm not sure it would be Cap. Bis is actually an abbreviation of bisou however is is never used as such with adults. Bisou is generally used when taking to very small children - up to six year-olds. After that, it switches to bis or bec.

Notable exception: Those couples who insist on taking baby-talk to one-another. English comparative...those couples that say "come gimme a kissy-wissy my baby-waybe." Makes you rethink those free-speech laws.

After that, it switches to bis or bec.

So, Qu�bec means "what a kiss!"?

In reply to:
So, Qu�bec means "what a kiss!"?

belMarduk-- Does baiser (from LL. basio 'to kiss') have its continental secondary meaning in Québec French?

I don't know what a "continental secondary meaning" means jheem so I'm not sure what you're asking.

F.Y.I. though, baiser as a noun means a kiss, as a verb means having sex.

Dear belMarduk: So a Yank using his highschool French, trying to say "Kiss me" could get a knuckle sandwich!

baiser
[beh zay]

to kiss

Les hommes ne baisent plus les mains des femmes. - Men don't kiss women's hands any more.

Note: Baiser is also a vulgar slang term, depending on the context. In the above sentence, it is obvious that baiser means kiss. In a sentence like � Il m'a bais�e � of course the listener would hear "He f...ed me." Basically, if you have any doubts, find another verb for kiss, like embrasser.

(vulgar slang) - to outdo, to be had; to have sex

Il s'est fait bais� - He was really had/outdone.

Related: un baiser - kiss; le baisement - kissing (e.g., the Pope's hand)

I don't know what a "continental secondary meaning" means jheem so I'm not sure what you're asking.

I just was asking if the verb baiser which originally meant 'to kiss' but now means 'to have sex' has this latter meaning also in Québec. Sorry to be vague.

Um, yes we do. These French do anyway. You'll notice that there is a world of difference (perhaps the expression should be 'an ocean') between the Franch French and the Canadian French.
[...]
Bis is used to mean "repeat" in written song lyrics. Otherwise, bis means a kiss, i.e. "donne moi un bis" (give me a kiss).

I am familiar with "bise" /biz/ rather than "bis" /bis/ to mean a kiss (and of course "gros bisou" when you're talking to an infant).

As for the Qu�bec use of "encore", I believe this is a regionalism influenced by English usage. My Petit Robert lists this usage for "bis" but not for "encore". It would not be the only case of a French word used in Qu�bec and in English, but not in bon Fran�ais de France - cf "brassi�re".

Sorry, but bis is good Latin for 'twice'; cognate with Greek dis, Sanskrit dvis from PIE *dwis.

You are quite right - for some reason I thought that the Latin "bis" was borrowed directly from Greek.

On the subject of "-ter", we also have
ob -> obiter
prope -> propter
post -> poster(us), poster(itas)

But in the cases of intra, contra and ultra, I think we may be seeing something different; contra especially is quite semantically different to cum/con, more than can easily be explained by a comparative ending. Originally I was looking for a noun like "*tera", but there is a stem "tri" in Sanskrit meaning "to step over/go beyond", which is surely related to L."trans" and could be the missing semantic ingredient in these words.

It seems that PIE had two genders: animate and inanimate which map roughly to non-o-stem masculine/feminine and neuter.

And both Dutch and Swedish have reverted to this condition - the two genders are "common" (representing masculine and feminine) and neuter. German of course still operates 3 genders (a curse be upon it!)

And both Dutch and Swedish have reverted to this condition - the two genders are "common" (representing masculine and feminine) and neuter.

Yes, and Hittite never bothered to split its common gender.

I was doing a bit of random surfing today and come upon this usage of bis:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxophone
scroll all the way to the bottom(if you can tear yourself away from the picture of musician playing saxophone!!).
bis is used for the last of three Bb fingerings. can't quite make sense of that.