Wordsmith Talk |
About Us | What's New | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | |||
Register Log In Wordsmith.org Forums General Topics Miscellany positive to negative
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
OP There are three terms in French, aucun 'none', personne 'nobody', and rien 'nothing', which started out from Latin and into Old French as positive (< Old French alques 'something' < Latin aliquid 'something' + un 'one', persona 'mask, part; person', and rem, the acc. of res, 'thing') but today are negative in meaning; cf. Old French les riens que j'aime 'the things which I like'. They seem to have gone from positive to negative on account of the formation of the negative in French: ne + V + pas (< Latin passus 'step', actually that's another one, pas can be used in the meaning 'not'), where pas strengthens the negative force of the sentence; cf. English I don't care one bit.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted positive to negative zmjezhd 12/30/08 05:27 PM Re: positive to negative BranShea 12/30/08 09:30 PM Re: positive to negative LukeJavan8 12/30/08 09:44 PM Re: positive to negative zmjezhd 12/30/08 10:28 PM Re: positive to negative BranShea 12/31/08 09:33 AM Re: positive to negative belMarduk 01/08/09 09:36 PM Re: positive to negative BranShea 01/08/09 10:03 PM Re: positive to negative LukeJavan8 01/09/09 06:40 PM
Moderated by Jackie
Link Copied to Clipboard
Forum Statistics Forums16Topics13,913Posts229,351Members9,182 Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
Newest Members Ineffable, ddrinnan, TRIALNERRA, befuddledmind, KILL_YOUR_SUV
9,182 Registered Users
Who's Online Now 0 members (), 775 guests, and 0 robots. Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Top Posters(30 Days) A C Bowden 22ddrinnan 1
Top Posters wwh 13,858Faldage 13,803Jackie 11,613wofahulicodoc 10,549tsuwm 10,542LukeJavan8 9,918Buffalo Shrdlu 7,210AnnaStrophic 6,511Wordwind 6,296of troy 5,400
Forum Rules · Mark All Read Contact Us · Forum Help · Wordsmith.org