" If the earliest know source is Germanic, the dictionaries will say so. No one is hiding anything."

the word books do not always say so; at least that is not what I have found. It must be an oversight, thoughtlessness, or slim means. ;-) Anyway...

Feud "hated" should've been *feed in today's English [< O.E. fǣhþ(u) < PIE *pAik-, *pAig- ], but it seems the Norman-French 'feud' "property, livestock" [< Frankish: *fehu, *fihu < PIE *peḱu-] helped to shape the words spelling. Fee, Fief, Med. Latin feudum, feodum, and many others are from the same root.

Proto- Indo-European raises as many questions as it answers; Proto-Germanic even more so. As John McWhorter wrote in "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English" ( a great book, by the way), "...Proto-Germanic was a distinctly weird off-shoot of Proto-Indo-European...with a mysterious many of the Proto-Germanic words, we just hit a wall." The Germanic branch seems to have gone its own way.

Keep in mind, shifts in word meanings and new words taking over for old ones is acknowledged all over as standard happenings in any tongue. The Germanic tongues are not left out of this, so it is not odd that there are many Germanic words of unknown roots. Although your words are thought stirring...

@ þ: "I don't care one bit about how "Germanic" a word is, or for making English "more Germanic".... I want to root out linguistic snobbishness or elitism, not foreignness."

I am with you somewhat here. I care about all of the words that English has lost, making it something other than English. English is still a Germanic tongue, but many of it's upper-crusty know-it-all's seem to want to keep on shaping it into the new Latin. English will then go the way of Gothic, Langobardic, and Frankish.

Borrowing is only good when needed... orange, kitchen, wine, and so on, are good since they show how folks of yesteryear came together to share and learn from one another.

What it comes down to is this:

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

Inkhorns must go for the good of the English tongue. My 2 Marks.

By the way, beer is one of those words that is marked "...of disputed and ambiguous origin." Here is a great post on this word and it's shrouded root: http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/words-for-beer-3-the-big-mysteries/#more-1363

@goofy: "but that doesn't change the fact that they were borrowed into English from French."

True enough, but the French got it from a Germanic word/root, which likely was already in English at the first. My whole thought above was about Academia not acknowledging the true roots of "French" words that came into English. It is not right to call them French; folks not in the know always read in that it is "Latin-French," even when it is not. The French have, for a long time, down played the Germanic words in the French tongue >> it's seems it is a truth that is kept under wraps > willfully or not, I cannot say. In the same way, it would be wrong to say that BANANA comes from Spanish/Portuguese, when in truth, it came through those tongues from Wolof.

What is odd is that Wordlorists always seem to acknowledge Latin --with or without any grounded findings. The standard (< Frankish *standord) line is "from an unknown source" or "obscure." New findings have shed light on words that were once thought of as Latin rooted, and have shown that they are truly from Germanic roots. Look up the word FOREST to see what I mean.

Here is another good one:

FEUD < M.E. fede < M.Fr. fe(i)de > Frankish *fehu. The Franks also gave this word to Catalan in 976.(del germ. frànc. *fĕhu 'possessió, propietat' http://www.diccionari.cat/lexicx.jsp?GECART=0063693)

Borrowing Germanic rooted words from French is the same to me as borrowing Germanic rooted words from Italian (Langobardic), Old Norse, Dutch, or German: they are words all from the same tongue.

It is right to acknowledge the input Germanic tongues have had; it is wrong to hide it, willfully or not.

Another word that English doesn't need >> DELIQUESCE

(v) To dissolve gradually and become liquid by attracting and absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts, acids, and alkalies.

In English >> to slowly melt away over time.

INKHORN, anyone?

"For those folk watching the olympics who don't know what "equestrian" means......
It's horse-riding.
I cannot begin to fathom why we make such a meal of it all when it's so easy in true English."

Hear, hear Jayles. Jolly (< ON jōl) Good Show!

@jayles:

Human < O.Fr (h)umain < L. hūmānus "of man" < Old Latin hemō "the earthly one" (whence L. homō "man" -> New Latin homo sapiens "wise man") > akin to < ME gome < OE guma "man" < Gmc. * gumō/-ēn/-an/-un < P.Gmc. *ghemōn-, which is still found today in the word "bridegroom".

Why not say "Man" two ways like was said before political correctness? 'Mankind' instead of 'Humankind'?

HUMAN is on of those Latin words that came into English way after 1066 (mid 1400's), and is, to my mind, unneeded.

@jayles: "...German seems to need the article..."

Nein, das stimmt nicht...z.B. "Der Inlandsgeheimdienst ist Teil des Problems".

G. Wald = E. wold, wald (although now, this word mainly means 'grassland', unforested land, or moor today).

Let us look at how near German is to English, if we write with truly English words:

German: "Ich fahre durch den dicken Wald und das tiefe Tal."

English: "I fare through the thick wold/wald and the deep dale."

I/Ich < P.Gmc. *ik, *ek "name for one's self--pronoun"

fare/fahre < P.Gmc. *faranan "to go, to travel, journey"

through/durch < P/W.Gmc. *þurh "through, by means of"

the/den (accusative masculine singular) < P.Gmc. *sa "that, those, the"

thick/dick < P.Gmc. *þikkuz, *þikkwiz "thick"

wold(wald)/Wald < P.Gmc. *walþuz "forest, woods"

and/und < P.Gmc. *andi, *anþi, *undi, *unþi “and, furthermore”

the/das < P.Gmc. *þat, neuter form of P.Gmc. *sa (see above)

deep/tiefe < P.Gmc. *deupaz "deep"

dale/ T(h)al < P.Gmc. *dalan "valley"

English can still look Germanic, if the speaker wants it to. No outside words needed.

Instead of the word 'foreign', we should bring back elendish, ellendish “foreign” (< O.E. elþēodiġ, elþēodisc "foreign"

Instead of saying "part, portion, allotment", English-speakers should go back to saying 'deal'. The word deal (O.E. dǣl) is from the same root as E. dole (O.E.dāl), Dutch deel, Dan. del, Isl. deila, G. teil, and so on.

"A great deal of pain" = 'A large allotment of discomfort' in non-English.

L. part came into English around 1000 through O.Fr, and at last bereaved M.E. del, dele -- mostly anyway. The words 'deal' and 'dole' are still said in a lot of ways, so it should be easy to bring them back to the fore.

Thoughts anyone?

OE clȳsan (