Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 March 4

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March 4

Alive and awake

I couldn't sleep and got to thinking about the word 'awake'. That also led me to 'alive'. What I was wondering about is the A on the front of each word. I'm not very good at reading the shorthand that dictionaries use to explain the origins of words but what I got was that they are a shortened form of old English for "on/of life" or "on/of waking". Am I roughly correct? Can someone clarify this for me? Thanks, †dismas†|^(talk) 18:06, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

You're exactly half right with these two examples, according to John Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins (Bloomsbury 1990), which covers the history of over 8,000 commoner English words. For 'alive' he says:

"[OE] Alive comes from the Old English phrase on live, literally 'on life.' Life was the dative case of lif 'life'; between two vowels f was pronounced /v/ in Old English, hence the distinction in modern English pronunciation between life and alive."

However, for 'awake' he says:

"[OE] Awake was formed by adding the intensive prefix ā- to the verb wake (in Old English wacan or wacian, related to watch, and also ultimately to vegetable, vigil and vigour). The adjective awake arose in the 13th century; it was originally a variant form of the past participle of the verb."

Picking other random 'a-' words, for 'away' he gives a similar origin to that for alive; a conflation of the phrase on weg, literally 'on way'. 'Arouse' (first recorded in Shakespeare) comes from adding the intensive prefix ā- to rouse. Abash comes (via French intermediaries) from the Latin batāre meaning 'yawn' or 'gape', with the addition of the prefix es- (from Latin ex-), giving a(s)bass which became abash. From my own knowledge of Latin, various other English words beginning with a- get it from various other Latin prefixes.

So, your "rule" does apply to some English words of Old English (i.e. Germanic) origin, but not those derived from Latin or its daughter tongues. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.27.125 (talk) 19:22, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Etymology online explains all and gives examples:

Old English an "on, in, into": alive, above, asleep, aback, abroad, afoot, ashore, ahead, abed, aside, etc.

Middle English of (prep.) "off, from," as in anew, afresh, akin, abreast.

Old English intensive a-, originally ar- (cognate with German er- and probably implying originally "motion away from"), as in abide, arise, awake, ashamed.

Latin and Greek derived words have their own "a-" prefixes. Alansplodge (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for that.

So, alive was "on life". Okay.

And then awake a more intensive, or sort of superlative, form of "wake"? Linguistics has never been my forte, so I just want to clarify. †dismas†|^(talk) 21:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

away, alone, alast, aloved, along --Jayron32 16:25, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Word derivation

I was reading an article about Joan of Arc which in turn caused me to look up the derivation of the word "pussy". I think there could be another explanation. In 1430 Joan of Arc was referred to as "la pucelle" which means "the maid". There is similarity of sound. Interesting. -- 20:55, 4 March 2019 2600:1702:3350:a500:6998:d2e6:51f7:d8fc

I would strongly doubt it: compare the second etymology section at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pucelle with the first etymology section at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puss ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2019 (UTC)