Sunday, 21 May 2017

Deal

Deal

I was caught up in an online conversation about the etymology of "Hellas" and "Helen". In the comments a commentator mentioned the menunos father, from the movie "my big fat Greek wedding", and he got a ton of requests from other users, to trace the Greek origins of random words.

One user in particular, Turgon92, asked for the etymology of "Deal" so I looked it up just for fun, and the results I got really caught me by surprise.

It seems the English Deal comes from IndoEuropean root "dail-"
To divide. Northern Indo-European root extended from *da(h2)i‑ (see -).
deal1, from Old English dǣlan, to share, from Germanic *dailjan.

So dail- comes from "-" so I look that up, as requested by the entry, and it seems it is a simplified form of "dai-"
To divide. Oldest form *deh2‑, colored to *dah2‑, becoming *‑.
Variant *dai‑, from extended form *daəi‑, with zero-grade *‑ (< *diə‑, metathesized from *dəi‑).
Root form *dai‑. geodesy, from Greek daiesthai, to divide.

????

and this is not from some ethnocentric Greek bull, it's from the American Heritage Dictionary

So Deal < from Old English dǣlan < from Germanic *dailjan < from PIE dail- < from PIE - which is a simplified version of an older form < *deh2‑, colored to *dah2‑, becoming *‑, which root come from Greek dai- found in the Greek words daiesthai, to divide and daimon  (yes, demon)

From the root *‑ comes  demos, which gives deme, demos, demotic; demagogue, demiurge, democracy, demography, endemic, epidemic, pandemic
and also a suffixed variant form *dī-ti‑ which evolves to the English word Tide. (!!!!!!)

Also a suffixed variant form *dī-mon‑ gives the word time, from Old English tīma, time, period, from Germanic *tīmōn‑.

Unbelievable stuff.

My source:
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/indoeurop.html#dā-
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/indoeurop.html#dail-



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