Thursday, December 19, 2024

Lexember Day 19 - double

Twīfauþs is the result of a rather unusual merger of two similar words with similar meanings. It’s almost not worth commenting on, except that the two words have completely different etymologies. In Early Modern Valthungian, these were two distinct words – twīfnas and twižafauþs. The twi has a semi-common source: twi- is a common Germanic prefix for ‘two’, while twī (with a long vowel) is part of a root form of the same word. The -f- of both words is completely coincidental, however... see below. (This adjective does not have a comparative or superlative form, but I didn’t feel like futzing around with the formatting to erase them.)



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