Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2014/May

yeast
An IP posted an inquiry at Talk:yeast about our etymology (and by extension, our Old English entries). While they were extremely confused about a lot of things, I suspect they were right about the correct Old English ancestor to yeast being gist, not giest.

For one thing, every English dictionary I've been able to check so far gives the OE term as gist, as do Bosworth-Toller and J. Clark Hall. I was able to track down one of B-T's cites in Google Books:.

On the other hand, Gerhard Köbler, (accurately) citing Pokorny p. 506, says giest.

The Dutch site, etymologiebank.nl, is mixed: their most recent source says "gist", but the older ones seem to all say "giest".

Does anyone have a definitive way to resolve this? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Not a definitive way, but see this entry from the Middle English Dictionary with several alternative spellings for a word for yeast in Middle English. Among others gist is early and yeaste is late. DCDuring TALK 01:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Last chance for anyone to say anything before I get rid of all references to Old English . Chuck Entz (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't find any reliable sources showing giest, only gist and gyst. giest makes sense though as an intermediate form between the two: gist would break into *giest before becoming gyst, but that's hypothetical. Leasnam (talk) 01:18, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

guide
Is the origin of guide (or French guider respectively) the preterite present or rather the full verb? The reason why I suspect that the macron has been mistakenly omitted here (from both the Frankish and the Proto-Germanic reconstruction – the mistake appears to go back to the Online Etymology Dictionary) is that the preterite present is never used in a sense like "to show the way", as far as I am aware. Nor would it be expected: Knowing (the way) is not the same as showing the way. The legal sense "accuse" of the full verb is plausibly derived from a meaning "indicate", in contrast (although I do not know if this meaning is actually attested in any Germanic language, as opposed to the well-attested legal sense). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

ding, dinge (verb)
Are these different forms deriving from the same Old English/Germanic source? 17:50, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
 * ding from OE, probably yes. The etymology of dinge however, is usually regarded as unknown, but I wouldn't be surprised if it could be representative of a causative form ''*dengan". Leasnam (talk) 22:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

ambo
Should the PIE origin be instead? Since is its cognate... --kc_kennylau (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Looking at the etymology for the other Ancient Greek cognate,, shows the more likely version: . It's all mostly a matter of notation, anyway: *bʰ and *bh are the same thing as represented in two different systems. Likewise, *h₂ and *a are the same thing in this case according to laryngeal theory (pre-laryngeal notation might use *ɘ). Chuck Entz (talk) 03:57, 18 May 2014 (UTC)