Linguistics

798 readers

43 users here now

Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!

Everyone is welcome here: from laypeople to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.

Rules:

Instance rules apply.
Be reasonable, constructive, and conductive to discussion.
Stay on-topic, specially for more divisive subjects. And avoid unnecessary mentioning topics and individuals prone to derail the discussion.
Post sources when reasonable to do so. And when sharing links to paywalled content, provide either a short summary of the content or a freely accessible archive link.
Avoid crack theories and pseudoscientific claims.
Have fun!

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

lvxferre@mander.xyz

fossilesque@mander.xyz

The etymology of fencing was a trade (aussie.zone)

submitted 4 days ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to c/linguistics@mander.xyz

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An interesting bit of etymology that I learnt recently.

The English word "fencing" (as in sword fighting) comes from English "defence", from Old French "defens", from Latin "defendere", meaning "to ward off, defend".

The French word for fencing is "escrime". The Italian and Spanish words are also close cognates with French. "Escrime" comes from Old French "escremir", from Frankish "*skirmjan".

That means English, a Germanic language, gets its word from Latin, a Romance language.

And the Romance languages of French, Spanish, and Italian get their word from Frankish, a Germanic language.

Essentially, the Romance and Germanic language families did a trade.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Neat.

Is there a connection of the Frankish (or Latin) to PIE?

There's always a connection to PIE (or seems to be). I'm curious if both words connect there somehow.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 2 days ago

Escrime seems to trace itself back to PIE *sker- (1) "to cut." Fence goes back to *gwhen- "to strike, kill".

So no, no relation.

[–] StalinIsMaiWaifu@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yes, exact placement of sub families (and existence of italo-celtic) are debated, but it is definitely part of PIE

Edit: as for these two words, they are reconstructed as coming from different roots, skirmjam from *(s)ker. (Meaning to cut, Shear in modern English), and fendere from *bʰeyd (meaning to split, bunch of words in modern English)