[lit-ideas] Re: The Education of a Swain
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:07:01 EDT
I'm slightly confused etymologically. The OED has an entry for an old
English form ("swon", no archaic), whose etymology it says is:
"
OE swan, swineherd --
OTeut. *swainaz, referred by some to root swa-, swe- oneself, and taken to
mean orig. ‘a person belonging to oneself, adherent, attendant’."
So my pun on 'swine' as in the current alarm is not etymologically related.
Or is it not?
The etym. for 'swine' is pretty complex:
OTeut. *swinom, neut. of adj. formation with suffix -no- (cf. L. suinus,
OSl. svin swinish, and see -INE suffix1) on the root of L. sus, Gr. hys ,
and SOW n.1
The orig. use may have been either generic or restricted to the young of
the swine; for the latter cf. Goth. gaitein, OHG. geizzîn young goat, kid,
cogn. w. OE. goeten of goats, L. hædinus of kids:Indo-eur. *ghaidno-, f.
ghaid- GOAT.]
'kid' is an interesting one. "That kid is uneducated", i.e it has been
misled from the 'flock'.
JLS
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