Linguistics is the scientific study of language or languages. The field of linguistics is often divided into several related fields including descriptive linguistics which describes a language and its phonology and grammar, and historical linguistics which looks at the history of the language. One very small, but fun, part of historical linguistics is etymology.
Etymology is the study of word origins. This includes language of origin (such as the number of words in English with French origins or American Indian origins) as well as changes in meaning through time. Etymology is about the history of words. Since English is a living language spoken by creative people, its words are constantly changing. Looking at these changes—in pronunciation, spelling, and meaning—can tell us a lot about our history.
With regard to etymology, linguist John McWhorter in Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English writes:
“Etymology is, in fact, but one tiny corner of what modern linguistic science involves, and linguists are not formally trained in it.”
Why engage in etymology? What can be gained from a study of the history of words? Dr. Joseph Shipley, in his 1945 book
Dictionary of Word Origins, writes:
“Word history traces the path of human fellowship, the bridges from mind to mind, from nation to nation.”
Etymology provides us with an understanding of the process of cultural and social change and it also provides some insights into the internal and external forces of change.
The inclusion of foreign words into English provides some insights into the histories of contacts between English-speaking people and other peoples. Most obvious are the great number of French words that came into English following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The impact of the French-speaking Normans on English has been primarily in vocabulary, as the ruling classes and the educated tended to be bilingual in French and English. Thus, the language absorbed words rather than grammar.
It should be noted that there are many words whose origins are untraceable. Etymological dictionaries contain many words which are described as being “of unknown origin” or “uncertain origin.”
The study of historical linguistics shows that all modern languages have descended from earlier languages. Using historical comparative linguistics, it is possible to reconstruct portions of these earlier languages. These earlier languages, languages from which other languages have evolved, are known as proto-languages. Pushpinder Syal and D. V. Jindal, in their book An Introduction to Linguistics: Language, Grammar and Semantics, write:
“This proto-language is not something that exists now; it is reconstructed by historical linguists on the basis of written records, coins, inscriptions, and so on.”
One of the most commonly described and discussed proto-languages is Proto-Indo-European (commonly abbreviated as PIE), which is the ancestral language to English, French, German, Sanskrit, and many other languages. This was a language which was spoken about 4000 to 3500 BCE and which was a dead language by 2500 BCE.
With regard to etymology, the word “etymology” came into English in the late fourteenth century as “ethimologia” referring to “facts of the origin and development of a word.” It came into English via French from the Latin “etymologia” which had been derived from the Greek “etymologia” which meant “analysis of a word to find its true origin.”