Marco To Elephant
> Is it me or is this speculation about the etymological relation of the
anglo
> saxon "geware" to the modern word "aware" somewhat besides the point?
>
Of course. Hope you forgive me, I was clearly playing with words. I like
etymology, but I've no formal training on it, and especially Anglo-Saxon
terms are not such "mine" as Latin and Greek. And further, the only
book supporting me is that "defective dictionary" you already know....
:-)
Anyway, many thanks for the short lesson. While waiting for a Saxon
etymology professor, hope you will like this diveRTissement ...
The point is: you hold that "ge-waer" is "ge" + "were" (preterit of "to
be"). I agree and thank you for the "ge-", but I need more about "to
be". Actually you also have found problems with a double presence of the
past, both in ge- and in were....
You did not consider the term "wary". Be-ware is IMO the present form,
and Ge-ware is the past for of the action of making someone "wary", that
is "careful".
You have offered 4 different possibilities for the ge- prefix:
1.performance of an action,
2.attainment of a result by an action,
3.completion of an action (familiar in German past participles)
4. together [with].
Actually, it seems to me exactly the German version of the Latin prefix
con-.... anyway, if gewaer is ge-wary, ge- can be quietly considered in
any of the 4 points, just like the Latin "con-scious" is "WithScience",
as science has been attained after the completion of the action of
knowing....
Anyway, I don't want to rule "to be" out. Let me know if your book says
something about the current term "wary"... we should discover if "wary"
and "war" and "were" are related or not.....
thanks,
Marco
> p.s. If you want to see someone take the pith out of
> etymology-as-a-route-to-philosophical-understanding with *style*, I'd
> recommend Plato's Cratylus.
It is on my list. I've just read the Phaedrus and it was funny.
ooopsss
I've just received a private post from an old German lurking friend:
JoVo. He seems to support my first post.... Danke JoVo, you made my day!
=====================
>From JoVo
To Marco
Hi Marco,
I've been following this thread with great interest lateley. Allow me to
give a comment on your considerations about the ethymological origin of
some of the named words.
I did not know about 'gewaer' to be an old 'almost'-synonym of 'aware'.
That is quite interesting, because there exists an old verb in German,
which is almost out of use - I myself use it also seldom - that seems to
match almost perfectly (supposingly) the meaning of 'gewaer'; it is
'vergewaertigen' or also 'gewaertigen'. Note the resemblance concerning
it's spelling. Just to make it more obvious I cut the second half of it,
making by this some sort of adjective out of it.
It is 'gewaer' in english and
'gewaer' in german
(besides we use instead of 'ae' always the german 'Umlaute', that are
'a','o','u' with a double spot above them, but that is secondary,
because it makes no difference for it's pronouncation)
'vergewaertigen' means to make oneself conscious of a certain fact or a
certain situation or simply to make something clear to oneself;
gewaertigen is synonymous only it is a short form. As mentioned above
these words are almost out of use in nowadays everyday-german and one
can use instead of it without great loss of meaning 'sich bewusst
machen', 'sich bewußt werden', which in turn means 'to make yourself
getting concious of', 'to get concious of'; and also is the noun
'Bewusstsein' equivalent to 'consciousness'.
We have no equivalent term for 'awareness', but I guess 'aware' is best
translated into 'gewahr', which is nowadays word for what is meant by
'gewaer' (see above).
sidenote:'Gewahr' and 'gewaer' resembles very much the german word for
rifle:= Gewehr. Also 'wahr' is in english 'true'
'gewaertigen' or even older 'gegenwaertigen' is composed of 'gegen'
(against) and 'warte' (which means 'lofty viewpoint') and has to be
considered as a special, exposed viewpoint, e.g. a tower or house, or
even a tree on a mountain or a hill. Not difficult to see it's origin: a
special post to observe the sorrounding landscape in effort to discover
any enemy or army approaching. So it is all very close to what you has
discovered.
and with a slight change you can make 'Gegenwart' out of 'gegen' and
'wart(e)', which is an almost exact translation of 'presence' .....
;-)(enough now)
guard is related to 'guerre' french for 'war' which correlates also with
'ger', which is a very old german word for 'spear' or 'lancet'; both
have a 'ger'man origin also.
Greetings,
JoVo
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