Re: [romanceconlang] Etymology question

From: Christophe Grandsire (christophe.grandsire@free.fr)
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 07:16:21 EST


En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@yahoo.co.uk>:

> I have one short question:
>
> Could someone tell me what the etymology is of the French word
> "encore"
> (Italian "ancora", Rumantsch "aunc", Romanian "înca")? I can't think of
> any
> reasonable Latin word; I was thinking of "coram", but somehow that
> doesn't
> sound right to me.
>

The "Dictionnaire de l'Académie française" (which made my computer crash, so
I'm not gonna give you their URL :((( ) says it comes from the Latin
expression "hinc ha hora" or "hinc ad horam": from here until then. Knowing
that a lot of French adverbs are (sometimes still transparently) worn down
forms of former expressions ("toujours": always, for instance, is quite clearly
coming from "tous les jours": every day), this is quite plausible. The Académie
is not to be trusted when it tries to describe present French, but with
etymology they are usually good :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.



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