Antiquated English

traditionally, it was a servant - in somewhat more modern german it's an apprentice for a master trade. Most young germans of Craven's age are in some type of apprenticeship, making them knechts. It's a bit more flattering than be considered a mere stripling.

My dad would have respect for a knecht, as s/he is learning a trade.

It can be Slave or pleb if you know what I mean but I can to be, : "scally, i.e. deceptive, untrustworthy, a genaral "WIERD"person too.

Hmm, might well be, but I always have to check flattering comments from Beth. Might be backhanded after all.

edit: SOOOO was a backhanded compliment! Bethie is sooo mean!

But this could of course be a completly different word because we spell it differently.
Knegt.

Nw I KNOW it's a different word.

So tell me precisely what it means please
I'm lost..

I think the words started in the same place, and kind of wandered in different directions. Merry Andrew is the expert in this area.

I thought it was odd to find those medieval definitions of slave. I can see how they got to apprentice from there, but German apprentices are anything but slaves these days. You even have to do an apprenticeship to be an engineer there. It's quite respected and respectable.

This is the kind of evolution of language that I was on about. We both share the same language and certain words but though the recourse of time we have modified and changed the meanings to suit our uses.

Surely this is how we all make everything a possible verb, and them two verbs, and then two nouns appear as differences and the evolution line is complete. Now we take these new words and start back at the top.

I blush at your calling me an expert on anything, Beth. It's too great a burden to live up to. Now, Aa, if she were here, would probably be quoting from the OED. Me, I'm way too lazy to go look anything up, so this is off the top of my head.

'Knecht' and 'knight' are obviously cognate words and at one time were undoubtedly the same word. What happens in cases like this is usually this -- the word changes its look only slightly from one language to the other, but the meaning, as understood by native speakers, might change drastically. First off, a knight (in the English sense of the word) was originally no more than a land-owner, a farmer, if you will, who owed allegiance to his overlord in times of war. He was, by contract, obligated to serve his lord as a mounted warrior. In this sense, he was an 'apprentice' to the noble lord.

I've seen the word spelled 'knecht' and 'knicht' in various medieval texts. By Chaucer's time, however, the preferred spelling was, apparently knight. It is so that Chaucer spells it in The Canterbury Tales (if you can speak of such a thing as 'standard' spelling in those days to begin with; everything was spelled phonetically.) But, now, that spelling gives us a hint to how the word was probably pronounced back then. If it had been said the way we say it today it would have been spelled quite differenly. Probably nait or something like that.

So Chaucer's pronunciation of it was probably something like 'k-nikht,' with the 'k' definitely not silent as it is today. And that's fairly close to how you pronounce 'knecht' in German.

Now that I've confused you completely, I take my abashed leave.

Bravo! Merry Andrew, that was great, exactly what i was hoping for - the knight connection made the varying directions the word has gone make a lot of sense.

I really appreciate how you present this type of information.

And then there is the tendency of words to change in meaning - fond, for instance, at one time meaning foolish: As in Lear's "I am a very foolish, fond old man." - the meaning can still be seen in fondness being an emotional state that may tend towards foolishness, as in over fond.

Silly used to mean innocent - and I suppose there may still be an innocence about silliness in some senses in which the word can be used.

Naughty used to be a very strong word - with a meaning closer to wicked.

So - words can become more, or less, morally reprehensible or laughable in their meanings.

And sometimes words can completely reverse their original meanings. If I say today, "I'll let you do that," I mean that I will permit it. If I had said the exact same sentence in Shajespeare's day, it would have meant I'll try and stop you. (See Hamlet, Act I.) ['Let' is still used in that older sense in legalese when they speak of 'with no let or hinderance.']

And I used it that very way this very day on the digression thread!

So it goes.

Andrew, if you haven't already done so, you might be interested in signing up for the Worldwide Words newsletter which is emailed each Saturday a.m. The following is from today's edition.

In 2005 Britain will undoubtedly make a vast splash about the two-
hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, at which Admiral
Horatio Nelson beat the French but lost his own life. A preliminary
skirmish took place in London last week when a mass of Nelsoniana
was auctioned. The catalogue contained a quiz in which the story of
Nelson's famous signal before the battle, "England expects that
every man will do his duty", was revisited.

Nelson originally wanted his signal to read "England confides that
every man will do his duty". His signal officer, Lieutenant John
Pascoe, persuaded him to replace "confides" by "expects" because it
would need fewer flags at a time of great haste. As an unintended
result, the signal makes as much sense now as it did at the time,
whereas the original version would have needed explaining anew to
each generation that encounters it.

It's another example of the way language changes. When we confide
in somebody today we mean we entrust a secret on the understanding
that it won't be passed on. That sense actually dates only from the
middle of the eighteenth century and overlaps with the one that
Lord Nelson was using.

"Confide" comes from Latin "confidere", to trust or rely on. We get
"confident" and "confidence" from the same source. The original
sense of the verb "to confide" was to be confident about something.
Another great sailor, Sir George Anson, wrote in his "Voyage round
the World" of 1748, "The stoutest cables are not to be confided
in", an extraordinary sentiment to us today. Some people talk to
the trees, our heir to the throne is reported to chat to plants,
but nobody that we know of tells their secrets to ropes.

Nelson was saying - in the standard English of his time - that his
country was confident that every man would do his duty. They did.
In 2005 we shall hear all about it in immense detail - of that we
can be confident.


http://www.worldwidewords.org/

I do subscribe to World Wide Words, M. deB. Have done so for more than a year now. In fact, I generally print the post as soon as it arrives and file the hard copy away somewhere in a folder in a cabinet where I know, for sure, I'll never be able to locate it again, should I need it. I run across these folders, usually in the Spring, when looking for income tax-related documents. Everybody needs a hobby.

That they do - and, fondly, in our silly way, we just keep a-filing - whether in our computers or our drawers, Or, in my case, on floors and in baskets and.....

And yet, . . .

"Brod, butter and grune chese, any man who canna say this is not a treu Friese"

Some parts of our language haven't changed in 2000 years.

Deb,
Where is the digression thread?

sumac

I see you have found it now Sumac! Welcome.

Setanta

I'm actually not sure, in which language you quoted - but it's definately neither Frisan, nor Dutch or German.

[ And 2000 years ago people here in Europe spoke ... some kind of Germanic language. (The first texts in German are from about 700, written Frisian even later. We didn't find tapes, cds or other recordings from our ancestors. So we just can tel from the written sources what was spoken when and where.) ] :wink: