So, disclaimer here that I’m not a linguist, I just enjoy learning about linguistics.
OED doesn’t have a Norman ancestor for English wasp - it goes back through Old English (wæfs, wæps, wæsp) to Saxon and Middle German/Dutch all the way back to pre-Germanic.
My guess here was that there’s a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor and Wiktionary, FWIW, agrees - they provide a reconstructed P.I.E word: *wóbʰseh₂ (“wasp”)
ETA: here’s the link to the OED online’s etymology page and a screenshot of it if you don’t have access through your library.
Thanks a lot for the answer! Quite interesting that the Proto-Indo-European word could have been something close to wasp, only for English to go through the waps->wasp that you explained in your previous post.
Well, one fewer false “fact” to believe in, many more to go!
So, disclaimer here that I’m not a linguist, I just enjoy learning about linguistics.
OED doesn’t have a Norman ancestor for English wasp - it goes back through Old English (wæfs, wæps, wæsp) to Saxon and Middle German/Dutch all the way back to pre-Germanic.
My guess here was that there’s a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor and Wiktionary, FWIW, agrees - they provide a reconstructed P.I.E word: *wóbʰseh₂ (“wasp”)
ETA: here’s the link to the OED online’s etymology page and a screenshot of it if you don’t have access through your library.
Thanks a lot for the answer! Quite interesting that the Proto-Indo-European word could have been something close to wasp, only for English to go through the waps->wasp that you explained in your previous post.
Well, one fewer false “fact” to believe in, many more to go!