| Nov. 16th, 2009 @ 02:48 pm sneeze |
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Current Mood:  cheerful
sneeze, v. & n. [sneez, snēz]
-Scholars are not absolutely certain, but they theorize that English sneeze ultimately comes from prehistoric Indo-European pneu- 'to breathe.' If this is not in fact the true ancestor, then scholars believe the ancestor to be of similar form and also of imitative origin. However, sneeze's etymological trail does become more solid by the time of Proto-Germanic fneusanan 'to sneeze,' from which sprung Old High German fnehan 'to breathe' and niosan 'to sneeze,' Old Norse fnysa 'to snort,' Middle Dutch fniesen 'to sneeze,' and Old English fneosan 'to snort, to sneeze.' This Old English word, first appearing around 1000 CE, transformed into Middle English fnesan 'to sneeze' after only approximately 150 years. By 1333, though, spelling and pronunciation had changed to sniesen, snesen. The leading theory on why this alteration occurred says that the initial f sound in fnesan was gradually dropped, producing nesen in the early 1300's, which was then influenced by similar words in English (snort, snore) and possibly in Old Norse. The noun form of sneeze is known from 1382 as nesing, then changed to neesing by 1609, with sneezing finally appearing in 1646. |
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