How is it that one may be found guilty of a crime even though the person may be guileless? In violation of a law, yes, but guilty? What about those who break a law through ignorance, with no guile involved?

I don't see that the two words are related. The OED Online traces guilt to OE. gylt and guile to OF. guile. Beyond that it appears to be supposition.

Here's what it says:

guilt, n.
[OE. gylt str. masc.:{em}prehistoric type *gulti-z; related to next vb.
No equivalent forms are known in the other Teut. langs. The connection commonly assumed with the OTeut. root *geld-, gald-, guld-, to pay, YIELD, is inadmissible phonologically, and its apparent plausibility with regard to sense disappears on examination. From the fact that OE. gylt renders L. debitum in the Lord's Prayer and in Matt. xviii. 27, and that is gylti{ygh} renders debet in Matt. xxiii. 18, it has been inferred that the n. had a primary sense ‘debt’, of which there seems to be no real evidence, though OE. scyld, G. schuld, have developed the sense of ‘guilt’ from that of ‘debt’.]

guile, n.
[a. OF. guile = Pr. guila, Pg. guilha; presumably of Teut. origin, but no certain etymon is known, as the late OE. wíl, occurring only once, may itself be adopted from Fr., and ON. vél seems to be inadmissible for phonetic reasons. See WILE n.]

Ignorance of the law is no excuse ...

Ignorance of etymology is no excuse either.

Asa, with tail between legs, slinking into doghouse

quote:

Originally posted by tinman:
gyltiȝ

fix'd your encoding for you.

Thanks. I don't know how to do that.

debet

That's the Latin word for 'owe'. In the original Koine Greek, the word is ὀφείλει (opheilei). The Old English word is gylt 'guilt, crime, sin, offense, fault, wrong, debt, fine, forfeiture'. (Tinamn's OED citation above also mentions the other Old English word for guilt, which is in line wityh other Germanic languages, scyld.) English guile is from Middle French guile 'trick, fraud'. It did not make it into modern French and was borrowed from a Germanic language, most likely Frankish, and is reconstructed as *wigila (which may be related to a rare Old English word wigle 'divination, sorcery'. That the words seem related is an illusion caused by the erratic "system" of English spelling. Many words that begin with gu are from French which borrowed words beginning in w and the French orthographic convention was to spell these word with gu. English has some lovely pairs of etymologically related words in both w and gu: e.g., guardian, warden, guerrilla, war, guarantee, warranty. (Other Romance languages than French use this same convention, e.g., Italian and Spanish.)

Some other words to wonder about: gilt: two words actually, one the past participle of gild 'to cover with a thin layer of gold' (related to gold, yellow, German Geld 'money' from PIE *ghel- 'to shine' (link); guild < Old Norse gildi 'payment, guild'; geld 'to castrate (a horse)' < Old Norse gelda 'to geld'; geld 'payment' (related to Old English geld 'payment', Medieval Latin geldum, survives in wergeld 'the price paid to a murdered man's relatives by the murderer as part of his punishment', the wer is from the Old English wer 'man, cf. Latin vir, Old English man was for humans in general without regard to sex, the latter word having been borrowed from Latin homo, hominis, which is related to Old English guma 'man' which survives in bridegroom); gilt 'a young sow that has not farrowed' < Old Norse gyltr 'a pig'; yield < Old English geldan 'to pay'.

So, even though they weren't related etymolgically, Asa, thanks for mentioning them. I had a great time researching the above.

So interesting, z. I know we talked about some of this on Saturday's chat, but the German word, geld is very similar to the Yiddish word gelt, meaning money. Of course German and Yiddish are closely related.