April 04, 2009, 11:14
<Asa Lovejoy>Guile/guilty
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?
April 04, 2009, 13:14
tinmanI 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.]
April 04, 2009, 15:25
arnieIgnorance of the law is no excuse ...
April 04, 2009, 16:28
<Asa Lovejoy>Ignorance of etymology is no excuse either.
Asa, with tail between legs, slinking into doghouse
April 04, 2009, 21:38
goofyquote:
Originally posted by tinman:
gyltiȝ
fix'd your encoding for you.
April 05, 2009, 02:16
tinmanThanks. I don't know how to do that.
April 05, 2009, 07:55
zmježd debetThat'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.
April 08, 2009, 20:56
KallehSo 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.