It turns out Patrick the etymologist, who has commented here recently, has an excellent blog called odamaki (subtitled 古のしづのをだまき繰り返し昔を今になすよしもがな, which Google translates as “Frost forms on it now and repeat the past and the old Dzunowodamaki”). It’s not updated often, but the entries should appeal to anyone who enjoys LH. Here’s the start of Missing “people”:
One Middle English word that I wish had survived into Mondern English is thede, “people, nation, country, Gentile nation.” Can you imagine how useful hip-hop artists would find it as a rhyme for weed? Scots kept the word theed a bit longer than the southern Anglic languages, the only citations in the Dictionary of the Scots Language being from the text Golagros and Gawane […] and then threw the word away too. Thede is the native reflex of the word from which Middle Dutch dūtsch and German deutsch were built. Just look at this savory list of cognates from the OED:[…]
While I’m here, let me update my Xmas Loot post with a few books that have made a late appearance in my stocking: The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym and Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams by Charles King (thanks, Sven & Leslie!) and The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and its Legacy by Galina Rylkova (thanks, Patricia!). The latter is a Kindle book, and I’d been wondering what would happen if someone gave me one; now I know—you get an e-mail announcing the gift and saying “click here to accept,” and once you click, boom, there it is on your Kindle! What fun!
It remains only to wish you all the very best of new years; I hope 2012 proves to be an improvement. See you after the changeover!
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