Now What´s Great About That?

Hi all, when having dinner this evening I was randomly reading a Danish etymological dictionary.

Surprisingly few words in the Danish language can be dated back to nothing else but plain Old Danish.

Most words come from Saxon, Old English and German. A huge group of words are common for the ancient Scandinavian languages.

But some words like “hav” (ocean) or “grød” (porridge) can solely be tracked down to its Danish roots. Now what is funny about the word “grød” is that it transformed into “gröt” in Old Saxon, from there to “gröz” in Old German - and again to Modern German as “gross”. But before that Flemish had adopted the porridge as “groot” which inspired the Old Frisian language to make up the word “grat”.

Somehow the word got picked up by Old English as “grëat” - the predecessor of the word “great” as in “Great Britain” and “Great Balls of Fire”.

Now you know - remember you read it first at Newspaper Index´ blog. Stay tuned.. More Old Danish? - Read the first newspaper in danish - scanned, blogged and online.

Update: 21/10
Due to an overwhelming response to this important topic I feel obliged to inform you about two more words that have no other origin than Old Danish:

“Æde” (to eat) and “øde” (deserted)

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