h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry, me again....

Could you clarify? You say you cannot 'go' your way. Are you objecting to the phrase here or are you objecting to the word 'go' used in this way? After all, surely 'you go your way, I'll go mine' is not such a problem?

I have a feeling that 'suspend' comes from a latin something like 'suspendere', meaning to hang, wheres 'spend' sounds harder and more Germanic.

Similarly, how the verbs expend/expand become expenditure/expansion is just one of those tricks of luck that come from English having sets of postfix modifiers with similar meanings, though 'expenditure' does have a nice Italianate sound to it, and so it may either derive from a foriegn word, or just happen to sound good.

True enough, Ictoan.

I was think more of the fact that you cannot simply replace 'wend' in the phrase 'wend your way home' with 'go'.

Neither, I don't think would I do the reverse to your example:

"You wend your way, and I'll wend mine."

Although I think (?) this is grammatically correct and makes sense, I would be very surprised if anyone said it in my presence!

Spiff

Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac (Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks?)has been playing in my head for several hours now.

I've been resisting this unlikely opportunity to quote a pop song in the Brit Eng thread ..but cite it I have.

Oh, the shame of it...

peace
jwf

I also get the impression from 'wend' that there is some implication of following a roundabout or intermittent route.

However, I'm sure that wasn't originally the case, since one of the old English verbs for 'go' was 'wend', (subsequent conflation gave us go/went as parts of one irregular verb), the parallels with 'wind' are too compelling for a mind to ignore without explicit reason, and that reason is now lost in the mists of linguistic time.

Possibly, the regular past tense 'wended' is a modern mis-recreation from the obsolete/rarely used present tense 'wend'?

I woke in the middle of the night convinced that "hassle" (remember that?) came from a combination of "harass" and "tussle".
It doesn't seem quite so persuasive now.
Pity, really, after losing sleep.

>I also get the impression from 'wend' that there is some implication of following a roundabout or intermittent route.<

That's the poetic influence I was talking about.
Several perfectly good English words have been usurped by 'poetix', that sense that it is a word so good, so wonderful, it is poetic and can only be used 'thusly'. By default, a lot of Jacobian English has been so endowed.

It is oft thus.

jwf (late of the Globe)

Persuasion is an art, there mister p'ville.

And y'convinced me.


jwf (wrestling with a tassel)

Gray may have been responsible for some of the wind/wend entwining:
"....The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea
The ploughman homeward wends his weary way"
Surely, however, a weary ploughman would go straight home rather than p*****g about?

I thought today was my second birthday on h2g2, but my home page was opened on 1st Nov and I was wan'drin for a couple of days before I found out how to do that. Do you think the original BritEng thread will return before we get to 4000 on this? Will I get 30 scripts marked in time for a consultation session in an hour's time?

Apologies, everyone, I mentioned "lended" earlier and it should have been "lent". There may be a word lended but I've certainly never used it.

The trouble is that those of us who thought it didn't exist were frightened to say so or suspected irony - such are the effects of being always right!

Ah so it wasn't just me who has had the Fleetwood Mac tune running through my brain.

You mean, when you're always right, people think you're right even when you're wrong?

As has been hinted at, wend initially had nothing to do with going. It's based on a Germanic root meaning a turn, which also gave us wander and wind. In English the verb originally meant to turn as well, and came to be used in the sense of going in a somewhat Confucian manner. Ultimately to wend became almost completely synonymous with to go but wending still retains some of its original leisurely and non-linear qualities. The regular past form of wend was (and is) wended, whereas went is the irregularized form which was co-opted by the verb go. The reason why wended seems like it's a poetic back-formation is because the -ed suffix's extra syllable has a much more mellifluous cadence favoured by frilly-shirted layabouts: no-one ever proposed on bent knee.

The reason why 'short' words appear to take more grammatical liberties is because most have been around in English far longer. In the case of spend, it has exactly the same Latin root as expend - expendere - however spend got into English (and German) about a thousand years earlier and could thus avail itself of linguistic laxities denied to its more refined younger sibling.

Happy Hoottwo 2
Happy Hoottwo 2

May all your tangenital time lines more or less coalesce happily and without confuscian.

God bless you Mycro, y'old softy.
'Frilly shirted layabouts' will keep me smiling for hours. And then I'll chew on 'mellifluous cadence' for a while and later ponder the deeper meaning of 'liguistic laxities'.

jwf - now poetically back-informed, I wendt my merry way

Wenden is a German word for "to turn" - or better still "to turn about". For example, road signs will inform you that an open area at the end of a cul-de-sac is a "Wendehammer". Its shape gives it the name hammer, and it is solely for the purpose of turning round when you have gone up the wrong road - yet again!

Cataloges will sell you "Wendejacken" - reversable jackets.

But wend still conjures up words such as "to wander" and "to meander".

And the frilly shirted layabouts reminds me of an example our English teacher was wont to quote to warn us off of using too flowery language. He used to say that they "called a spade an 'oaken-handled implement of toil'"

Thank you, John
I was walking past the bank this morning when the following verse of a Christmas carol floated out on the air-conditioning:
'E'en so, here below,below
Let steeple bells be swungen
And io,io,io
By priests and people sungen'
(the io should be capitalised, but then it looks like Io which doesn't scan)I think this oddity may be a translation from German and the tune demands a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed at the ends of those lines. This "masterpiece" also contains the line,'Ding,dong,verily the sky is riven with angels singing". Is there another collocation for 'riven'?

Riven seems to be the past whatyoumaycallit of "to rive", a verb which I have never heard of. It means to tear apart. The computer game "Riven" was about a world which had been torn apart. But the word "rift" is related as well.

This brings to mind the word "cloven". What's the difference between cloven and cleft? A cloven hoof, a cleft palate.

My dictionary gives:
"cleave vb cleaved also cleft or clove ; cleaved also cleft or clo.ven ; cleav.ing" which explains it all, doesn't it?

And then to confuse things even further, there is another verb meaning to stick to something which is:

"cleave vi cleaved or clove also clave ; cleaved ; cleav.ing"

I'm confused!

Is there any connection between riven and rend?