Comments on: Word of the Day: methinks

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:12:13 +0000

“Methoot” sounds very funny for today!

By: Tony Esolen

Tony Esolen — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:42:38 +0000

Heather: It may be, too, that “methought” is really not the right form, either! It was built by analogy from “methinks,” but OE thencan (think) had its preterite thohte, while OE thyncan had instead thuhte, which “should” have ended up sounding “thoot” in Modern English, or even “thight,” but people even then were constantly mixing the two verbs up …

By: Heather

Heather — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 07:29:49 +0000

Tony wrote: “Heather — yes, we have “methought”: for instance in Caliban’s famous speech…”

I guess I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t saying no one had ever used it – then the word wouldn’t exist, would it?

I meant that I had never seen anyone use it today – as opposed to “methinks,” that I do see people use now and then.

By: Tony Esolen

Tony Esolen — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 04:42:30 +0000

Just checked, Rob: The weird construction “visus sum” = “it seemed to me”, “I thought,” is all over the place in classical Latin: “Audire vocem visa sum,” says a woman in Terence, literally: I was seen to hear a voice, but really, I thought I heard a voice, It seemed to me I heard a voice. It’s odd, but it’s very common.

The thing about “brother” is true of Old Norse and Mercian: the old Teutonic *brothriz > *brothri > ON braethr, Mercian broether. So Old English was the odd man out, with the plural form without the vowel change, but the northern forms seem to have won out in the early Middle Ages, and then the double plural was added. Anyway, the point I was making was that it was a double plural, like “children”. I remembered correctly about the umlaut, but had forgotten that it showed up everywhere but in southern England (where it should have showed up, if it had followed the example of all the other umlauts).

Thanks for your kind words, and for giving me the heads-up! I started writing these far away from my books, in Canada, on sabbatical ….

By: Tony Esolen

Tony Esolen — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 03:58:34 +0000

Heather — yes, we have “methought”: for instance in Caliban’s famous speech:

Methought the heavens opened and would show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.

By: Tony Esolen

Tony Esolen — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 03:57:05 +0000

Well, that’s what I get for writing from memory, without the book nearby. “Brether” is dative singular, “gebrothra” the most typical plural. But somewhere along the line we conformed to the German-style Brueder, and then added the second plural sign. I’ll hit the OED. As to the Latin — “videor” is typically used in Cicero to mean “it seems to me”. I’ll check that too. I’ll look again for the perfect. The point about “sequor” is that we can look at the action from the point of view of the follower, or from the one who is followed; to “follow someone” is not the same sort of thing as to “kick someone,” since one might say that the follower is both agent and patient, which is not the case with the kicker.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:24:43 +0000

I feel much gratitude toward Professor Esolen for his wonderful writings in defense of faith, sanity, and everything that belongs to civilization. But I wish to object, I hope not uncharitably or pointlessly, to some of his remarks in these “Word of the Day” pieces. “brether” is not the Old English plural of “brother”. There were probably three different basic forms in use among the Anglo-Saxons, of which only one, the rarely attested “brethre”, had umlaut, and it had an inflectional ending (-e). How does “sequor” mean “I am made to come after”? I don’t follow! “visus sum” doesn’t mean “it seemed to me”, except insofar as something like “visus sum mihi felem videre” may be translated “it seemed to me that I …” (“I tawt I taw a puddy tat”). Otherwise “visum est mihi” would correspond to “it seemed to me”. I’m sure Professor Esolen, an accomplished translator, knows this. But getting words right is worth some care; or why write about ‘em?

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:20:10 +0000

What is even funnier is “methought!” which I have never seen used…

And while all the Latin derived languages provide for this reference to the person (it seems *to me*), in Spanish, for example, people even say: To me, it seems to me that… :-)

A mí me parece que…