Note 24 — I

Somewhat different from this, yet itself also curious, is the passing of an Anglo-Saxon word in two different forms into English, and continuing in both; thus ‘desk’ and ‘dish’, both the Anglo-Saxon ‘disc’ [a loan-word from Latin discus, Greek diskos] the German ‘tisch’; ‘beech’ and ‘book’, both the Anglo-Saxon ‘boc’, our first books being beechen tablets (see Grimm, Wörterbuch, s. vv. ‘Buch’, ‘Buche’); ‘girdle’ and ‘kirtle’; both of them corresponding to the German ‘gürtel’; already in Anglo-Saxon a double spelling, ‘gyrdel’, ‘cyrtel’, had prepared for the double words; so too ‘haunch’ and ‘hinge’; ‘lady’ and ‘lofty’ [these last three instances are not doublets at all, being quite unrelated; see Skeat, s. vv.]; ‘shirt’, and ‘skirt’; ‘black’ and ‘bleak’; ‘pond’ and ‘pound’; ‘deck’ and ‘thatch’; ‘deal’ and ‘dole’; ‘weald’ and ‘wood’†; ‘dew’ and ‘thaw’†; ‘wayward’ and ‘awkward’†; ‘dune’ and ‘down’; ‘hood’ and ‘hat’†; ‘ghost’ and ‘gust’†; ‘evil’ and ‘ill’†; ‘mouth’ and ‘moth’†; ‘hedge’ and ‘hay’.

[All these suggested doublets which I have obelized must be dismissed as untenable.]