Re: About the word "spinster"

Helmut Richter wrote:
On Fri, 17 Nov 2006, wugi wrote:

enough: who tells me [de] leer's antecedents?

Here are the explanations from Duden's etymological dictionary.

leer:

[mhG] lære, [ohG, oSax] lâri, [oEng] lære

German cognate: lesen ("pick up", "collect scattered things", "harvest fruit", also "read"). After harvesting a corn field (which is not "lesen" because it is not done by collecting scattered things), poor people could walk through the field and pick up ("lesen") the remainders - such a field is "leer".

So is 'lesen' ('read') a calque from Latin 'legere', or is it independent?

Incidentally, the English for 'lesen' in the sense of a field is 'glean' - the literal meaning now archaic perhaps to the point of obsolescence (like the activity).

Colin
.

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