Re: elementary Sanskrit blunder by Harvard professor

On 2008-09-17, Harlan Messinger wrote:

"Second fits in better"? [shaking head] Yes, reality must rewrite itself
to keep from shattering your preconceptions. Yes, there must have been
something mindbogglingly cosmic about "second" that made it fit English
so much better than the word it replaced, that wasn't the case for the
other French ordinals vis-a-vis their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. *Not*.

Well, the OED entry for "second" includes this comment in the
etymology:

OE. had no proper ordinal for the number two (like G. zweite,
Du. tweede, F. deuxième), the sense being expressed by óðer (see
OTHER a.); this being ambiguous, the Fr. word found early
acceptance.

But I'm about to start a "why?" thread about this...


--
Bob just used 'canonical' in the canonical way. [Guy Steele]
.

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