Ulix Goettsch wrote:
>
>snip<
> in german, "Spannung" means tension.
> "spannen" means to put somethig (such as a spring) into tension.
> A "spanner" is something to put something into tension with.
> Maybe there was (or is?) a similar word in english?
>snip<
ho we got from spanner to wrench, but I won't...
>
> I would like to know the origin of the term "dog" in the technical sense,
> though, and _exactly_ what it refers to.
>
> Ulix
>From the etymological corner:
'Spanner' comes from an old saxon (ie, Old Low German) word meaning 'to
fasten' [spoen, spaan ... depending on the branch]. 'Wrench' comes from
an equally old saxon word meaning 'to turn' [renken, renkern, again
depending on the branch]. It's one of those fluky American-British
things that one of us took one word for the thing and the other chose
differently, with seemingly no reason ... the standard linguistic reason
for this sort of shift between American English and British English is
that immigrants to this country in the 19th (ie, mechanical/industrial)
century were about evenly split between Germans and Brits; as the
Germans picked up the local language, they inevitably seized on cognates
wherever practicable, and 'wrench' is closer to the German than
'spanner' is.
Dog is a little more complicated. The origin of the word as relating to
canines is a little obscure; it's neither a latinate (canis) nor a
germanic (hund), though we have the English words 'canine' and 'hound'
from those, respectively. It's fairly clear back to medieval English
[dogge] and in Old English (ie, from about the time of the early Saxon
period) it appears as doge or dogce (soft c) or dokce (again, soft c) or
dokse. The final 'e' would probably have been pronounced in this period.
The word is not related to Icelandic nor is it a Viking import ... there
is no similar Germanic root. It would seem to be a Brethonic, ie Celtic
word, since there's no other obvious solution, except that the Celtic
root for canines is 'madra'. No connexion. That it survives today as the
primary English word for canines, surviving through the Roman and Norman
periods alongside the latinate words and the Saxon invasions, testifies
that it must have been a pretty strong identifier for that sort of
animal.
Stay with me here.
It is somewhat related to an old Gaelic root of 'grab' or 'hold', <dokhe
[lots of variations on this one, none prime], and since that's a lot of
what people used dogs for, there's a possible connexion there. Oddly
enough (with a nod to Ulix) that's precisely what the mechanical
function of a 'dog' is ... something that engages or holds another
piece, and to the general English usage of the word dog to mean 'fix' or
'secure' ... as in the term 'dog down the hatch'.
And that's it for this edition of Etymology Today. Thanks for listening.
Corey
75 MGB 'Rags'
RD#373750
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