E 1015          WORD, WEORD ; URBAN ; ORCHARD

Old English "word" and "weord" are of Germanic origin.

"Urban" is of Latin origin . "Orchard" is of mixed descent .

H 0220         ר י ע

Concept of root : protected settlement

Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

ר י ע

‛ir

town

Related English words

Old English : weord, word (fenced premises) ;  urban ; orchard

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

ר י ע

‛ir

town

‛y r  ;

* w r

Greek

ορχας

orkhas

fence

o r kh

Latin

hortus;

urbs,

urvus

hortus

urbs,

urvus

garden; town,

townmoat

ho r t ;

u r b

u r v

Old English

weord, word

fenced premises

w  o r d

English

  urban ;

orchard

  urban ;

orchard

u r b ;

o r ch . r d

Dutch

wierd; woerd

wierd, woerd

protected settlement

wi r d ;

wo r d

 

 

Proto-Semitic *UR --- *UR- Indo-European

 

 

 

The concept of a town is basically that of a protected settlement. The word itself has different meanings in some Germanic languages. German "Zaun" is in fact a fence, Dutch "tuin" is a garden and English town is a town. With the root of this entry things are not too different. It is known to most English speakers from the town that Abraham left in order to travel westward : Ur of the Chaldeans, the "Town of the Chaldeans". Little known is the fact that this name, in the Bible indeed "Ur of the Casdim", may have not much to do with the Chaldeans". See our chapter (Hebrew 0001_aa02) "Abraham and his Language" in the Introductory part".

 

Note:
  • Gardens are expressed in Latin by adding a third consonant "T". And the fence used to protect a garden , in Greek has received a "K", which at the end of the Greek word, just as is always the case in Hebrew, has become "KH". The Greek "orkhas" we seem to still find in o. Not all scholars agree to this and see an original "*wortgard = vegetable garden".

 

Note:
  • Settlements in ancient Holland, with its frequent if not sometimes daily flooding, more than needing fences, had to be built on higher ground that had to be accumulated artificially first. So this was a "wierd". A "woerd" has both this meaning of a settlement on top of an artificial flat hill and that of a fenced settlement. The original message carried by the root is that of a settlement, not of the artificial heights on which many settlements were built.

 

Note:
  • WAW. We must recall the particular developments the letter "waw" may live through. It is either a consonant, mostly "W", or a vowel, mostly "O" and often "U". Frequently it may change into an "I" or even fully disappear . And we find this in the various words of this entry.

 

Note:
  • WAW in Germanic. In many cases the famous, and difficult to understand, letter waw has become a kind of double sound, "WO" or "WI". We see this also in various English verbs, such as "to will" with its past tense "would" and "to win" , that has also maintained the form "won".

 

Note:
  • Hebrew from the basic root *"OR", or perhaps still "*UR", has undergone two developments. The "O" has, as usual at the beginning of a word, become an "I". And pronunciation of the initial vowel has been reinforced by placing the guttural "Ayin" in front of it.

 

Note:
  • Hebrew finally has developed still another word on basis of this same root, using the prefix "B", that has a place-defining function : " ב י ר ה, birą " for fortress, citadel. Obviously a citadel was built in the centre of a town. So it was called an "Intown" or "Birą"

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic. The commonly supposed root is the same as considered in Hebrew , that has : "Ayin Resh", pronounced in singular with a vowel " I ". In plural one sees a vowel "A". We suppose an original vowel " U ", which would indicate a rather common development from Waw to Yod, or from "O/U" to "I" as found as well in Indo European. But there is a complication. There are two plurals , one is " 'arim " and the other " 'ayerot ". That means that the Yod was part of the root, which than must have been "Ayin Yod Resh". And consequently the predecessor might have been "Ayin Waw Resh". But that is again uncertain, as we see the town Ur of the Chaldeans spelled with Aleph Waw Resh. One may suppose that the introduction of the "I" was accompanied by a change from Aleph to Ayin. And the older Hebrew roots remain those probable for Proto-Semitic: "*א ו ר , *Aleph, Waw Resh", and possibly also already "*ע י ר, Ayin Yod Resh " , that anyhow never became fully applied, sharing also still in Hebrew the ground with an "*ע ר, Ayin Resh ".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Germanic. The older Germanic languages where we find the words related to this entry, open these with he combination "WO" and close them with "-RD", sometimes becoming "RTH", that can be considered a development out of "RD". Proto-Germanic probably had just this form "*WO RD .

 

Note:
  • Latin. A suffix "B" has been added to the root "UR" to make the word for town: The following "S" indicates the nominative case, whereas in the genitive case we find "IS" after "URB" : "URBIS".

     

    For the word "hortus" we refer to entry E 0197 (Hebrew 0780)

 

Note:
  • Indo-European, still without the Latin suffix " B " or the Germanic suffix "_R-D", had to do with a simple basic "*U R-".

 

 

 

 
"...the town, to which was given the name Babel, because it was there that the Lord confused the language of all the world on the face of which He dispersed them. GENESIS 11,9"
 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 06/10/2012 at 9.22.25