Comments on: Don’t Snite in Public

By: Maeve

Maeve — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:01:27 +0000

Quinn,
The Old English o is long, so snotor=snow-tor.

By: Philip Dragonetti

Philip Dragonetti — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:08:14 +0000

I had previously mentioned that English is basically the German language spoken by the German tribe, the Angles, speaking “Anglish”—if you will.

Todays article says:
Our word snot, on the other hand,
meaning “nasal mucus,” existed in OE as gesnot.”

Noticed the ge ending of the word—which is a German ending indicating a past event..

For instance , in German rained = geregnet where rain = regen.
The ge indicates a past event.

It is interesting to note how most of the towns in Britain have names of German origin. For instance, ham at the end of a town, like Birmingham, is a modfication of the German heim—like todays’ Mannheim.

And a ton ending—as in Newton— is a modification of the German zaun—which means fence. So newton means New Fence.

I also wondered why some Brits are so haughty about ‘their’ language—when they actually gave up their Celtic language and took on German and some French.

By: Kristi

Kristi — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:45:51 +0000

Not that this has anything to do with snot…
but, wow! Someone else who’s interested in Beowulf in the original language! I bought a dual language edition when I was in, I think, 7th grade. It totally fascinated me! When I went to college as an English Lit major (I later switched to Linguistics), I was so excited to take one term of Old English followed by another term of Beowulf. This was in addition to a number of other classes I took in dead or dying languages. There’s just something magical and mysterious about reading myth and folklore in the original language. If there had been a major in Dead or Dying Languages, I totally would have gone for it. Thanks for reminding me of those good ol’ days! Maybe I need to dig those books out of my closet…

By: Quinn

Quinn — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:08:13 +0000

I just love your posts.

I wonder: snyttru, “wisdom, discernment,” is so close in spelling to “snyttan, ‘to wipe or pick one’s nose,’” from the same era.

Could it be that it also conveyed a subtle air of “snootiness” (surely derived from the same general arena as snout) by those who used it?

And just out of curiosity, is snotor pronounced snot-ǝr, snow-tǝr, snoot-ǝr, or even perhaps, snot-OR, snow-tOR, etc?