126: or and nor Apr 13, 2015

The words 'or' and 'nor' look and sound similar, as do 'either' and 'neither' however not all of these words are related to each other. Both 'either' and 'neither' are related to the Old English word 'hwæther' which meant 'whether'. In fact, the origin of both of these words is from a contraction. 'Either', derives from 'ǣgther', which was a contracted form of 'ǣg(e)hwæther', and 'neither' derives from and 'nawther', a contraction of 'nāhwæther'. 'Nor' is simply a reduced version of 'nawther', but 'or' did not come from 'ǣgther', it came from the conjunction, 'oththe' which meant 'other'.