1797: Word Family: Better Nov 15, 2019

English has far fewer current word families than some languages, but there are far more looking across germanic languages. For instance, 'better', though not related to the semantically similar 'good' is related to 'boot' (verb), 'batten', and 'battle', among many others. In the case of both 'boot' and 'battle', this is because they used to mean 'exercise; improve', the former connoting pushing oneself to improve often through punishment, and the latter simply meant to practice for a battle. 'Batten' means literally 'to get better', but unlike 'boot' has no relation to the meaning of 'beat' as in 'batten down the hatches', which comes from a different verb. There will be more on 'bid' tomorrow.