2886: Burn and Brand Metathesis Nov 15, 2024

A number of words from Old English experienced metathesis wherein the first vowel and the [r] would switch, as in bird from brid and so to with horse. This did not happen uniformly, however. The word ‘burn’ experienced this metathesis, appearing for instance in German as ‘brennen’ despite Old English ‘birnan’, i.e. with the -R- before the vowel, but there are English words where the same feature is present. ‘Brand’ as in to put burn a mark into something used to be the past participle of ‘burn’ in Old English, and semantically narrowed during Middle English—the sense of brand as the essence of a manufacturer or other business is from the 17th century based off of that. 

Even earlier than ‘brand’ was ‘brew’, that developed from the same root ultimately, but appeared in Old English as ‘brēowan’, in the sense of burning, then boiling, and potentially related to the word ‘barely’ to lead to the specific meaning it has now.