2468: forest Sep 14, 2021

'Forest' is a word with cognates in both Germanic and Romance languages, but few with meanings like in English. Originally, the phrase was from Late Latin phrase 'forestis silva' (the outside woods) as a term to distinguish the royal forests, also called a 'park' (parcus). The actual Latin word 'silva' was misunderstood and they took 'forestis'. This replaced 'weald' in Old English (related to 'wald' in German), 'scough', originally Old Norse 'skógr', and Middle English 'firth'.