2648: sondern, sunder, & sine Mar 18, 2022

The German for 'especially' is 'besonders', and more commonly as the preposition meaning 'but rather; except is 'sondern'. The basic root also is used for compound-nouns to mean 'private'. This is related to the English 'sunder' meaning 'to separate' but in Old English the word also meant 'special; particular'. Still, lots of Indo-European languages have words with this root that mean 'only' or 'without' like the Latin 'sine' and all its derivatives like French 'sans' and Portuguese 'sim'.