One that I'd never noticed before was that if you push once then you shove, and if you push repeatedly into the earth with a spade, you shovel. It comes from the Old High German scioban.
But there is a second shove frequentative. If you shove one foot forward, and then the other and so on and so forth, you shuffle.
Which is a long way round of saying that I'll be speaking at the Shuffle Festival in East London on Sunday at 3pm about death, sex and toilets.
Thank you - I didn't even know the word 'frequentive' and now I love them too.
ReplyDeleteYou mention 'burst' and 'bustle' but my dicker says 'bustle' comes from the Old Norse 'busk' meaning 'to prepare'. So it is an example of a frequentive that has lost its infrequentive (if that is a word).
Now I am looking for the etymology of 'cobbles' as in the road surface beloved by set designers for period dramas. Most say it comes from 'cob', meaning a lump somewhere between a stone and a boulder. So does that mean that cobble is what you get when you lay lots of cobs?
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