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Definition:
In historical linguistics, the linguistic form from which a later form of a word derives: an earlier version of a word in the same language or a word in a foreign language that is the source of a particular loanword.
See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "true"Examples and Observations:
- "[W]e have to avoid being misled by the etymology of the word etymology itself; we have inherited this term from a pre-scientific period in the history of language study, from a time when it was supposed (with varying degrees of seriousness) that etymological studies would lead to the etymon, the true and 'genuine' meaning. There is in fact no such thing as the etymon of a word, or there are as many kinds of etymon as there are kinds of etymological research."
(James Barr, Language and Meaning. E.J. Brill, 1974)
- "In Old English, the word meat (spelled mete) mainly meant 'food, especially solid food,' found as late as 1844 . . .. The Old English word mete came from the same Germanic source as Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, mat, Old High German maz, Old Icelandic matr, and Gothic mats, all meaning 'food.'"
(Sol Steinmetz, Semantic Antics. Random House, 2008) - "Frequently a distinction is made between an immediate etymon, i.e. the direct parent of a particular word, and one or more remote etymons. Thus Old French frere is the immediate etymon of Middle English frere (modern English friar); Latin frater, fratr- is a remote etymon of Middle English frere, but the immediate etymon of Old French frere."
(Philip Durkin, The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford Univ. Press, 2009) - "The etymon of ransack is Scandanavian rannsaka (to attack a house)(hence 'to rob'), whereas sack (plundering) is a borrowing of French sac in phrases like mettre Ă sac (to put to sack). . . .
"An extreme case of five English words reflecting the same etymon is discus (an 18th-century borrowing from Latin), disk or disc (from French disque or straight from Latin), desk (from Medieval Latin but with the vowel changed under the influence of an Italian or a Provençal form), dish (borrowed from Latin by Old English), and dais (from Old French)."
(Anatoly Liberman, Word Origins . . . and How We Know Them. Oxford Univ. Press, 2005)
Pronunciation: EH-te-mon