Words are Time Machines

Our English language is not only changing year by year (i.e. "plutoed" & "My bad!"), but is also a treasury of the past, affording us a glimpse into cultures now vanished. Words are time machines.

Our language is filled with words which date back over a thousand years to the early beginnings of English as an Anglo-Saxon language (basically Germanic). Quite a number of these words have survived the past millennium only to be discarded recently or dropped out of speech while remaining in "book-English".

I'd like to take you on a tour of one group of ancient English words with the prefix "be". I will list them below, and do a post on each one, sharing the original sense of the word before it became part of today's speech. Check back each day and I should have up a new word.

believe

beseech

betray

besmirch

beside

before

beneath

behind

below

between

betwixt

belittle

beyond

behoove

belong

berate

belabor

behest

become

beset

belie

bemoan

begin

behave

befuddle

begotten

bereft

behold

beware

beshrew (just for fun)