Message to J. Manuel Martin and Clive Pertegàs

Hello mates, I know that we have not shaped some ideas yet and we have to talk about some details related to the appropriate meanings that we can find in the etymologic dictionary(www.etymonline.com), however I want to show you how we can organize the portfolio and then we can establish how we can present the relation of the evolution of words and our conclusions.

This is an extract of my part, showing the origin of some words of a particular sentence:

And therto brood, as though it were a spade.

it: O.E. hit, neut. nom. & acc. of third pers. sing. pronoun, from P.Gmc. demonstrative base khi- (cf. O.Fris. hit, Du. het, Goth. hita "it"), which is also the root of he. As gender faded in M.E., it took on the meaning "thing or animal spoken about before." The h- was lost due to being in an unemphasized position, as in modern speech the h- in "give it to him," "ask her," "is only heard in the careful speech of the partially educated" [Weekley]. It "the sex act" is from 1611; meaning "sex appeal (especially in a woman)" first attested 1904 in works of Rudyard Kipling, popularized 1927 as title of a book by Elinor Glyn, and by application of It Girl to silent-film star Clara Bow (1905-1965). In children's games, meaning "the one who must tag the others" is attested from 1842.

were: O.E. wæron (past plural indicative of wesan) and wære (second person singular past indicative);. The forms illustrate Verner's Law (named for Danish linguist Karl Verner, 1875), which predicts the "s" to "z" sound shift, and rhotacism, which changed "z" to "r." Wast (second person sing.) was formed 1500s on analogy of be/beest, displacing were. An intermediate form, wert, was used in literature 17c.-18c., before were reclaimed the job.

a: indefinite article, c.1150, a variation of O.E. an in which the -n- began to disappear before consonants, a process mostly complete by 1340. The -n- also was retained before words beginning with a sounded -h- until c.1600; it still is retained by many writers before unaccented syllables in h- or (e)u-, but is now no longer normally spoken as such. The -n- also lingered (especially in southern England dialect) before -w- and -y- through 15c.