Doublet (linguistics)

In etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins or twinlings (or possibly triplets, and so forth) when they have different phonological forms but the same etymological root. Often, but not always, the words entered the language through different routes. Given that the kinship between words that have the same root and the same meaning is fairly obvious, the term is mostly used to characterize pairs of words that have diverged at least somewhat in meaning. For example, English ''pyre'' and ''fire'' are doublets with merely associated meanings despite both descending ultimately from the same Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word *'.

Words with similar meanings but subtle differences contribute to the richness of modern English, and many of these are doublets. A good example consists of the doublets ''frail'' and ''fragile''. (These are both ultimately from the Latin adjective ', but ''frail'' evolved naturally through its slowly changing forms in Old French and Middle English, whereas ''fragile'' is a learned borrowing directly from Latin in the 15th century.)

Another example of nearly synonymous doublets is ''aperture'' and ''overture'' (the commonality behind the meanings is "opening"). But doublets may develop divergent meanings, such as the ''opposite'' words ''host'' and ''guest'', which come from the same PIE word *' and already existed as a doublet in Latin, and then Old French, before being borrowed into English. Doublets also vary with respect to how far their forms have diverged. For example, the connection between ''levy'' and '' levee'' is easy to guess, whereas the connection between ''sovereign'' and ''soprano'' is harder to guess.

Origin

Doublets can develop in various ways, according to which route the two forms took from the origin to their current form. Complex, multi-step paths are possible, though in many cases groups of terms follow the same path. Simple paths are discussed below, with the simplest distinction being that doublets in a given language can have their root in the same language (or an ancestor), or may originate in a separate language.

Native origin

Most simply, a native word can at some point split into two distinct forms, staying within a single language, as with English ''too'' which split from ''to''.

Alternatively, a word may be inherited from a parent language, and a cognate borrowed from a separate sister language. In other words, one route was direct inheritance, while the other route was inheritance followed by borrowing. In English this means one word inherited from a Germanic source, with, e.g., a Latinate cognate term borrowed from Latin or a Romance language. In English this is most common with words which can be traced back to Indo-European languages, which in many cases share the same proto-Indo-European root, such as Romance ''beef'' and Germanic ''cow''. However, in some cases the branching is more recent, dating only to proto-Germanic, not to PIE; many words of Germanic origin occur in French and other Latinate languages, and hence in some cases were both inherited by English (from proto-Germanic) and borrowed from French or another source – see List of English Latinates of Germanic origin. The forward linguistic path also reflects cultural and historical transactions; often the name of an animal comes from Germanic while the name of its cooked meat comes from Romance. Since English is unusual in that it borrowed heavily from two distinct branches of the same language family tree – Germanic and Latinate/Romance – it has a relatively high number of this latter type of etymological twin. See list of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English for further examples and discussion.

Less commonly, a native word may be borrowed into a foreign language, then reborrowed back into the original language, existing alongside the original term. An English example is '' animation'' and ''anime'' "Japanese animation", which was reborrowed from Japanese '. Such a word is sometimes called a ' (German for "one who wanders back").

Borrowed origin

In case of twins of foreign origin, which consist of two borrowings (of related terms), one can distinguish if the borrowing is of a term and a descendant, or of two cognate terms (siblings).

Etymological twins are often a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved separately in French. An example of this is ''warranty'' and ''guarantee''.

Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language. In English this is usually Latin and some other Romance language, particularly French – see Latin influence in English. The distinction between this and the previous is whether the source language has changed to a different language or not.

Less directly, a term may be borrowed both directly from a source language and indirectly via an intermediate language. In English this is most common in borrowings from Latin, and borrowings from French that are themselves from Latin; less commonly from Greek directly and through Latin.

In case of borrowing cognate terms, rather than descendants, most simply an existing doublet can be borrowed: two contemporary twin terms can be borrowed.

More remotely, cognate terms from different languages can be borrowed, such as ''sauce'' (Old French) and '' salsa'' (Spanish), both ultimately from Latin, or ''tea'' (Dutch ') and ''chai'' (Hindi), both ultimately from Chinese. This last pair reflects the history of how tea has entered English via different trade routes.

By language

English

Many thousands of English examples can be found, grouped according to their earliest deducible Indo-European ancestor. In some cases over a hundred English words can be traced to a single root. Some examples in English include:

*'' host'' and '' guest'': via Latin and Germanic
*'' strange'' and '' extraneous'': Old French, Latin
*''word'' and ''verb'': Germanic, Latin
*''shadow, shade'', and '' shed'', all from Old English ' "shadow, shade"
*''stand, stay, state, status'', and ''static'': native, Middle French, Latin (twice), and Ancient Greek via Latin, all from the same Indo-European root
* '' chief'', '' chef'', ''cape'', '' capo'', ''caput