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--- John Cowan skrzypszy:
> > Could someone tell me what the etymology is of the French word "encore"
> > (Italian "ancora", Rumantsch "aunc", Romanian "înca")? I can't think of any
> > reasonable Latin word; I was thinking of "coram", but somehow that doesn't
> > sound right to me.
>
> The bizarre but apparently uncontested etymology is HINC AD HORAM 'from this
> [hour] to [that] hour'.
Well well, that was the last thing I had ever suspected! Thank you guys!
I Krzysztof skrzypszy:
> The "Dictionnaire de l'Académie française" (which made my computer crash, so
> I'm not gonna give you their URL :((( ) says it comes from the Latin
> expression "hinc ha hora" or "hinc ad horam": from here until then. Knowing
> that a lot of French adverbs are (sometimes still transparently) worn down
> forms of former expressions ("toujours": always, for instance, is quite
> clearly coming from "tous les jours": every day), this is quite plausible.
Same thing with "aujourd'hui" (ad diurnum de hodie). French wouldn't surprise
me with such a construction, but AFAIK Italian doesn't do that so easily.
Jan
=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
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