Some etymological interference

Or say more specifically some etymological interference from French. A friend recently forwarded to me an e-mail with some interesting facts about French words, like the longest French palindrome (ressasser) and the curiosity of squelette being the only masculine word ending in -ette. The introduction to the list of curiosities said it was intended “pour les férus de la langue française,” meaning “for those people who are passionate about (literally ‘smitten with’) the French language.” I recognized féru as the past participle of a verb that has otherwise almost disappeared from French, férir, meaning ‘to strike,’ and coming from Latin ferīre ‘to knock, strike, kill.’ And there lies the connection to Spanish, because Latin ferīre evolved to Spanish herir, with the characteristic phonetic shift from f- to h-, and in this case with a shift in meaning to ‘to wound.’ In addition, the Spanish feminine past participle herida has come to function as a noun meaning ‘a wound.’

But this is a blog about the connections between Spanish and English, so on to the English—but not without returning to French again. Old French ferir entered into the compound s’entreferer ‘to strike one another, to trade blows.’ That passed away in French, but not before passing into English as interfere, (which, I’ll add “pour les férus de la langue française,” French later reimported as interférer).

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman