"Re: [meteorite-list] avoirdupois ?

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:35 2004
Message-ID: <3EE56B73.808FC1E0_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Pierre,

    Of course, Early Middle English is not "just a British expression forged
to look
like French," but French as spoken by the British who were at that time
French, at least the moneyed (and language determining) classes, descendants
of the French who followed Guillaume de Normandie (whom the British now call
William the Conqueror) to England after he defeated Harold Godwinson for the
throne, Harold and his army being exhausted from having defeated another
Viking invasion (this time from Norway) just three weeks earlier. I say
"another" Viking invasion because Guillaume and all his French followers
were actually Vikings themselves, descendants of the Danes and Jutes who
took Paris in 845 (or was it 945?) and were bribed off by giving them
Normandie. And, of course, the English that these Danish French Vikings
conquered were also themselves Danish English Vikings (as well as Jutes and
Angles and Saxons, all from the same neighborhood). Hey! And people call the
U.S.A. a melting pot!
    Not confusing enough? At that point, when Guillaume (William) takes
over, English is French, identical in every way with the French spoken in
France at the time. This would mean that the "remote tribes" of which you
speak are therefore remote tribes of Frenchmen. Of course, a millennium of
separated linguistic evolution has seriously disturbed this former unity of
tongues! English speakers of today are thoroughly baffled by the English of
even half a millennium ago, much less a full millennium. To experience a
similar bafflement, go to a university library and ask for a copy of the
original text of that 10th century masterpiece of French literature, Raoul
de Cambrai. Pretty baffling, oui?
    That neither "aveir de peis" nor "avoir de pois" is correct Modern
French is a result of the evolution of the French language over a millennium
(at least up to the point when the Academie decided to freeze it into
Mandarin-like immobility). And while many languages resist the intrusion of
words, terms and expressions from other languages, English is essentially
polyglot by nature and delights in collecting and preserving words, antique
or not. There are English words whose roots can be traced to their origins
in more than 200 other languages. English even has a word of long standing
derived from the Sumerian of 7000 years ago, the only existing language to
preserve a Sumerian word. (The word is "abyss" from the Sumerian ABZU.) No
one knows how it got here...
    Besides the convenience of the powers of ten, what the metric system
brought was uniformity of measures, needed because virtually every major
trading city and district in Europe formerly had its own weights and
measures that were different from every other district's! "Merchant, this
piece of cloth is short by half a foot!" --- "No, My Lord, these are Flemish
feet, which, as is well-known, are shorter than London feet by the width of
two barleycorns each!" At least, a meter is a meter is a meter everywhere!


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

rochette wrote:

> Sterling wrote:
> >Hi, Tom aka James,
> >
> > "Avoirdupois" is the fancy French term for common British measures
> ..
>
> Well list I object!
>
> this is not genuine french, just a british expression forged to look
> like french. In the Web page:
> http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2000/08/29.html
> you read:
>
> avoirdupois is from Middle English avoir de pois, goods sold by
> weight, from Old French aveir de peis, literally, goods of weight,
> from aveir, property, goods (from aveir, to have, from Latin habere,
> to have, to hold, to possess property) + de, from (from the Latin) +
> peis, weight (from Latin pensum, weight).
>
> Avoirdupois weight is a system of weights based on a pound containing
> 16 ounces or 7,000 grains. Compare apothecaries' weight and troy
> weight.
> ****
> The correct French could be "avoir du poids", which in fact describe
> someone suffering obesity or being important in the society! In
> french there is no such term "avoirdupois" to describe prescientific
> units still in use by remote tribes who have still not taken profit
> of the second leg of arithmetic (multiplication, the first being
> addition) when making measurements. We just use the local name. By
> the way in latin languages thinking and weighing have the same
> origin. Interesting, isn't it?
> --
> Pierre
Received on Tue 10 Jun 2003 01:24:04 AM PDT