Five common English words we don’t know the origins of – including ‘boy’ and ‘dog’

“The English lexicon includes some terms known as “proper words”, which today apparently exist only in English. Cognates for them cannot be found in any other language.

These are very simple and common words but being unique, we cannot apply the comparative method to them and therefore cannot reconstruct their origins.”

https://theconversation.com/five-common-english-words-we-dont-know-the-origins-of-including-boy-and-dog-232299

#History #English #Language #Linguistics #OldEnglish @linguistics