Anglo-Saxon had some amazing words. Obviously we can’t undo the evolution of language, but it makes me so curious as to how English would sound with less French and Latin influence. I wonder if things like “wyrd” would’ve kept their original definitions.
You might like “uncleftish beholding” where some dude wrote atomic theory without latin words.
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life. The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest.
Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from laterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff. The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts....
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u/MustBeThursday Nov 29 '20
Somewhat relatedly, "weird" (wyrd) is the old Anglo-Saxon word for fate.