Dear David
Many thanks for you help.
Yours Sincerely
Dai
>From: David Nicholas Harley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Etymology of "well"
>Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 18:16:47 -0500
>
>Francine Nicholson wrote:
> > The concept of wells being holy--good or cursing-bad seems to belong
> >to the Christian period. But I rather wonder whether the origin of holy
>in
> >relation to wells was actually the Anglo-Saxon halig meaning healthy and
> >whole. By the way, perhaps it's not wholly coincidental that the word
>"well"
> >apparently comes from an Indo-European word for power?
>
>David Harley writes:
>I think there's a problem with homonyms here. The adverb and adjective
>"well" do indeed come from the same root as "will", in all probability, and
>equivalents are widespread throughout the languages of Northern Europe.
>However, the noun "well" comes from a different source, a verb meaning to
>boil or bubble up, seen in Old English and Anglian.
>
>As for "holy", it is true that cognate words in some related languages
>meant either "whole" or "healthy", but it is not clear that this was ever
>the case for "halig" in Old English, because all our surviving texts carry
>the Christian meaning, "sacred". It may therefore have already meant
>"sacred" for pre-Christian speakers of Old English, just as easily as it
>might have meant "healthy".
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