Here is a word that applies to all of us without exception. No matter where or how, we have all been born: we have all had a birth.
So where does the word come from? Is it a Latin root, through French, perhaps. Well, no, in French it is naissance. Is it from Greek? In Greek, birth is γεννα [genna] or τοκετός [toketos]. So we will have to look elsewhere.
Let’s start by going back to Middle English. Here we may find various spellings, including bird, burd, burth, borth and byrd as well as the much more familiar birth. We have a nice example in On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s translation from Latin of Bartholomaeus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum, dating to 1398.
If defnes be in birþe, it is incurable.
Deafness from birth is incurable. …
The full text was published here.
Glossologics: a blog on language, with special emphasis on etymology, and including references to languages other than English. [@AlexpolisTigers]
