Practical class №1

1. Germanic Languages Ancestry. Classification of Indo-European

languages, including the Germanic ones.

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and is therefore related

to most other languages spoken in Europe and western Asia from Iceland to India.
The parent tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago.
Germanic, one of the language groups descended from this ancestral speech, is
usually divided by scholars into three regional groups: East (Burgundian, Vandal,
and Gothic), North (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish), and
West (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian, and English). Indo-European
languages, family of languages spoken in most of Europe and areas of European
settlement and in much of Southwest and South Asia. The term Indo-Hittite is used
by scholars who believe that Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are not just
one branch of Indo-European but rather a branch coordinate with all the rest put
together; thus, Indo-Hittite has been used for a family consisting of Indo-European
proper plus Anatolian. As long as this view is neither definitively proved nor
disproved, it is convenient to keep the traditional use of the term Indo-European.
Anatolian

Now extinct, Anatolian languages were spoken during the 1st and 2nd

millennia BCE in what is presently Asian Turkey and northern Syria. By far the
best-known Anatolian language is Hittite, the official language of
the Hittite empire, which flourished in the 2nd millennium. Very few Hittite texts
were known before 1906, and their interpretation as Indo-European was not
generally accepted until after 1915; the integration of Hittite data into Indo-
European comparative grammar was, therefore, one of the principal developments
of Indo-European studies in the 20th century. The oldest Hittite texts date from the
17th century BCE, the latest from approximately 1200 BCE. Indo-
Iranian comprises two main subbranches, Indo-Aryan (Indic) and Iranian. Indo-
Aryan languages have been spoken in what is now northern and central India and
Pakistan since before 1000 BCE. Aside from a very poorly known dialect spoken
in or near northern Iraq during the 2nd millennium BCE, the oldest record of an
Indo-Aryan language is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda, the oldest of the sacred
scriptures of India, dating roughly from 1000 BCE. Examples of modern Indo-
Aryan languages are Hindi, Bengali, Sinhalese (spoken in Sri Lanka), and the
many dialects of Romany, the language of the Roma. Iranian languages were
spoken in the 1st millennium BCE in present-day Iran and Afghanistan and also in
the steppes to the north, from modern Hungary to East (Chinese) Turkistan
(now Xinjiang). The only well-known ancient varieties of Iranian languages
are Avestan, the sacred language of the Zoroastrians (Parsis), and Old Persian, the
official language of Darius I (ruled 522–486 BCE) and Xerxes I (486–465 BCE)
and their successors. Among the modern Iranian languages
are Persian (Fārsī), Pashto (Afghan), Kurdish, and Ossetic.

Greek, despite its numerous dialects, has been a single language throughout its
history. It has been spoken in Greece since at least 1600 BCE and, in all
probability, since the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. The earliest texts are
the Linear B tablets, some of which may date from as far back as 1400 BCE (the
date is disputed) and some of which certainly date to 1200 BCE. This material,
very sparse and difficult to interpret, was not identified as Greek until 1952.
The Homeric epics—the Iliad and the Odyssey, probably dating from the 8th
century BCE—are the oldest texts of any bulk.

Italic

The principal language of the Italic group is Latin, originally the speech of the city
of Rome and the ancestor of the modern Romance
languages: Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and so on. The earliest
Latin inscriptions apparently date from the 6th century BCE, with literature
beginning in the 3rd century. Scholars are not in agreement as to how many other
ancient languages of Italy and Sicily belong in the same branch as Latin.

Germanic

In the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, Germanic tribes lived in southern

Scandinavia and northern Germany. Their expansions and migrations from the 2nd
century BCE onward are largely recorded in history. The oldest Germanic
language of which much is known is the Gothic of the 4th century CE. Other
languages include English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
and Icelandic.

Armenian
Armenian, like Greek, is a single language. Speakers of Armenian are recorded as
being in what now constitutes eastern Turkey and Armenia as early as the 6th
century BCE, but the oldest Armenian texts date from the 5th century CE.

Tocharian

The Tocharian languages, now extinct, were spoken in the Tarim Basin (in present-

day northwestern China) during the 1st millennium CE. Two distinct languages are
known, labeled A (East Tocharian, or Turfanian) and B (West Tocharian,
or Kuchean). One group of travel permits for caravans can be dated to the early 7th
century, and it appears that other texts date from the same or from neighbouring
centuries. These languages became known to scholars only in the first decade of
the 20th century. They have been less important for Indo-European studies
than Hittite has been, partly because their testimony about the Indo-European
parent language is obscured by 2,000 more years of change and partly because
Tocharian testimony fits fairly well with that of the previously known non-
Anatolian languages.

Celtic

Celtic languages were spoken in the last centuries before the Common Era (also
called the Christian Era) over a wide area of Europe, from Spain and Britain to the
Balkans, with one group (the Galatians) even in Asia Minor. Very little of the
Celtic of that time and the ensuing centuries has survived, and this branch is
known almost entirely from the Insular Celtic languages—Irish, Welsh, and others
—spoken in and near the British Isles, as recorded from the 8th
century CE onward.

Balto-Slavic

The grouping of Baltic and Slavic into a single branch is somewhat controversial,

but the exclusively shared features outweigh the divergences. At the beginning of
the Common Era, Baltic and Slavic tribes occupied a large area of eastern Europe,
east of the Germanic tribes and north of the Iranians, including much of present-
day Poland and the states of Belarus, Ukraine, and westernmost Russia. The Slavic
area was in all likelihood relatively small, perhaps centred in what is now southern
Poland. But in the 5th century CE the Slavs began expanding in all directions. By
the end of the 20th century Slavic languages were spoken throughout much of
eastern Europe and northern Asia. The Baltic-speaking area, however, contracted,
and by the end of the 20th century Baltic languages were confined
to Lithuania and Latvia.

The earliest Slavic texts, written in a dialect called Old Church Slavonic, date from
the 9th century CE, the oldest substantial material in Baltic dates to the end of the
14th century, and the oldest connected texts to the 16th century.

Albanian

Albanian, the language of the present-day republic of Albania, is known from the
15th century CE. It presumably continues one of the very poorly attested ancient
Indo-European languages of the Balkan Peninsula, but which one is not clear.

In addition to the principal branches just listed, there are several poorly
documented extinct languages of which enough is known to be sure that they were
Indo-European and that they did not belong in any of the groups enumerated above
(e.g., Phrygian, Macedonian). Of a few, too little is known to be sure whether they
were Indo-European or not.
The Indo-European languages are a family of related languages that today are widely
spoken in the Americas, Europe, and also Western and Southern Asia. Just as languages
such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian are all descended from Latin, Indo-
European languages.

English language, West Germanic language of the Indo-European family of

languages; it is closely related to (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian). English
originated in England and is the dominant language of the United States, the
United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and various island
nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

It is also an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and many

countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. English is the first choice
of foreign language in most other countries of the world, and its status has given it
the position of a global lingua franca. It is estimated that about a third of the
world’s population, some two billion persons, now use English.

The Indo-European languages have a large number of branches: Anatolian, Indo-

Iranian, Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Tocharian, Balto-Slavic and Albanian.
This branch of languages was predominant in the Asian portion of Turkey and some
areas in northern Syria.

2. Classification of the Germanic tribes by Pliny the Elder.

All Germanic tribes were passing through the stage of developing called
barbarism. We learn about ancient Teutons from Caesar, Plyny the Elder,
etc.
According to Plyny Germanic tribes in the 1c. AD consisted of 5 groups:
-the Vindili (the Goths, the Burgundians, spoke East G.L.);
-the Ingevones (North-western Germ. territ., North Sea);
-the Istveons (the western part, the shores of Rhein);
-the Herminones (the southern part);
-the Hillavions (inhabited Scandinavia, spoke northern G. L.);
По данным Плиния, германские племена в I в. н. э. разделялись на следующие 6 групп:
1. Виндилы (к их числу относились, в частности, готы и бургунды). Они жили в восточной
части территории, занятой германцами.
2. Ингевоны (или ингвеоны). Они жили в северо-западной части территории, занятой
германцами — на берегах Северного моря, включая современную Голландию. К
ингвеонам относились, в частности, племена, которые впоследствии завоевали Британию.
3. Истевоны (или и с к е в о н ы). Они жили в западной части территории, занятой
 германцами, т. е. на Рейне. К истевонам относились франки, которые впоследствии
завоевали Галлию.
4. Гермионы (или герминон ы). Они жили на юге территории, занятой германцами, т. е. в
нынешней южной Германии.
5. Певкины и б а с т а р н ы, жившие по соседству с даками, т. е. в районе нынешней
Румынии.
6. Г и л л е в ионы, жившие в Скандинавии С Приведя эту классификацию Плиния, Ф
Энгельс, вслед за известным немецким языковедом Яковом Гриммом, вносит в нее только
одну поправку: он указывает на то, что пятая группа Плиния (певкины и бастарны) должна
быть включена в первую (виндилы). В пользу этого говорят два соображения: во-первых,
племена пятой группы, подобно виндилам, жили на востоке; во-вторых, Плиний не дает
этой группе никакого общего наименования, а приводит только названия двух племен,
входивших в ее состав (певкинов и бастарнов).
Следующий по времени после Плиния римский автор, писавший о германцах, —
знаменитый историк Корнелий Тацит (Cornelius Tacitus, родился около 55 г., умер около
120 г.). В своем небольшом сочинении «Германия» (полное заглавие — De situ, moribus et
populis Germaniae) Тацит дал характеристику общественного строя древних германских
племен на рубеже I и II вв. н. э. Данные Тацита широко использовал Ф. Энгельс в своей
книге «К истории древних германцев».
Следующие в хронологическом порядке связные памятники— древневерхненемецкая
«Песнь о Гильдебранде» (отрывок эпической поэмы, относящийся к V III в.) и «Беовульф»
(древнеанглийская эпическая поэма, созданная, по-видимому, в V III в. и дошедшая до нас
в одной рукописи X в.). Далее идут древнеисландские эпические тексты, объединенные в
виде так называемой «Старшей Эдды» — сборника, в который вошли песни, записанные в
X III в.
3. Germanic migration to be shown on maps.
The history of English started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes, who
invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the
Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark
and northern Germany.
At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of
the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders – mainly
into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from
"Englaland“ and their language was called "Englisc“– from which the words
"England" and "English" are derived.

4. Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain. Special attention to be paid to the

native residents of the British Isles.
Germanic invaders came and settled in Britain from the north-western
coastline of continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. The invaders
all spoke a language that was Germanic (related to what emerged as Dutch,
Frisian, German and the Scandinavian languages, and to Gothic) but we will
probably never know how different their speech was from that of their
continental neighbours. The Celts were already residents in Britain when the
Anglo-Saxons arrived, but there are few traces of their language in English
today. It is suggested that the Celtic tongue might have had an underlying
influence on the grammatical development of English, but this is highly
speculative.
 The number of loanwords known for certain to have entered Old English
from this source is very small. Those that survived in modern English
include brock (badger), and coomb a type of valley, alongside many place
names
5. Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
Seven kingdoms in England in VII-IX centuries.
The Germanic invaders quickly united into larger territorial groups under kings. Seven kingdoms
were set up on the territory of what we call now England. The centers of power in Anglo-Saxon
England were to rest in the three kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. These were the
kingdoms on the northerly and westerly frontiers of the area under Anglo-Saxon control. Their
constant border wars with Picts, Scots and British kept their armies in fighting shape. The other
kingdoms were Kent, Sussex, East Anglia and Essex.
By the end of the 7th century people regarded themselves as belonging to “the nation of the
English”. This sense of unity was strengthened during long periods when all kingdoms south of
the Humber acknowledged the overlordship (called by Bede an imperium) of a single ruler,
known as a bretwalda, a word first recorded in the 9th century.
East Anglia was under Mercian rule on two separate occasions in the eighth and early ninth
centuries, and under Norse rule when the Vikings invaded in the late ninth century. Kent was also
under Mercian control, off and on, through much of the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
Mercia was subject to Northumbrian rule in the mid-seventh century, to Wessex in the early
ninth, and to Norse control in the late ninth century.
Northumbria was actually comprised of two other kingdoms - Bernicia and Deira - that were not
joined until the 670s. Northumbria, too, was subject to Norse rule when the Vikings invaded --
and the kingdom of Deira re-established itself for a while, only to fall under Norse control, as
well. And while Sussex did exist, it is so obscure that the names of some of their kings remain
unknown.
The kingdoms were often at war with each other, and especially with great powers, Wessex and
Mercia. Viking attacks were to lead to a permanently united English kingdom under Wessex in
the ninth century. Due to the talents of King Alfred the Great, his overcoming the Danes in 886,
he was recognized as the overlord of all the English. He entered into a formal treaty with the
Danes, in order to extract from them the best possible treatment of the English living in Danish-
dominated territories.
6. Periods of the English History.
I. Old English (500-1100 AD)

West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles
(whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and
Jutes, began populating the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.
They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian—the
language of northeastern region of the Netherlands – that is called Old English.
Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of
England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and
Kentish in the South-east.

These invaders pushed the original, Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is

now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few
Celtic words. Also influencing English at this time were the Vikings. Norse
invasions, beginning around 850, brought many North Germanic words into the
language, particularly in the north of England, and influenced grammar greatly.
Old English, whose best known surviving example is the poem Beowulf, lasted
until about 1100. This last date is rather arbitrary, but most scholars choose it
because it is shortly after the most important event in the development of the
English language, the Norman Conquest.

II. The Norman Conquest and Middle English (1100-1500)

William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, invaded and conquered

England and the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 AD at the battle of Hastings. The new
overlords spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman. The
Normans were also of Germanic stock and Anglo-Norman was a French dialect
that had considerable Germanic influences in addition to the basic Latin roots.
As a result, many words commonly used by the aristocracy have Romanic roots
and words frequently used by the Anglo-Saxon commoners have Germanic
roots (not always, of course). Sometimes French words replaced Old English
words, other times, French and Old English components combined to form a
new word, or even two different words with roughly the same meaning survive
into modern English.

In 1204 AD, King John lost the province of Normandy to the King of France.
This began a process where the Norman nobles of England became increasingly
estranged (відчужений) from their French cousins. England became the chief
concern of the nobility, rather than their estates in France, and consequently the
nobility adopted a modified English as their native tongue. About 150 years
later, the Black Death (1349-50) killed about one third of the English
population. The laboring and merchant classes grew in economic and social
importance, and along with them English increased in importance compared to
Anglo-Norman. This mixture of the two languages came to be known as Middle
English. The most famous example of Middle English is Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales.

By 1362, the linguistic division between the nobility and the commoners was
largely over, in that year, the Statute of Pleading was adopted, which made
English the language of the courts and it began to be used in Parliament.

The Middle English period came to a close around 1500 AD with the rise of
Modern English.

III. Modern English (1500-nresent)

1. Early Modern English (1500-1800)

The next wave of innovation in English came with the Renaissance. The revival
відродження of classical scholarship brought many classical Latin and Greek
words into the Language.

Elizabethan English, has much more in common with our language today than
it does with the language of Chaucer. Many familiar words and phrases were
coined or first recorded by Shakespeare, some 2,000 words and countless catch-
phrases are his.

Two other major factors influenced the language and served to separate Middle
and Modern English. The first was the Great Vowel Shift. This was a change
in pronunciation that began around 1400. Long vowel sounds began to be
made higher in the mouth and the letter “e” at the end of words became
silent. In linguistic terms, the shift was rather sudden, the major changes
occurring within a century. The shift is still not over, however, vowel sounds
are still shortening although the change has become considerably more gradual.

The last major factor in the development of Modern English was the advent of
the printing press. William Caxton brought the printing press to England in
1476 (the first printed book in Britain – translation of the History of Troy).
Books became cheaper and as a result, literacy became more common. The
printing press brought standardization to English. The dialect of London, where
most publishing houses were located, became the standard. Spelling and
grammar became fixed, and the first English dictionary was published in
1604.2. Late-Modern English (1800-Present)

The principal distinction between early- and late-modern English is

vocabulary. Pronunciation, grammar, and spelling are largely the same, but
Late-Modern English has many more words. These words are the result of two
historical factors. The first is the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the
technological society. This necessitated new words for things and ideas that
had not previously existed. The second was the British Empire. At its height,
Britain ruled one quarter of the earth’s surface, and English adopted many
foreign words and made them its own.

7. Germanic word stress as one of the main features of Germanic

languages.
The main features of G.L. on 3 linguistic levels:
-phonetic
-grammatical
-lexical.
 Phonetic features – stress, accent. In Indo-European languages the accent
was free or moving and tonic. Later in G.L. it became fixed on the 1st root
syllable (except verbs with a prefix) and was dynamic. It had brought the
reduction of endings.

8. The PG phoneme system. The works of Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner.
Grimm’s law
Comparing the phoneme system of Germanic languages with other IE
languages, Jacob Grimm discovered a set of correspondences between
PIE consonants and the PG ones.
The most prominent peculiarity of the Germanic system of consonants
is a big number of fricative phonemes and a relatively small number of
stops/plosives. At the same time in the reconstructed PIE phoneme
system there was a rich number of stop (проривні) consonants. This
system underwent great changes in PG.

There exists a sufficient number of Old English texts to form an opinion

about what really the English language was in the times of Alfred and his
successors. The language of the period bears a lot of traces in common with
other inflected Indo-European languages, Ukrainian and Russian
including.The nominal parts of speech were declined, the infinitive of the
verb likewise had a distinct infinitival suffix, the structure of the sentence
had a subject, a predicate and secondary parts. Just like in our Slavic
languages word order was free, and the nominal parts of speech had cases,
there was agreement between the subject and the predicate, double negation
was not prohibited.

Impersonal sentences had no subject. And a considerable number of words

of the language had parallels in other known Indo European languages
(brodor 6paт: duru .двepi). Some of

sounds are found in all languages that we know, some are now known as
phonetic symbols, and they are specifically English sounds. But some
sounds which are found elsewhere, may not stand in the English words of
Indo European origin in the same places. Sunu-sunus- cин; but duo -дваtwа.
By carefully studying present-day English words and comparing them with
the words of our language we can related words in the languages: (flame
Rus. пламя; Ukr. полум’я). In the process of its development a great
number of words were taken into English from other languages (mainly
Latin or Greek):

first – primary; two – double; eight – octopus; eye – binoculars; tooth - dentist
 In some others the changes are so significant, that we cannot see common
features without knowing the major shifts in sound system.

The first fundamental change in the consonant system of Germanic

languages dates back to times far removed from today. Jakob Ludwig Grimm
(1785-1863), a German philologist and a folklorist (generally known together
with his brother Wilhelm for their Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-22) studied and
systematized these correlations in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37).
Hisconclusions are formulated (called Grimm's law or the First Consonant
shift).

The essence of Grimm’s law is that the quality of some sounds (namely
plosives) changed in all Germanic languages while the place of their formation
remained unchanged. Thus, voiced aspirated plosives (stops) lost their
aspiration and changed into pure voiced plosives, voiced plosives became

9. voiceless plosives and voiceless plosives turned into voiceless fricatives.

10.bh dh gh —> b d g Sanskrit bhrata —> Goth brodar, Old English brodor
(brother);

11.b d g -> p t k Lith. bala, Ukr. болото -> Old English pol;

12.Lat. granum —* Goth. kaurn. Old English corn;

13.p t k -> f 6 h Lat. pater —> Goth fadar. Old English fasder

14.Aspirated plosives are now lost almost in all European languages, and we
take for comparison words from Sanskrit. Present-day Hindi has it, and we
may find them in well-known place-names in India

15.There are some exceptions to Grimm's law: p t k did not change into f 0 h, if
they were preceded by s (tres - dreo, but sto - standan). Another exception
was formulated by a Danish linguist Karl Adolph Verner (1846— 96) in
1877: if an Indo-European voiceless stop was preceded by an unstressed
vowel, the voiceless fricative which developed from it in accordance with
Grimm's law became voiced, and later this voiced fricative became a voiced
plosive (stop). That is:

p t k —> b d g. Greek pater has a Germanic correspondence fadar; feder because

the stress in the word was on the second syllable, and so voiceless plosive was
preceded by an unstressed vowel. Verner's Law, phonetic principle formulated by
the Danish philologist Karl Adolf Verner (1846-96) in 1875, which modifies
certain points in the earlier work of the German philologist Jacob Grimm
(see Grimm's Law). Verner's law describes a regular shift in stress that took place
in words in the Germanic languages after the consonant shift postulated by Grimm.
According to Grimm, the ancient Indo-European parent language sounds of p, t,
and k changed into f, th, and h in the Germanic languages, while b, d, and g in the
ancient tongue changed to the Germanic p, t, and k. Verner observed that this was
true when the accent fell on the root syllable, but when the accent fell on another
syllable, ancient Indo-European p, t, and k became Germanic b, d, and g. Verner
then applied these rules to the consonants s and r. Verner's law states that with
respect to the Germanic languages, the medial and final fricatives were voiced if
they came after an unaccented syllable in the Indo-European parent language. His
work is important in the study of linguistics because it proves both that language
changes are evolutionary and that no exceptions or gaps exist in linguistic
development.

Saxons    —    South of the Thames (West Saxon area)

Angles    —    Middle and Northern England (Mercia and Northumbria), including
lowland Scotland
Jutes       —    South-East of England (Kent)

II. PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT

1. The following table contains reconstructed Indo-European roots (simplified) on the left, and
on the right the modern English spellings. In between you need to fill in the effects of Grimm’s
Law and Verner’s Law. (Not every instance shows the workings of both laws: pay attention to
the position of the accent.) Vowel lengths are not marked, and you can ignore the vowels in any
case because they often follow entirely separate sound changes. In the English column the cell
for some words is left blank where the form should be obvious; in the others gaps are left where
the proper letter should be filled in. Be careful: one of the gaps is misleading. The first two are
done   as examples.

 Note: the chart conflates some of the five steps shown in the previous exercise. It shows,
essentially, before-and-after states.

Proto-I-E Grimm’s Law Verner’s Law Accent Shift English

*púlo- ful (no change) (no change) foul
*upélo ufélo ubél- úbel- evil (Ger. übel)
*matér  -  mōdēr  -  mother
*bhló-  blo  -  - bloom
*dhrágh  drág  -  -  
*plotu-´  flotu  flod  - flood
*kasó  haso  haro  - hare
*dhó  do    -  
*léb-  lep  lep  - lip
*sténge-  stenke  steng  - stink
*yunkó-    yungo    young
*bhér-  ber      bear
*tóng-  ƥonk      sank
*gháns  gans  gans   goose
*konk-´  gang  gang   hang

2. In the following pairs, one word comes from a Germanic root and the other was borrowed into
English from a non-Germanic language. Using the American Heritage Dictionary or the OED,
find their common Indo-European root. Then using Grimm/Verner, sketch out how the
consonants diverged. (You need to account only for the consonants affected by Grimm’s and
Verner’s laws.)

whore, caress (or charity)

kā–, "to like, desire  from Latin cārus

cantor, hen

 from Old English;  kan - han

gnostic, know

[Late Latin Gnōsticus, a Gnostic, from Late Greek Gnōstikos, from Greek gnōstikos, concerning

knowledge, from gnōsis, knowledge

from Old English  gnō - kno

paucity, few

eke, augment

gelatin, cool

tumescent, thumb

domestic, timber

ten, dime