The English language is a glorious hotchpotch. Built on Germanic foundations, it has significant influences from Norse, French, Latin and Greek but has also borrowed words from languages as diverse as those from the Indian subcontinent and even the native languages of the Caribbean. All of these influences make the language a bit bonkers; where any rules exist, they seem to be broken as often as they are observed.
Take superlatives as an example. Most follow the pattern of big, bigger biggest but then all of a sudden we get ‘good, better best’. Why is it not good, gooder, goodest, or something like bet, better, best? The answer turns out to be an interesting story of the rise in popularity of one word and the falling away of another so that one word, ‘good’, ended up taking the place of the word that previously meant good. It sheds an interesting light on the way the meaning of words shifts with time and how a living language is never really fixed.
So where did the word ‘good’ come from? One thing that seems categorically clear is that it didn’t come from the word ‘God’ as is often thought. The two words, although similar in sound and meaning, are unrelated. It seems that it actually came from an original word that was something like ‘godaz’ in the ‘proto-germanic’ language from which all Germanic languages descend. But in its original form it didn’t mean ‘good’ but had a meaning more like ‘unite’.
Over the course of centuries the word evolved in both sound and usage and began to be associated with other desirable qualities so that, by the time of old Germanic, it meant something like ‘worthy’ or ‘noble’ and in old Norse it appears in commemorative rune stones with a meaning to do with strength and bravery.
With Christianity the meaning shifted again and the word became attached to sentiments of piety and virtue. By the 12th Century it was being used in English to mean friendly or gracious and by the 14th Century it was also being used in the sense of kindness. Eventually its meaning broadened to that which we recognise today and the word became more popular, and then universal.
We shouldn’t really be surprised by way the meaning of the word has changed. We do this all the time - repurposing words or expanding their meaning. Even in recent years we have seen words such as wicked, sick, ill or dope, all being used to mean good despite their traditional meanings being negative. The word ‘silly’ once meant ‘worthy’ or ‘blessed’, and the word ‘nice’ once meant ‘foolish’.
But what word did ‘good’ replace? This appears to be the word ‘bot’ which, as you can see, fits much better into the sequence ‘bot, better, best’. As people started to use ‘good’ they stopped using the word ‘bot’ and the word ‘good’ simply usurped its place alongside better and best. Now ‘bot’ has almost vanished from the language. Almost, but not completely. It exists in one single expression which is the expression ‘to boot’, as in ‘he was a good singer and a great dancer to boot’.
Our language is full of such anomalies - don’t even get started on why it’s bad, worse, worst - but it is these anomalies that make the language so rich. It is the changing usage over time and the multiple influences on the language that make it so expressive and, arguably, the greatest literary language in the world. It is because of the outside influences that we have so many different ways of saying the same thing, each offering a different nuance (for example, climb, mount, and ascend from old English, French and Latin respectively). Where a spelling, meaning, or association of an English word seems odd, there is usually an interesting story behind it.
If this short article has piqued your interest then I can highly recommend Kevin Stroud’s podcast, The History of the English Language via the link below.