So I was pondering the word "disgusting" the other day. There are three parts to the word: "dis," "gust," and "ing," two of which we know the meaning of. "Dis-" means something along the same lines as "un-" or "not." "-ing" turns a word into an adjective or gerund (or a verb if you want to get less technical.) Basically, the word tells us that the thing we're describing is not...whatever "gust" means. Which means "gust" meant something at some point in our language's history, probably something to do with taste.
At this point in my thought process, the very similarly-sounding French word "dégoûtant" (pronounced day-goot-on) popped into my head--it's the French word for "disgusting," and if you recall my post about the accent circonflexe, the accent circonflexe, seen here above the 'u,' indicates pretty reliably that there used to be an s right there. AND, the cool thing about the word "dégoûtant" is that "goût" means "taste" in French.
So, if you followed all of that, you may decide to hypothesize along with me that there used to be a word in English, "gust," that meant "taste."
Having brought my thought process that far, it occurred to me that I should, like, test this theory. So I consulted our best friend the Oxford English Dictionary and found this:
SUCCESS.
:D
OOOOOH, I love this! Your thought process totally makes sense, and it's always wonderful to discover that one's hypothesis is along the lines of the truth (or in this case, absolutely correct)!
ReplyDeleteMy first thought when I saw the title was 'gust' as in a gust of wind. I wonder how this ties in, or if it does? I'd be interested to find out if there is a similar word in German. In fact, I'll look that up now:
Gust: ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Old Norse gustr, related to gjósa ‘to gush.’
And my trusty desktop translator has nothing to say about there being any such word as "gust" in German. So, Old Norse it is! Iiiinteresting.
I have to assume that "disgusting" is the only remaining English word that uses the "taste" meaning of "gust," and it must come from Middle English.
I wonder how this pans out in Latin-based names like "Gustav" or "Augustus." I suppose it's similar to being named something like "Rico" (direct translation: "Delicious"). Or, "August" for that matter. Hmmmmm!