English Doublets

Abstract

The list of doublets in the appendix of Skeat's Etymological Dictionary is the most complete collection so far published, the list in Maetzner's Englische Grammatik being hardly worthy of mention. Professor Skeat's definition of doublets, however, is so broad as to include cognates from the Aryan mother tongue—pairs referable to the same Aryan base, such as beef and cow. brother and friar, cell and hall, chief and head, cool and gelid, cone and hone, core and heart, corn (1) and grain, corn (2) and horn, fell and pell, foremost and prime, genus and kin, guest and host (2), name and noun, two and deuce, verb and word, the list of which might be extended. Professor Skeat would probably now exclude chief and head, for it is doubtful (see Brugmann), tho the consonants agree, whether Lat. caput and A.-S. hëafod are cognates. His definition of doublets is as follows: “Doublets are words which, tho apparently differing in form, are nevertheless, from an etymological point of view, one and the same, or only differ in some unimportant suffix.”