Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/233

 (from beech). Etymology would seem to show also that travel had become more or less common over the land. Fear (from fare) suggests dangers to be expected while traveling through strange lands and forests; learn came from a root meaning, “to follow a track”; weary, “to tramp over wet grounds and moors”; earn came from “field labor”; gain by way of the French, “from a Teutonic verb meaning ‘to graze, to pasture’…to forage, to hunt or fish”; free came “from an Aryan root meaning dear,” that is to say, applied to those connected with household-ties, and therefore not in bondage. This also is the source of our word friend. Bless, a religious word, was derived from blood, “to mark or consecrate with blood”; mirth and merry, meaning “short,” presumably “that which shortens time, or cheers.”

In studying the old words of our vocabulary, we should heed the warning of L. P. Smith, and others, against our giving to them their modern meanings. “Thus fear had the ob-