Comments | word_ancestry: yeast

gwoman in word_ancestry

yeast

Dec 17, 2009 14:15

yeast, n. [yeest, yēst]
-Though we now consider yeast to be any fungi of the genus Saccharomyces (especially S. cerevisiae), which reproduces by budding and from ascospores and is capable of fermenting carbohydrates, Middle English yest, yeest specifically referred to the froth of fermenting beer. The Middle English term was developed from Late ( Read more... )

yeast

Comments 11

dutchy1 December 17 2009, 23:30:50 UTC

I am not a scholar, but in Holland the Dutch word is still gist.
And it is still used in beer, bread and some special dishes.
And during my time in Switzerland they used the word gist as well in so called "plat German or Sweizy-Deutch" as they call it themselves.
So middle german is very probably...

gwoman December 21 2009, 23:57:46 UTC

thank you! so, the "plat German" - what kind of dish/drink is that?

Plat- German dutchy1 December 22 2009, 13:24:16 UTC

Plat German is no dish, it is a kind of speaking, a kind of dialect or local language. The difference between Dutch and Frisian is they are 2 languages, the difference between German and Sweizy-Deutch is according the German no 2 different languages but a dialect and the Schweitzer people say it are 2 different languages even with differences in writing!
For me as a Dutch woman: the language of Switzerland and Luxembourg is more like Dutch from Holland in accents than in what the German call proper German. Do not ask me why, it is a matter of experience while I did live there and speak both.

prettygoodword December 18 2009, 14:47:44 UTC

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the PIE root yes- means to boil, foam, bubble. Its only other important English derivative is eczema.

---L.

gwoman December 21 2009, 23:59:52 UTC

THANK YOU! let me cyber-give you some of the holiday goodies i baked this weekend :)

and why dictionaries don't have appendixes of IE roots on their web versions makes no sense to me.

plaidseven December 19 2009, 00:56:34 UTC

Is this old English gist also where we get our modern "gist"? Or are they completely unrelated?

prettygoodword December 21 2009, 15:59:09 UTC

Nope -- our gist comes out of Anglo-Norman from legal Latin jacere, to lie.

---L.

gwoman December 22 2009, 00:00:19 UTC

what ^ said :)

plaidseven December 22 2009, 00:13:17 UTC

Ah! Thank you very much.

bravesaintash December 21 2009, 21:10:13 UTC

Any idea on the origins of the word/phrase brouhaha?

gwoman December 22 2009, 00:01:09 UTC

added!