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Put another way, an etymon is the original word (in the same language or in a foreign
language) from which a present-day word has evolved.
"[W]e have to avoid being misled by the etymology of the word etymology itself; we have
inherited this term from a pre-scientific period in the history of language study, from a time
when it was supposed (with varying degrees of seriousness) that etymological studies would
lead to the etymon, the true and 'genuine' meaning. There is no such thing as the etymon of a
word, or there are as many kinds of etymon as there are kinds of etymological research."
"In Old English, the word meat (spelled mete) mainly meant 'food, especially solid food,'
found as late as 1844... The Old English word mete came from the same Germanic source as
Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, mat, Old High German maz, Old Icelandic matr, and
Gothic mats, all meaning 'food.'"
An extreme case of five English words reflecting the same etymon is discus (an 18th-century
borrowing from Latin), disk or disc (from French disque or straight from Latin), desk (from
Medieval Latin but with the vowel changed under the influence of an Italian or a Provençal
form), dish (borrowed from Latin by Old English), and dais (from Old French).
(Anatoly Liberman, Word Origins . . . and How We Know Them. Oxford University Press,
2005)
Source
Nordquist, Richard. "Etymon." ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/etymon-words-
term-1690678.