Interpreting a dictionary entry in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (by C.T.
Onions,
1966, Oxford)
Case study of tradition and treason
Tradition
Parts of the dictionary entry
tr\di—ß\n
that which is handed down as belief or
practice in a community XIV;
delivery, transmission XVI.
— (O)F. tradicion, (also mod.) -tion
or L. trāditiō(n-),
Explanation
Modern pronunciation with ‘—’ showing the
stressed syllable
this meaning first recorded in the XIV century
this meaning recorded first in the XVI century
in Onion’s dictionary ‘—’ shows popular
borrowing: so En borrowed this word from
spoken language Old French (when the
spelling was tradicion or tradition, which is also
the modern spelling of the word in French).
The pronunciation of the French word was
(and still is) tËadisjo~ (this is not shown by the
dictionary, it is background knowledge). Note
also that the French spelling of tradition was
altered on the basis of Latin (the Old Fr
spelling having been tradicion).
It is also possible that this word entered En
through learned borrowing from Latin (= it
was directly taken from a dictionary of Latin
with no intermediary languages like French).
Notes on the Latin word:
 the vowels are shown with their
reconstructed etymological length
(length was not marked in spelt Latin).
How do we know they were long?
Based on Latin (see later) and the rest
of the IE languages (through historical
linguistic reconstruction).
 the (n-) shows that -n- appeared only
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 sometimes in the various forms of this
word, more precisely there was
no -n- in the nominative case (traditio),
while it was present in the rest of the
cases if a vowel followed (e.g.
traditionis, traditionem, traditions, etc.).
For those who learned Latin please
remember this is a III declension
feminine noun. Note Onions’ use of
‘-’ after the ‘n’: it shows the presence
of a suffix after it. If the suffix begins
with a vowel, the ‘n’ appears, if there
is no vowel after it, it disappears.
 Note: if English borrows words from
this declension in Latin, it borrows the
non-nominative form (e.g., tradition,
function, delegation), Hungarian by
contrast borrows the nominative
forms without the ‘n’ (tradíció, funkció,
delegáció).

f. trādere hand over, deliver (f. = formed on derivationally) trāditiō(n-) was

formed on trādere (this is the infinitive of the
verb in L). Meanings are as given.
f. trāns TRANS- + dāre give; see -ITION trādere itself was formed on trāns and dāre,
meaning ‘giving, handing over of’

Notes:
 capitalised data (TRANS-, -ITION)
show that further information is
available under the respective
headings
 the meaning of TRANS- is ‘over,
across’ (not given here)
 dāre is the infinitive of the verb ‘give’
(the ultimate stem da-, do- is found in
many other words: donate, data, Pandora
(meaning ‘all gifted’), etc.)
 the vowel in trāns is long
because -n- was unstable before the
fricatives in Latin and was ultimately
lost even in Latin. There was,
however, compensatory lengthening
after the loss of -n- (the vowel before
it underwent lengthening). For the
buffs: why does Onions show
both -n- and a long vowel in trāns?
Because there is evidence that
this -n- was not present in spoken
Latin, and the -n- was restored in
(careful) spelling of the word based on

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Hence tradi—tionAL1 XVII.
ancient texts in Latin. So, what was
the pronunciation of trāns in (later)
Latin? trā~s (with a long nasalised
vowel). Note that neither the -n- not
the -s- was restored in trāditiō(n-)
probably because the first part of the
word was no longer associated with
trāns.
 In conclusion trāditiō(n-) is made up of
trāns + dat-(perfect participle of dāre) +
-ion (a suffix that produced nouns
from adjectives. It had a number of
allomorphs, one of these attached to
verbs whose past participle ended
in -t, as it did for dāre: dat-, from where
we have -dit-ion)
Hence (= so from this base a number of
further forms were derived) traditional was
first recorded in the XVII century. Note the
stress mark and the raised 1 over
capitalised -al. It means look up -AL1 for
more information (yes, there are a number of
–AL’s). The French form traditionnel, medL (=
mediaeval Latin) traditionālis all come
ultimately from trānsdāre) (medL is the kind of
Latin used among the educated in mediaeval
Europe, as a lingua franca of the age)

Something that is taken for granted by Onions

En tradition tr\di—ß\n (compared to French tËadisjo~) shows a regular, late Modern English
change of palatalization of sj to ß (Shakespeare, it is assumed, still had sj). Why does En not spell
it tradicion? Because the spelling is based on Latin, or French tradition (which is again based on
Latin, the original Old Fr spelling having been tradicion, as shown by the dictionary).
But if spelling is based on Latin traditio(n-) why is it that we do not have a reconstructed t for
Shakespeare (tr\di—tj\n)? This would be expected if the spelling reverted to the Latin original,
which did have a -t-. The reason for this is that in late Latin (from which all the Neo-Romance
languages come) the sequences tj/dj spirantised (fricativised) to sj/zj very early (even before Old
French existed). (simply: -t- and -d- changed to fricatives before the yod). In other words, <tiV>
in spelling (i.e., the letter <t> followed by <i> followed by a vowel) always represented a sj. This
was a well-known fact about mediaeval Latin pronunciation in Europe, so there is no surprise
this is how the French learnedly borrowed tradition from L tradition (note that Old Fr tradicion
shows a spelling closer to pronunciation). It is also possible (as we have seen above) that En
learnedly borrowed tradition from L tradition. Whoever borrowed it was a learned person who
knew that <tioV> in Late Latin was sj (from where we have the Modern En pronunciation
through palatalization). Note also that this pronunciation with sj (and other similar
pronunciations) continued into mediaeval Latin (the language used by educated speakers).

3
treason

Based on the above, the following pieces of information should be easy to interpret:
trī—z\n, betrayal of trust XIII; violation by a subject of his allegiance XIV.

ME. treison, tresoun These are the Middle English recorded forms
of the word
— AN. treisoun, tres(o)un, OF. traison (mod ME treison is a popular borrowing from
trahison) Anglo-Norman or Old French (popular
means not having been borrowed from a
dictionary, borrowed through spoken
communication)
Note:
 Anglo-Norman is a dialect of French,
a variety of French spoken in
Normandy (transported over to
England by the Norman aristocracy
after 1066, the Norman Conquest).
AN was one of a many varieties of
French with its own phonological
rules.
 At this point we cannot precisely say if
the word comes from AN or OFr
(they are too similar to now this for
sure)
== Pr. traizon, Sp. traición The AN. and OFr. forms are in a sister-to-
sister relationship with Provencal traizon and
Spanish traición. ‘Sister-to-sister’ means that
AN., OFr, Pr. and Sp. all come directly from
the Latin word. They are sisters because their
mother is the same (= Latin).
:— L. trāditiō(n-) : — for Onions means ‘direct inheritance
from a mother language’, so Latin trāditiō(n-) is
the mother word for the AN., OFr., Pr. and
Sp words. There is no borrowing involved,
the words are passed down from mother to
daughter through regular sound changes. So,
the regular sound correspondences among the
words will reveal the mother word.
f. on trādere deliver up, BETRAY, f. on trāns- This should be easily interpretable now:
TRANS- + -dere give trāditiō(n-) is formed on trādere (with the

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Hence treasonABLE perfidious
(Barbour; chiefly Sc. till XVII)
meanings given, see BETRAY for more
information), trādere itself is formed on trāns-
(check TRANS- for further details) and -dere
(with the meaning ‘give’), -dere being one of
the allomorphs of dāre (see entry for tradition)
XIV From treason we have treasonable (check
independently for ABLE) with the meaning
given that appears in the XIV century (found
in John Barbour, a Scottish poet, famous for
The Brus (The Bruce), a lengthy poem about
Scottish chivalry). The meaning ‘perfidious’
was chiefly used in Scottish until XVII
century)

Some phonological facts that Onions takes for granted

How do we know that AN/OFr treison, etc. are NOT the result of learned borrowing from Latin,
borrowed by En? The word shows all the phonological changes that characterise the transition
from Latin to French (and its dialects). So, treison is a direct descendant (= the regularly
developed form) of the Latin word through regular sound changes.

What are these changes?

 Spirantisation of t/d

We have already seen one change above for Latin tradition-: the t in tj sequences turned into a
fricative (s). In some dialects of French the yod (j) was lost, leaving behind only s. This s was
intervocalic (= between vowels) and was subsequently voiced giving z (this is a regular
development is French: all intervocalic fricatives were voiced (the modern Fr trahison still has z)).
Middle English also had z in traison (it also voiced all its intervocalic fricatives), continued into
Modern English.
 Loss of intervocalic non-labial obstruental stops
Another conspicuous change is the loss of d in Latin tradition between Old French and Latin.
This is again regular: all intervocalic t/d/k/˝ sounds were lost (p/b are found as v between
vowels). Note again the Old French word traison (there is no d between the vowels spelt <a> and
<i>). The Modern French word has trahison pronounced with -aj- with no d (the <h> is just the
result of French etymologization that did not affect the pronunciation: the word traison was
falsely thought to be derived from Latin trahere ‘carry’, hence trahison). Some further examples:
Latin pica ‘magpie’ is found as pie in French (note that the En word magpie has -pie a popular loan
from OFr.), L. podia (plural from podium) ‘stage’ is found as OFr. puye, borrowed into Middle En
and found as pew today meaning ‘bench in a church’).
 Loss of the nasal word finally and before consonants
In addition, note that the final n was also lost and is preserved as nasalisation in French, giving
tËajzo~. (Almost) All changes have been accounted for: as you can see, trahison (Old French

5
traison) shows all the phonological changes between Latin and French. The word was never
borrowed from Latin (it has always been there in French, passing down from Latin). En
borrowed the word through spoken communication with Old French speakers, hence the word
in En is a popular loan.
The more changes a word shows, the more likely it is to have been passed down from mother
language to daughter language. This is direct inheritance. Words borrowed through bookish
means (by opening a dictionary of a language no longer spoken) is learned borrowing.
Borrowing that happens through the spoken medium is popular borrowing.
A final note: words like tradition and treason in En are DOUBLETS. They come from the same
source (Latin tradition(n-)) through different channels:
 (i) tradition is either a learned borrowing from Latin or a popular borrowing from Old
French tradition (which itself is a learned borrowing from Latin, hence the great similarity
between Latin traditio(n-) and Old French tradition/tradicion),

 (ii) treason in a popular borrowing from Old French (this is clearly visible as the Old
French word shows all the phonological changes that occurred after Latin).
A note on French: the word tradition (spelled tradicion in OFr) is a learned borrowing in OFr
(continued as MFr tradition meaning ‘tradition’), MFr trahison ‘treason’ is the direct continuation of
L traditio(n-). They are doublets in French (ultimately having the same origin, L tradition(n-)).

6
Graphically this can be shown as follows

≈≈≈≈≈>
direct inheritance popular borrowing learned borrowing

L traditio(n-), f. on trans+dare/dere

AN, OFr traison, treison, etc. ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈> ME traison, etc.

MFr trahison MEn treason

OFr tradition ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈> ME tradition

MFr tradition MEn tradition