An adder is a type of venomous snake, which is appropriate, because it has a poisoned etymology. Okay, maybe that's melodramatic, but it certainly took a surprising turn. Back in Middle English, the word was addere, and before that, it was naddere. Why the dropping of a consonant? Well, in the olden days, people said "a naddere" so much that it became "an addere," and the shift occurred (this is a process known as rebracketing). In Old English, the word was naeddre, and in Proto-Germanic, it was nadro. By then, the meaning had broadened to "a snake" in general, though, phonemically speaking, we have traveled quite a way from the original term. Further reconstructions take us to the Proto-Indo-European root netre, also "snake", which in turn may be from a word sounding like neh and meaning "to twist", because snakes twist. Apparently, there was a bit of natural selection going on: nadder was also a word, briefly, in the nineteenth century, before it faded into obscurity.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. This year, I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government and Linguistics. There, I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote a thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy, magna cum laude. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy philosophy, trivia, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, art history, and law.
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