The word bandit was first attested in English in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (written at an unknown point in the late 1590s). There, he spelled it bandeto, and subsequent forms included bandetto, bandito, and bandite. These words hint at its origin from the Italian word bandito, which meant "outlaw", same as today. That's the past participle of bandire, a verb meaning "banish", since outlaws are people banished from society. That traces to the Vulgar Latin verb bannire, meaning "to proclaim" (the connection was that people were banished through proclamations), and the d might have been added because of influence from a similar Gothic word. Finally, bannire (also the source of ban and banish) derives from the Proto-Indo-European root bha, meaning "to speak".
1 Comment
Patrick T McCord
11/2/2023 05:44:58 pm
What's the relation to the Yiddish word, "bonditt"--"a clever or mischievious person." See third paragraph, PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history.
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