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SURRENDERING TRADITION

1/2/2021

2 Comments

 
​The word tradition was first used in the 1384 John Wycliffe Bible, where it was spelled tradicioun and meant "the action of imparting something". Other forms around that time included tradicyon, tradycion, tradycyon, tradicion, tradicion, and more; the t in the center didn't get added until around the seventeenth century. Tradicioun comes from an Old French word meaning "handing over" and eventually traces to the Latin noun traditionem, which meant "give up" or "surrender", an action that clearly became more figurative as the word developed. That's based on the verb tradere ("to hand over"), which was composed of the prefix trans-, meaning "across", and the root dare, "to give". Finally, those respectively derive from the Proto-Indo-European roots tere ("to cross over") and do ("to give").
2 Comments
Noob1
1/29/2021 03:05:51 pm

Nice! Keep up the work :)

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W. Douglas Halsted, III link
8/16/2022 12:02:07 pm

This is a fascinating history of the word "tradition". I knew a bit of this information, but not much of it. I am very interested in the origins of certain words, and really appreciate this information about the origins of the word "tradition." Thank you so much.
W. Douglas Halsted, III
[email protected]

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    Hello! 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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