Different “Withs” In English, Latin, and French

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m JP. I’m from Temecula. And I was wondering about the origin of the word with, W-I-T-H.

What got you thinking about that?

Well, I’m learning a bit of French and Spanish. And they, Spanish uses the word con for with.

And we also use that in some of our words to mean with, but I was wondering if we use it as a root word, why we don’t just use con instead of with.

In English. Yeah, that’s a good question.

And then French has a vec, which is also a whole different origin too.

So we’ve got these three languages, English, Spanish, and French, and they all have these different etymological stories for their words that mean with.

So let’s talk about Spanish first.

That cone is really interesting.

Absolutely, you’re right.

There are a lot of words in English that have that cone.

Sometimes in English, it shows up as C-O-N, and sometimes it shows up as C-O-M.

And Martha probably has a ton of these words at her disposal because she’s got this Latin expertise.

Like Congress means, right?

We get together, that C-O-N or compress, C-O-M, gets compressed together.

So that’s what’s happening in Spanish and Portuguese and Italian.

They all have that.

And they all come from that Latin word C-U-M, cum.

And we do use that C-U-M in very formal kind of stilted construction English where we might say something like, oh, it’s hard to come up with an example.

But we might use it actually literally as a Latin word in English to mean with.

Right.

If you graduate cum laude, you’re graduating with praise.

Yeah, exactly.

And then we’ve got the French and the EVEC and that also comes from Latin, but completely different origin.

It comes from two different words, which means nearby that, a pulled hulk.

Yeah.

And they’ve been just kind of like been condensed and contracted together over this.

Contracted.

Yes.

Over the years to turn into a vek.

Now let’s talk about the English with.

Well, there’s several interesting things about this.

One is that its meaning has kind of changed over the centuries.

It used to more or less mean against, as in in opposition to.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And it’s got this complex history.

You can still find that old meaning of in opposition to in the word withstand, which more or less means to stand against.

English used to have the common preposition mid, M-I-D, which is a little different than other mids, which had many of the meanings of our modern with.

But with took them over.

And you can still hear those old meanings of mid in modern words like midwife, meaning with woman.

A midwife is somebody who is with a woman when she has a baby.

Or in the word midst, meaning among or enclosed or surrounded.

But again, our WITH, W-I-T-H, took over those mid-meetings.

Yeah, and WITH is weird, isn’t it?

Because if you’re playing a video game and you’re fighting with somebody, are you fighting alongside your teammates?

Or are you fighting against somebody?

Yeah, exactly.

So all of these stories, and those are the short versions.

So your curiosity has rewarded you with these crazy tales.

Thank you.

Well, JP, you are definitely a member of the Word Club of the Air.

You’re clearly one of us.

Thank you.

Con mucho gusto. Au revoir.

Yeah, thanks for talking with us.

Bye-bye, JP.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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