Eggs are oval. The word ‘egg’ is even etymologically related to ‘oval’.
‘Oval’ comes from Latin ‘ōvālis’ (egg-shaped), a derivative of ‘ōvum’ (egg), the ancestor of Spanish ‘huevo’, French ‘œuf’ and others.
Latin ‘ōvum’, in turn, was a distant cousin of Germanic *ajjan, the ancestor of Old Norse ‘egg’. This word was borrowed into Middle English and gradually displaced the native word ‘ey’.
Click my new infographic graphic to learn more.
See post 2 for an anecdote on ‘eggs’ and ‘eyren’.
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In 1490, William Caxton wrote an anecdote on ‘eggs’ and ‘eyren’. Commenting on the linguistic diversity of English, which made creating a standardised English hard, he told the story of a group of northern merchants asking a southern lady for eggs:
“And one of them, named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys. And the goode wyf answerde that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt ... 2/
3/
... was angry for he also coude speak no frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde have eyren; then the good wyf sayd that she understood hym wel.
Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte: egges or eyren? Certaynly it is harde to playse every man bycause of dyversite & chaunge of langage.”
(And one of them, named Sheffeld, a mercer, entered a house and asked for food, and specifically he asked for eggs. ... 3/
@lindarosesmit @swoonie @yvanspijk
I recognised eyren as related to modern Dutch eieren, and in Scots eggs (in plural) are sometimes called "eggis" (which likely also influenced the formation of the plural in dialects of Northern England)
@yvanspijk @violanders Wow, the "Metzger" thing is weird! (I looked it up on German Wikipedia, which says that Mett and Metzger are related, but now I see this is actually disputed on the talk page.)
Now I'm sitting here at 3 am, researching etymologies on the web. I just learned "Messer" is related to "Mett" and "meat", too! Never thought about that.
https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Messer
@yvanspijk you are most welcome and thanks for being open to this. Few people realise that simple steps can make inclusion for everyone much easier.
From memory (I moved to InkScape for vector graphics more than a decade ago) in PowerPoint, grouping all content on a slide then saving the group as a picture using the SVG format sort of works.
See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhl2t6gFkxc
Yoïn van Spijk
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Linda Rose Smit
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