| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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Appendix I
Indo-European Roots |
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| ENTRY: | merg- |
| DEFINITION: | Boundary, border. Oldest form *mer -, becoming *merg- in centum languages.
Derivatives include marquee, demarcation, and margin.
1a. mark1, from Old English mearc, boundary, landmark, sign, trace; b. margrave, from Middle Dutch marc, border; c. march2, marquee, marquis, marquise, from Old French marc, marche, border country; d. marchese, marchioness, from Medieval Latin marca, boundary, border; e. demarcation, from Old Italian marcare, to mark out; f. mark2, from Old English marc, a mark of weight or money; g. markka, from Swedish mark, a mark of money; h. marka, from Middle High German marke, mark of money. a–h all from Germanic *mark-, boundary, border territory; also to mark out a boundary by walking around it (ceremonially “beating the bounds”); also a landmark, boundary marker, and a mark in general (and in particular a mark on a metal currency bar, hence a unit of currency); these various meanings are widely represented in Germanic descendants and in Romance borrowings. 2. letters of marque, marquetry; remark, from Old Norse merki, a mark, from Germanic *markja-, mark, border. 3. marc, march1, from Frankish *mark n, to mark out, from Germanic denominative verb *markn. 4. margin; emarginate, from Latin marg, border, edge. 5. Celtic variant form *mrog-, territory, land. Cymry, from Welsh Cymro, Wales, from British Celtic *kom-brogos, fellow countryman (*kom-, collective prefix; see kom), from *brogos, district. (Pokorny mere- 738.) |
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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