degen
degen (m.; degens) ‘jonge man, krijger, gevolgsman’
Overgeleverde vormen
Oudnederlands thegen (Middelnederlands degen ‘dappere held, ridder’), Oudsaksisch thegan ‘man, knaap’, Oudhoogduits degan ‘soldaat, gevolgsman, held’ (Duits Degen ‘held’), Oudengels þegn ‘dienaar, gevolgsman’ (Engels thane ‘gevolgsman’), Oudnoords þegn ‘krijger, gevolgsman’
Oudgermaanse vorm
*þegnaz ‘jonge man, krijger’
Duiding/etymologie
De oudere betekenis is ‘knaap’. In oorsprong is het bijna hetzelfde woord als Grieks téknon ‘kind’. Degen was lang de benaming van de jonge krijger die trouw aan zijn heer zwoer in ruil voor onderhoud en kans op weelde.
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"A theorist about language may approach his native tongue, as it were from outside, regarding its genius as a thing that has no claim on him and advocating wholesale alterations of its idiom and spelling in the interests of commercial convenience or scientific accuracy. That is one thing. A great poet, who has 'loved, and been well nurtured in, his mother tongue', may also make great alterations in it, but his changes of the language are made in the spirit of the language itself: he works from within. The language which suffers, has also inspired the changes. That is a different thing - as different as the works of Shakespeare are from Basic English. It is the difference between alteration from within and alteration from without: between organic and the surgical."
"It has been always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music; and the passionate love of growing things; and the deep response to legends (...) that have what I would call the North-western temper and temperature."
"In this respect our human consciousness is something like a man who should try, by turning round, to see the back of his head in a mirror. For the impulses to record and to remember can only come into it along with the very change that begins to obscure perception of what is most worth remembering."
"De magie van het woord en de kracht van het beeld zijn samen met de emoties van klanken de oudste vormen van magie. De kleur van woorden, het gevoel dat daarachter zit, dat vind ik mooi. De zeggingskracht van beelden vind je terug in de oeroude symbolen. Woorden en beelden roepen gevoelens op en kunnen drijfveren worden."
