Saturday, December 18, 2010

Twelve

The word "twelve" is a native English word that presumably arises from the Germanic compound twa-lif "two-leave", meaning that two is left after one takes away the base, ten. This compound meaning may have been transparent to speakers of Old English, but the modern form "twelve" is quite opaque. Only the remaining tw- hints that twelve and two are related. Etymology (Weekley, Skeat) suggests that "twelve" (similar to "eleven") consists of two parts, the first meaning "two" and the second "leftover", so a literal translation would yield "two remaining [after having ten taken]".

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