Malory and the prefix "be"

[Jim Deutch]

Reading Malory, I got interested in the prefix "be" when I spotted the word about how Nimue was being constantly hassled by Merlin and couldn't get rid of him:

for she was ferd of hym by cause he was a deuyls sone / and she coude not beskyfte hym by no meane

What a cool word, "beskyfte". You can tell what it means from context: she couldn't discourage his attentions. After some thought, I figured it might be related to the British English word "skive" whose etymology is "probably from French esquiver ‘escape.’" so it means she couldn't escape from him. Makes total sense.

This sparked a new interest in the prefix, which I found these definitions for:

be-
prefix
1.forming verbs:
all over; all around.
"bespatter"
thoroughly; excessively.
"bewilder"
2.(added to intransitive verbs) expressing transitive action.
"bemoan"
3.(added to adjectives and nouns) expressing transitive action.
"befool"
4.(added to nouns) affect with.
"befog"
(added to adjectives) cause to be.
"befoul"
5.(forming adjectives ending in -ed ) having; covered with.
"bejeweled"

Wow! I was never consciously aware of all those uses, but they are all familiar, if mostly somewhat archaic/poetic in modern english.

A favorite archaic word of mine is "belike", meaning "probably". But I can't place it into any of the five categories above. Linguistics is mostly a mystery to me, but this shouldn't be so hard. Google doesn't come up with any etymology for "belike". Can anyone help explain it to me?

(Spelling note: I found three instances of "beloved" on a single page of Malory, variously spelled "beloued", "byloued" and "biloued". On a single page!)

 

[Jim Deutch]

P.S. I am also interested in the relation between the English prefix "be" and the German prefix "ge", which is much more commonly used, and seems to function in a similar way. Anyone know anything about this? I do not speak German myself, but I've been exposed to quite a bit of it because my wife is a native German speaker and most of her family is still back in "the old country"...

 

[Jim Deutch]

And P.P.S - I forgot to mention! Tolkien himself uses the word "belike" in the epilogue to one of the drafts of the "Lost Tales".

 

[Harnuth]

I have always been bemused and sometimes befuddled by that delightful word construction.

A brief consultation with a German speaker whose native tongues are Dutch and Russian suggests that the English "be-" is primarily a shift in pronunciation of the German "ge-" that occurred after some Germanic folks moved to the island and followed their own linguistic path. For as long as I've known her, Anja has insisted that English is really a distant dialect of German; and Dutch of course is a closer cousin. (I take this advice with some caution; it comes from a lady whose speaks English with a mixture of London and Texan accents, sometimes mixing in words and phrases from Dutch, Georgian Russian, and German in a dialect of her own that we call "Anjish." In contrast, her written English is near perfect, albeit usually quite formal.)

 

[Jim Deutch]

suggests that the English "be-" is primarily a shift in pronunciation of the German "ge-" that occurred after some Germanic folks moved to the island and followed their own linguistic path.

Yes, that is exactly my impression, too. Though mine is based on a very, very slight knowledge of German.

English is really a distant dialect of German

I'm sure you're familiar with the James Nicoll bon mot:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.​

 

[Jim Deutch]

Finally catching up on the Malory podcasts, I find that Corey, also, thinks "beskyfte" is a very cool word!

 

[Harnuth]

Yes, that is exactly my impression, too. Though mine is based on a very, very slight knowledge of German.

I'm sure you're familiar with the James Nicoll bon mot:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.​