| Jay Scott : Daily Whale : archive : 1991-1994 : 16 May 1991 |
The oldest reconstructed ancestor of English, so far, is Proto-Indo-European. Its root "skei-", to cut, is thought to have given rise to the Latin "scire", to know, to discern one thing from another, and thence to "science", chopped-up knowledge.
Other words thought to derive from this root include "conscience", "schism", "escutcheon", and "shit".
copyright 1991, 2001 Jay J.P. Scott
<jay@satirist.org>