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Another Modern English cognate even closer to shyne than "sheen" is "shine" (and obviously the German "schein"). The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "s
by Sharlin 8mo ago
Another Modern English cognate even closer to shyne than "sheen" is "shine" (and obviously the German "schein"). The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "shining", "well-reputed", "righteous" have a long history of being related:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schinen#Middle_English (to shine, to appear)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skyr#Middle_English (clear-coloured, pale, light, luminous, radiant)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sciene#Old_English (beautiful, fair, brilliant, shining)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/sk%C4%ABnan%C4%85 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīnaną (to shine, to appear)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/sk%C4%ABriz https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skīriz (pure, clear, sheer)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skauniz https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic... *skauniz (beautiful, shining)
and ultimately the PIE
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/(s)%E1%B8%B1eh%E2%82%81y- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... *(s)ḱeh₁y- (to shine)
There are cognates absolutely everywhere in modern Germanic languages:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sk%C3%ADr#Icelandic skír (bright, clear, pure)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skir#Swedish (sheer, delicate, shining)
And even in Slavic languages:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/sijati https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/s... *sijati (to shine, to illuminate)
Skauniz was even borrowed to Proto-Finnic and highly conserved in modern Finnish, Estonian, Ingrian, etc. which all have kaunis meaning "beautiful"!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/kaunis https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/k... *kaunis
- ChrisGreenHeur 8mo agoOne way to say it that is understandable in modern English and Swedish: She shines with beauty/ Hon skiner av skönhet
- readthenotes1 8mo agoThis makes sense in the Firefly universe, too. Shiny!
- schoen 8mo agoI resemble that remark! For a modern semantic parallel, we might point to the phrase "she's quite a looker". It's also interesting to see the words related to hearing and reputation; I'm thinking of Greek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleos and Slavic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Ethnonym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs#Ethnonym where there's a whole thing about having people talk about you loudly (or, alternatively, being able to produce intelligible speech at all).
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago> The words for "beautiful", "fair", "bright", "shining", "well-reputed", "righteous" have a long history of being related Compare modern Mandarin 漂亮 ["beautiful", in most of the English senses of the word] and 亮 ["shine"].
- Sharlin 8mo agoAlso, I just realized that Finnish loistava can mean either "excellent" or "shining", "radiant". Of course English also has, for instance, the phrase "shining example".