I don’t know about you, but there are times when I just like to browse in a dictionary.
And doing so recently made me aware of all the different ‘waves.’
The first thing this word ‘wave’ suggests to us is the movement of the sea—the rolling waves on our beaches.
That meaning of ‘wave’ has existed in English since 1526.
The noun ‘wave’ seems to come from the earlier verb ‘to wave’ which is (possibly) recorded as early as 1380, and comes from the Old English word wafian which, in turn, corresponds to the Middle High German word waben (there’s the Germanic roots of the English language again).
At first, it meant anything that shook in the breeze, and only in 1530 was applied to the movement of the sea.
It applied to a movement of the hands only from 1616.
Then there is the other wave, the one spelled with an ‘I’— ‘waive.’
I saw a story on an American news site saying: ‘The University of Chicago has announced that it will waive tuition for students from families earning less than $250,000 per year.’
Clearly that’s a different kind of ‘waiving’ altogether.
In fact, despite the similarities this is a totally different word which came into English from a different source.
There is an Old French word behind this ‘waive’ which means it turned up in our language via Anglo-Norman after the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror (and his French speaking knights) took over the place in 1066.
And behind the French source there seems to be a word from what is called Law Latin.
So, this shows us the dual source of English—the only language on the planet that has grown out of a combination of Germanic sourced words and Latin sourced words (one of the reasons why English can be so hard to learn as a second language).
The earliest meaning of ‘waive’ was ‘relinquishing’ (as early as 1297) depriving a person of the protection of the law (as a punishment).
This grew into the familiar use of this ‘waive’ to mean to refrain from insisting on something.
And because historically this had the sense of ‘relinquishing’ or ‘abandoning’ it is related to the very different (these days) word ‘waif’ (meaning an abandoned or neglected child).
All these connections in our language are what make it constantly fascinating!
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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