538: again versus against May 29, 2016

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Spelling in English may seem arbitrary and nonsensical, but it is common to find that words with similar spellings, even without similar meanings today, may be closely related. The preposition 'against' was formed in Middle English from the adverb 'again' and the suffix '-s' which is the genitive ending that still appears in "-'s" such as "Robert's dog" to show possession, and from there, the '-t' was added to mimic superlatives. This same process occurred in the evolution of among and amongst. The steps may be fairly straightforward, but the connection between 'again' and 'against' is not very clear necessarily. 'Again' actually changed meaning over time from the original Old English, 'ongēan, ongægn' which meant something similar to ‘opposite’.

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