1641: Productivity of -Er: beetle Jun 12, 2019

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The historical suffix '-le' can be used to form appliances, as mentioned yesterday, but it can also be used to form the words for animals. For instance, 'beetle' has this historical suffix, but it has no relation to the vegetable 'beet'. Instead, it comes from 'bite'. Really, this suffix meant something along the lines of what '-er' means today, thus the equivalent now would be 'biter': in Old English though, it was 'bitula'. This equivalence does not work as clearly with the examples given yesterday, 'thimble' and 'bridle'—in Modern English 'thumb-er' and 'bite-r' again—but '-er' can also used to form appliances etc..
See yesterday's post for more.

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