witenagemot

[prettygoodword]

witenagemot (WIT-n-uh-guh-moht) - n., the assembly of the witan, or national council of the king, nobles, bishops, and aldermen.


A wita being a king's councilor, literally, wise one (or one with wit), and -mot being moot, as ain a moot court. This was a political institution from the 7th to 11th centuries of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. You'd expect an initial /v/ sound, but no, the pronunciation has been fully modernized. Historically the most common spelling was wittenagemot, with alternate forms wittenagemote, wittena-gemote and wittena-gemot, but the orthographers settled on witenagemot around 1850. The term is not used by historians much anymore, alas.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

...Why would one expect an initial v- sound?

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

A lot of people who've learned a little German but no training in Old English tend to pronounce Old English w- as German /v/. Where by "a lot" I mean, I've met more than one.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I see. Makes sense, though it's funny because German used to pronounce written w- the way its cousin languages did contemporaneously.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Do you know offhand when that changed?

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Not sure. I'd guess it goes approximately with the shift in regional uppitiness. Middle High German so called is high because it's mountain-centric, from along the German Alps (Swabian and Bavarian). New High German, the modern standardized language, is high in cultural terms and more central-northerly because it went with the imperial chancery from the seventeenth century or so. Mhd was taught to me with w-. I really don't know much about German after the thirteenth century, though, aside from familial C20 usage (dialect).