An example of two morphologically similar words with opposite meanings in modern Dutch compared to OE are the words "earhlic" (OE) and "eerlijk" . However, the OE version means cowardly, whereas in Dutch it means honest(ly). A shift in meaning can be traced by comparing the OE word "gewaeld" (=power). Its Dutch counterpart would be "geweld" which means violence. A related Dutch word is "geweldig" which means terrific/great. It seems that power was often identified with violence, not surprisingly. A third interesting example is the OE word "wincel". Its Dutch analogon is "winkel", which means shop. The OE word means corner (as it still does in modern German), which sheds some etymological light on the concept of a cornershop.

Retracing Dutch in OE words also allows you to do some etymology of Dutch words. For example Dutch has the word "welig", which means abundant but never in a monetary sense. In OE the exact same word exisits and its meaning is wealthy. In the OE conjugation of to be, many germanic roots can be recognized, e.g. wesan. Once I did a guided tour of the city of Antwerp. At some point, the origin of the city's name was explained. The tour guide told the story of a giant who would cut off the hand of each captain who would dare to pass the city with his ship without paying the appropriate taxes. The giant would subsequently throw the hand in the Schelde river, hence: "Hand-werpen". Interestingly, in OE the following, morphologically similar, word exists: "geondhweorfen, which simply means to pass through. Would this then be the root of the city's name?

The word wic needs some more explaining because its Dutch analogon would be wijk, which mean burrough. However in more archaic dutch the predicate wijck would be given to large (farm) houses/ estates /mansion. In village where i come from (Maarssen), we have for example Daelwijck, which is an .... but the village has also Vechtstede (see OE stede). The OE word like morgen is exactly the same as in modern Dutch. The modern English variant morning appeared for the first time in the 13th century, according to Myriam Webster. In the OE words se naeddre (snake) and se naca (ship), I suspect that the starting letter of the word has melted with the articel in the dutch equivalents of een adder  (viper) and een aak (type of sailingboat). Often one finds just a slight change in prefix like for example omginnan which is beginnen.or onstellan (establish) which is instellen. Back