Hmmm...
Online Etymology Dictionary? OK, but why haven't you included the full texts of the brief entries which you cited? Would that be objectionable pedantry, or does citing a source require you to "deliver the goods"?
Aware:
aware (adj.)
late O.E. gewær, from P.Gmc. *ga-waraz (cf. O.S. giwar, M.Du. gheware, O.H.G. giwar, Ger. gewahr), from *ga- intensive prefix + wær "wary, cautious" (see wary).
I don't claim to have any competence in this field but the combination of an intensive prefix with a root word which
may or
may not have connoted "wary, cautious" seems to suggest the new word didn't exactly mean "wary"
or "cautious," but you knew that, didn't you?
I "don't know nuttin" about Proto Germanic, or Sanskrit, or even Ancient (
or Modern!) Greek but I think you may be well aware of a substantive difference in category here. We don't want to engage in sophistry, do we?
You've used a
reductio ad absurdum to suggest that my "disquiet" about the inconsistency between Thomas Carlyle's beautiful use of this English word and the word's Greek origin is unreasonable, but aren't you comparing apples and oranges? Is the relationship of "aware" to its
possible Proto-Germanic antecedents comparable to the relationship of "cynosure" to what
seems to be a
well-documented Greek word?
You've decided to point out the relationships of two words (which seem to be core, routine portions of our workaday vocabulary) to their distant, uncertain, poorly-attested antecedents. Can you refer to any contemporaneous dictionaries of Proto-Germanic? Its speakers weren't even literate, but we seem to have
good documentation of the use of the Greek compound word for "
dog tail" in the case of
cynosure, and, to nail down my point even more firmly, we know
WHY the Greek word was used! The curving handle of the Little Dipper was thought to
LOOK like a
dog's tail! I'm not pointing out some
conjectured,
poorly-attested,
possible meaning; I'm simply stressing that the
CLEAR intention in this case
was to compare a portion of a constellation to
THE TAIL OF A DOG!
Just for the record, and for the benefit of other readers of this thread, your other Online Etymology Dictionary citation was of:
Erudite:
Here's your source's full text. Other readers may be interested to compare your report of this entry with the actual text:
erudite
early 15c., from L. eruditus, pp. of erudire "to educate, teach, instruct, polish," lit. "to bring out of the rough," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + rudis "unskilled, rough, unlearned" (see rude).
Jeff Hook