http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_095b.html
An airplane wing is not a ship’s body. A “spar” is part of the mast-and-rigging assembly.
What I found interesting about this secondary issue of “spare ribs” is the bi-lingual redudancy involved – like calling a dish “rice pilav”.
Offered for your consideration.
One of my best book purchases in the last year was Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. All of my cites in this thread are from that source.
I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Perhaps both DDG and Cecil can be correct.
First, you have to understand that there are three basic words involved, and they all relate to each other. There’s spear, spit and spar.
In English, the oldest of the three words is spear. It appears before 800 and is spelled “spere.” It was a “lance, or a long thrusting weapon.” It was a cognate with Old Saxon sper. Old Saxon, in etymology circles refers to that Germanic language before 1100.There exists the possiblity that the Latin sparus, a hunting spear, is a cognate.
Next to appear in English is spit which shows up before 1200. It is “a sharp-pointed rod on which meat is roasted.” Of course, one could and probably did roast things on one’s spear. But it seems that there existed a separate word before 1000 which has cognates with many a language and it had the basic spelling of “spit” or “spitz” or from the Indo-European “spidus.”
Finally, we get to spar Which only appears “before 1325 as sparr meaning a rafter, beam, stout pole.” It is cognate with Old Saxon sparro =rafter. It doesn’t seem to be cognate with Old Saxon “sper.” It almost certainly goes back to Proto-Germanic sparron which is related to OE “spere=spear.”
“The sense of a stout pole used to support or extend a ship’s sail is found in 1640, but is first recorded in the compound cant spar (1611), or perhaps spar deck (1570).”
So my take is that the sense of spar to mean a stout pole connected to a sail is rather later than the use of spar to mean a timber or rafter. As earlier ships might have been constructed of timbers laid next to each other, I can’t disrespect the notion that they could have been called spars at that point in in that sense.
But there is little to back up Cecil’s vision of “MIddle Low Germans” (1100-1500) sitting around a fire using a “sper” to roast meats. Either he meant “Old Saxons” sitting around the fire(before 1100), or he meant “MIddle Low Germans” sitting around a fire after 1100, roasting meat on a “spiz.”
prehensile what’s hensile?
IN the beginnning, there was hendere in Latin, cognate with the Greek chandanein. To hold or cling. Related to hedera ivy.
Then you get prae + hendere which becomes pre, going to prehensus, then to French prehensile.
English borrowed the final result from French. About 1750 or so.
???
Then you get prae from where?
How does prare/pre figure in? You’ve explained how hensile relates to clinging, what does prehensile mean? Before clinging?
I’m confused.