If you’re looking for old phrases rather than single words which are obviously linked to very old forms, the following expressions all occur in Beowulf from about the 8th century:
long while (lange hwíle)
sweet song (swutol sang)
dark nights (deorcum nihtum)
under [someone’s] roof (under […] hróf)
on deep water (on déop wæter)
beer-drunk (béore druncen)
far and near (feorran ond néän)
mankind (manna cynne)
Apple, at least, might be even older than PIE. It doesn’t really fit well with the language (the initial a-colored sound and the b sound in the original word (abel or h2ebol) were both pretty rare), so it could have been an import from some Asian tongue.
Obviously, the oldest phrases used in English can’t be older than the language itself. The earliest form of the language, Old English, emerges in about the sixth century. But dateable evidence of the use of particular phrases would require them to be recorded in literature, and I think we have very little Old English literature from before the ninth century.
So it’s going to be hard to beat the phrases Kimstu mentions that are found in Beowulf. There may be older phrases that were preserved in an oral tradition before being recorded in written form, but it’s going to be very hard to evidence that.
I recall some article discussing the production of the King James bible (suggesting KJ also never go around to paying the translators. King James would be the 1600’s. The article said the translators aimed for accuracy but also poetic turn of phrase, so some of those expressions may be original 1600’s.
Chaucer mentions April showers in the first few lines. I believe “kiss my ass” is in one of his stories.
Apparently several of Shakespeare’s words are not found anywhere else in contemporary literature. The old joke about Shakespeare is “What’s so great about his plays? They’re mostly just famous quotes strung together.”
Yes, that was my point. Something like the collocations from Beowulf would be the only things that you could consider intact “phrases” in a meaningful sense, (rather than just single words of PIE origin).
OP’s question is somewhat ambiguous: How much change can a word undergo and still be the “same word”?
Many of these Old English words are incomprehensible, but the seventh line, “And forgive us our guilts,” is almost the same as modern English.
How old are the oldest words? Very old, if we’re to believe some talented but controversial linguists. As one example, consider Latin aqua. This word is echoed in America (Hokan ahqha, Tucano axko and hundreds of others), Sino-Tibetan (Newari khwo), New Guinea (okho), proto-Afroasiatic (*akwa), Nilo-Saharan (Mangbetu eguo), and even Khoisan (Kam-ka !Ke k’'wa). (No, I’ve not taken the time to render these in IPA.) Obviously the half-dozen words I’ve shown here could be coincidental — but in fact I excerpted these from a list of several dozens of such cognates.
Since aqua exists as a word in English in its own right, it’s another one that has remained unchanged since Proto-Into-European, and possibly goes clear back to Proto-World.
Although, ironically, the English word “aqua” doesn’t mean “water”; depending on context it means either a liquid (which may or may not be water but usually isn’t), a solution or a blue-green colour. Admittedly, as the stem in words like “aquatic” it does refer to water.
But, of course, this is not what the OP is looking for. He is looking for phrases and expressions used in English speech. Even if “aqua” is the same word as something immeasurably ancient, it’s still not a phrase or, I think, an expression in the sense in which the OP uses the term.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe is possibly a corruption of an Old Saxon divining chant: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe - Wikipedia
Here’s a list of words supposedly found in several language families:
https://curiosity.com/topics/these-are-23-of-the-oldest-words-ever-spoken-curiosity/
Here’s a claim that “huh?” is the only word in every language:
There’s a pair of dated interjections: “by Jupiter!” and “by Jove!”. According to Wiktionary, they are chiefly British interjections and are minced oaths for God. A minced oath is a polite expletive, in this case substituting the word “God” with “Jupiter” or “Jove”, to avoid using His name in vain. Here are a couple of videos I found showing usage of the “by Jove!” variant: one, two.
Jupiter was the Roman god of the sky and thunder, and the king of the gods in Ancient Roman religion. The word Jove is related to Jupiter, being the Latin ablative singular case of Iuppiter. The phrase “by Jupiter!” (Latin: pro Iuppiter) was a shortened form of an oath (“I swear by Jupiter that…”) that people had to swear in Roman law courts. It may also have been a commonplace interjection, along the lines of “my god!”, “OMG” etc.
The word Jupiter itself is ultimately thought to derive from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European chief deity, called Dyēus Phter, which means “sky father”. Other gods with related etymology include Zeus, from Greek mythology, and Dyauṣ Pitār, from Vedic religion. While we can’t know for sure, since it’s from before written history, it’s probably reasonable to conject that Proto-Indo-European people might have had their own “By Dyēus Phter!” expression.
I suggest that, lest these phrases - which might be thousands of years old - die out, we should take steps to revive them and and use them in our day-to-day lives, by Jupiter!
Quite possible, as apples have a Central Asian origin. The name may have spread with the fruit.
Regarding apple: I’d read that this word is found only in Western branches so isn’t treated as from PIE. Google seems to confirm that, e.g. at this rather lively discussion.
I also wonder what is meant by “the same”. After all, it’s difficult to reproduce human speech with letters.
“Fæder” kind of reminds me of the old Sherman song, “Hello muddah, hello faddah…” Pronunciation can be interesting even with current day speech. When we were in New Zealand, we joked about the expression of “tekking a feeree across thee wahttah en thee hahbbah”.
I imagine there is a ready answer, but how did they get a word for “five” before “four”?
Or did Monty Python misread the instructions for the holy hand grenade?
I almost stopped reading once Theo Vennemann was invoked. Glad I didn’t. Great link!
While the Central Asian Malus sieversii wild apple has shown to be the primary ancestor of most cultivars of the domesticated apple (Malus pumila), the European crab apple (Malus sylvestris), which is native to Europe, has been shown by DNA analysis to have contributed significantly to the genome. While rather sour-tasting when eaten raw, crab apples are edible, although better when cooked.
Presumably they used another, unrelated word for “four”?
Names for body parts are slow to be replaced also, as seen on Swadesh’s list of 100 slow-to-be-replaced words. That list also includes 4 animal body parts — horn, tail, feather, claw — and four animals — bird, dog, fish and … louse!
Likely by borrowing the word for ‘hand.’
Or perhaps they used the word for two, twice, instead of having a word for four?