"
A D [i] eu enemy, a chaitif, A felun, a lively devil
," exclaims Rutebeuf in Le Miracle de Théophile, a play written in the 13th century.
Is it a mistake ?
Can a God, a felon or a devil be "quick" and "
puny
"?
Not in the way we hear it today ...
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Read also: Aperitif, a word that has totally changed meaning
Originally, the word is used as a synonym for prisoner.
Thus, as the
Trésor de la langue française
reminds us
, Seneca used it to designate the
"prisoner of a passion",
while the Christian authors, of which he was a part, used it to qualify
"the captive of sin. "
.
The latter was so to speak… "captivated"!
What is the origin of the word puny?
One reason for this: the term
puny
comes from the vulgar Latin
captivus
(prisoner).
However, even if the root of the word encloses it very early in this sense, it also escapes quickly.
In the eleventh century, the adjective
puny
qualifies, in fact, a being
"unhappy, miserable"
and, a hundred years later, a person
"of weak
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