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Originally Posted by roachboy
here's a curious sidebar to all this.
i was considering pasting the entire oed definition of the verb "to hit" but before i copied it, i looked at the etymology and now am confused. so there are 28 definitions of the verb, almost all of which have to do with delivering a blow, striking or a derivation of striking. but they all come from this root:
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[Late OE. hyttan = ON. hitta to hit upon, light upon, meet with, Sw. hitta, Da. hitte to hit, find.
App. from Norse: cf. Branch II; but the senses under I seem to have been developed at an early date in Eng. from the notion ‘get at, reach’.]
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all of which make me wonder if this curious little expression was launched by some drunken etymology-obsessed gentleman in a publick house somewhere.
it's a shame these slang bits don't travel with footnotes... |
ON = Old Norse. It must have come with the Vikings to England. We still use this word daily in Icelandic, since we basically speak Old Norse that has evolved a tiny bit over 1,200 years.
Ađ hitta = to meet (meet up with someone), though as far as I know, it's not related to the word for fuck (which is ađ ríđa, or "to ride"). So in Iceland, presumably going back to the settlement of Norwegian Vikings here in 874, the usually pick-up line is "You want to ride?" (as in, ride a horse)--and yes, that is actually how people ask someone to come home with them from the bars. There is no such thing as dating in Iceland.
(Just woke up; thought I'd contribute some lighter fare.)