'Afford' : An Old English Word 16th C Scribes Thought Was Latin
Wednesday 11 November 2026 at 22:52
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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday 11 November 2026 at 23:11
We hear a lot about affordability just at the moment but where did afford come from?
The Old English was geforðian (yeh-FOR-thee-an), 'to contribute or further', which later became became aforðian, which in the 16th century scribes apparenly began parsing as as af-fordian, thinking it was Latin word with a prefix af, a variant of Latin ab-.
However it isn't Latin at all but a native word of Germanic origin, derived for Proto-Germanic *furÞa, 'forth', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per-, 'forward' or 'through'. This is the ancestor too of many words with the meaning of 'for' or 'first' (there are two), including some surprising and non-obvious examples like paradise (from the extended sense of 'around'), veneer (connected with furnish), privy and priest (from the idea of an elder, someone born before, as far as I can make out).
And of course proto-.
The original sense of afford as 'provide' is still used; you could say something like 'My theatre seat afforded me a good view of the stage', although it has a slight dated feel, and the primary meaning nowadays is being able to meet the cost of something—as in affordability, where we came in.
Here's a joke.
My friend in the country couldn't afford his water bill... so I sent him a 'Get Well Soon' card.
'Afford' : An Old English Word 16th C Scribes Thought Was Latin
We hear a lot about affordability just at the moment but where did afford come from?
The Old English was geforðian (yeh-FOR-thee-an), 'to contribute or further', which later became became aforðian, which in the 16th century scribes apparenly began parsing as as af-fordian, thinking it was Latin word with a prefix af, a variant of Latin ab-.
However it isn't Latin at all but a native word of Germanic origin, derived for Proto-Germanic *furÞa, 'forth', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *per-, 'forward' or 'through'. This is the ancestor too of many words with the meaning of 'for' or 'first' (there are two), including some surprising and non-obvious examples like paradise (from the extended sense of 'around'), veneer (connected with furnish), privy and priest (from the idea of an elder, someone born before, as far as I can make out).
And of course proto-.
The original sense of afford as 'provide' is still used; you could say something like 'My theatre seat afforded me a good view of the stage', although it has a slight dated feel, and the primary meaning nowadays is being able to meet the cost of something—as in affordability, where we came in.
Here's a joke.
@Dadsaysjokes on X, 7 July 7, 2020