In this episode, Amy appreciates the timeless nature of the word (and artifact) “book” and Ryan wonders what Shakespeare called Romeo before the word “character” was used.
Lexitecture is a podcast about words. In each episode, a Canadian (Ryan) and a Scot (Amy) each present their current favourite word and talk about its origins, current use, and try to puzzle out how it may have gone from A to B. If you love thinking and talking about words, word origins, or just random bits of head-scratching language trivia, this may be the show for you!
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According to this really cool site I just found –
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED33110
In Middle English the word persoun or persoune was used for “role, character” (from Latin persona, obviously)
In Old English they apparently used the word “had” (long vowel a – like ah) to mean character.
I found this on another fascinating site here by typing in character and translating to Modern English and scrolling down till o found the right definition.
https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/
Enjoying your podcast! Thanks 🙂
That’s really cool! Thanks for sharing those links!