What’s going on with "hot -> heat”?

Question

I am looking for a particular linguistic term for this process of turning words like hot into words like heat.

English has a bunch of pairs like these:

Hot -> heat
Whole -> heal
(Folk)lore -> learn
Dole -> deal?
Token -> teach?

What is going on there? What does it mean?

Can you be more explicit about what the pattern is? How do I transform a word from column 1 to one from column 2? — The Photon, Jul 19 '20 at 17:12
i got the hot and heat but what's the analogy between whole and heal? and the rest? — JustTolerateMe, Jul 19 '20 at 17:38
What happened here is that the two vowels were always slightly different to begin with, or rather two different versions of the same vowel. The linguistic term you are looking for there is "umlaut", and related languages like German have kept these to this day. But English had the Great Vowel Shift, which is the second term you can look up, during which every vowel shifted purely depending on what it sounded like, and not on what base vowel it was a variation of in each particular word. Hence hot/heat and mouse/mice and so on. (Which e.g. in German are still heiß/Hitze and Maus/Mäuse.) — RegDwigнt, Jul 19 '20 at 17:39
@ThePhoton and JustTolerateMe: lore and learn come from the same root, whole and heal are essentially the same word, and likewise for dole and deal. This is a valid question and the OP deserves more credit than they are currently receiving from us. When in doubt, check etymonline. — RegDwigнt, Jul 19 '20 at 17:49
Closely related: Was “book” to “beek” as “foot” is to “feet”? — Decapitated Soul, Jul 19 '20 at 18:15
@RegDwigнt, I didn't mean to imply it was a bad question. But I think it would be better if OP is more explicit about the pattern they're asking about. — The Photon, Jul 19 '20 at 18:51
Does this answer your question? Was "book" to "beek" as "foot" is to "feet"? - (It's the same phenomenon, so your question is a duplicate.) Also see your previous question which is also a duplicate. — Decapitated Soul, Jul 27 '20 at 21:25

What’s going on with "hot -> heat”?

0 Answers0