Q: Since each “sight” and “web site” can consult with a spot, why will we use the primary one, not the second, within the time period “sightseeing”?

A: The phrase “sight” within the sense of one thing price seeing is derived from a prehistoric Germanic time period for “to see.” It appeared in Outdated English tons of of years earlier than Center English borrowed “web site” from the Latin time period for a location.

With that historical past in thoughts, it’s by no means stunning that we now use “sight” for a spot of curiosity to a “sightseer,” and “web site” for a spot to place up a constructing, maintain an occasion, learn the information on-line, and so forth.

Regardless of their totally different meanings, the 2 phrases can typically consult with the identical place, as in “The location [location] of the Battle of Gettysburg is a sight [something worth seeing] that pulls many sightseers.”

Earlier than giving some early examples, we must always point out that spelling diversified broadly within the Center Ages. In The Canterbury Tales (circa 1386), for instance, Chaucer spells “sight” as “web site” in “The Clerk’s Story” and as “sighte” in “The Knight’s Story.”

The arrival of the printing press in England within the late fifteenth century and the unfold of printing within the sixteenth and seventeenth helped standardize English orthography, together with the spellings of “sight” and “web site.”

The oldest of the phrases, “sight,” is finally derived from a prehistoric Indo-European root reconstructed by linguists as sek^w (to understand or see), in response to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

This historical root led to the prehistoric Germanic root sehwan (to see) and the Outdated English noun sihð (a imaginative and prescient or spectacle), the ancestor of our  trendy phrase “sight.” The Outdated English noun was pronounced like “sixth” (the ultimate letter in sihð was the runic letter ð, or eth, which seemed like “th”).

The earliest instance of “sight” within the Oxford English Dictionary is from a Tenth-century Outdated English gloss, or translation, of the Latin from Mark 9:8 within the Lindisfarne Gospels, relationship from round 700:

“[He] bebead ðæm þætte ne ænigum … ða sihðo gesægdon” (“[He] commanded them that nobody … be instructed of the sight”).

The phrase “sight” was additionally spelled “siþe,” “sith,” “syth,” “sythte” “sighð” “sihȝeðe” “ziȝþe,” “zyȝþe,” “syhte,” “sichte,” “seȝt,” “siȝhte, “sygte,” “syghte,” “sighte,” and so forth earlier than “sight” was established in Fashionable English.

As for “web site,” it’s finally derived from the Indo-European root tkei- (to settle, dwell, be at dwelling), supply of the Latin situs (place of a factor). Center English borrowed it within the late 14th century from the Anglo-Norman web site (place, location).

The OED’s first English quotation for “web site” is from John Trevisa’s translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Issues), an encyclopedic Latin reference compiled within the mid-1200s by the medieval scholar Bartholomeus Anglicus.

The phrase “web site” is spelled “sight” on this passage: “Þe water addre … infecteþ þe place þat he glydeþ inne and makeþ þe sight smoky” (“the water adder infecteth the place that he glideth in and maketh the positioning smoky”).

“Web site” was spelled variously as “sighte,” “siȝt,” “siȝte,” “siht,” “siyt,” “syȝte,” “syhte,” “syyt,” “web site,” “cite,” and so forth earlier than “web site” was established in Fashionable English.

As for “sightseeing,” it first appeared within the early nineteenth century. The OED describes it as a compound of the nouns “sight” and “seeing,” and defines it as “the motion or occupation of seeing sights.”

The dictionary’s earliest instance is from an Oct. 21, 1824, entry within the journal of Reginald Heber, the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta: “Morning rides, night sight-seeing” (printed in Heber’s Narrative of a Journey By means of the Higher Provinces of India, 1828).

Many individuals are led astray by “sight” and “web site” as a result of they’re homonyms, phrases with the identical spelling or pronunciation however totally different meanings and origins. On this case, the pronunciation is similar and the spelling related—a double whammy!

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