History. The word ‘Black’ can be traced back to its proto Indo-European origins through the word ‘blac’ which meant pale, wan, colourless, or albino. ‘Blac’ was incorporated into Old French as Blanc, Italian and Spanish as Blanco, Bianca, Bianco, Bianchi. In Old English “blac” person meant fair; someone devoid of colour, similar to the word “blanc” which still means white or fair person. In Middle English the word was spelt as “blaec” same thing as the modern word “black”, only at that time, around 1051 AD, it still meant a fair skin, or so-called white person. The words “blacca” an Old/Middle English word still resonates with “blanke” the Dutch-Germanic term for white people of today. Black in Old and Middle English Thus, we can see that the Old English ‘blæc’ was relative to its ‘blac’ origin as it was predominantly used as an adjective to describe ‘colour pertaining to matter that was colourless’. Other cognates of ‘blac’ include examples like: Bleak, Blake, Blanch
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 12:13:06 +0000
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