Where does “curtsey” come from?
I appreciate the challenge, but I need to flag an issue: the chain provided appears to be circular/repetitive (alternating between "courtesy" and "curtsey" in English) with no older language layers, making it impossible to write an accurate etymology sentence following your rules.
To write a proper one-sentence etymology, I would need:
- The actual chain tracing back through older languages (e.g., Old English → Old French → Latin, or similar)
- The original meaning in the oldest attested form
- Actual language names that differ (not just English repeating)
Could you provide the complete etymological chain for "curtsey"? That would let me write an accurate, search-engine-ready summary sentence.
curtsey (English): A small bow, generally performed by a woman or a...
Definitions
- A small bow, generally performed by a woman or a...
Ancestry of “curtsey”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | Old French | curteisie | — |
| 2 | Old French | curtesie | honor; valor; nobleness |
| 3 | Old French | curteis | Alternative form of cortois |
| 4 | Old French | cort | court |
| 5 | Latin | cōrs | — |
| 6 | Latin | cohors | a court; a farmyard or enclosure; a retinue or... |
| 7 | Latin | co- | allomorph of con- |
| 8 | Latin | cōn- | — |
| 9 | Latin | cum | with, along with; at; -fold |
| 10 | Old Latin | com | Alternative form of cum |
| 11 | Proto-Italic | kom | with, along, at |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱóm | beside, near, by, with |
| 13 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱe | Deictic particle, here; Post-positional... |
| 14 | Middle English | kyt | — |
| 15 | German | kitt | — |
| 16 | Old High German | kuti | — |
| 17 | Proto-West Germanic | kwidu | gum, resin |
| 18 | Proto-Germanic | kweduz | resin |
| 19 | Proto-Indo-European | gʷet- | resin, gum; to say, speak |
| 20 | Proto-Indo-European | gū- | to bend; curve; arch; vault; to bow, bend, arch,... |
Words derived from “curtsey”