Where does “grandchild” come from?
I appreciate the task, but I notice a critical issue: the etymological chain provided doesn't support "grandchild" at all. The chain traces roots like "gelt-" and "gel-" which don't connect to "grand" or "child" in any standard etymology. To write an accurate one-sentence origin summary, I would need a correct etymological chain for "grandchild" that shows how it actually derives from its source languages. Could you provide the correct chain, or did you mean to ask about a different headword?
grandchild (English): A child of someone's child
Definitions
- A child of someone's child
Ancestry of “grandchild”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | Child | Alternative letter-case form of child "often used... |
| 2 | Middle English | childen | To deliver a child; to beget or procreate; To... |
| 3 | Middle English | -en | Denotes the past participle form when attached to... |
| 4 | Old English | -en | mæġþ + API → mæġden; cocc + API → cycen, cicen;... |
| 5 | Old Norse | -inn | Used to create adjectives from nouns, meaning... |
| 6 | Proto-Norse | -īna- | — |
| 7 | Proto-Germanic | -īnaz | -en |
| 8 | Proto-Indo-European | -iHnos | Creates adjectives of materials |
| 9 | Proto-Indo-European | -no- | adjectival suffix |