Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jerry:

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Jerry: "No, what I am arguing is that the word "strike" meaning miss was a development from the idea of "striking"at the ball and attempting to hit it."

 

Karl: "This is what I originally speculated, and at the time my understanding was that you rejected this idea."

 

Jerry: No, Karl.  Your memory is faulty here.

Not my memory, rather my understanding of your reaction. As I gave the same speculation as you have below,

 

  I always argued that by a series of steps, "strike," meaning to hit, came to mean to miss.  So strike means to hit the ball and foul it off.  Strike means to swing and miss.  And strike means to stand there and watch the ball and the ump calls it a strike, when you haven't even swung or attempted to hit it.  I never argued anything differently.

But this development is pure speculation, even the online etymology dictionary admits that this is speculation by their words. Since your answer is speculation, you can’t rule out that we are dealing with two different roots that converged in sound.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com

 

By the way, I’d still like to know what you’d call it when non-native speakers of a language mispronounce and misuse that learned, second language? When it is a whole society, so that their misuse changes that learned, second language to approximate their native tongue, how is that not corruption of that learned, second language? If not corruption, what do you call it?

Secondly, how do you account for the exact same use of what you call “simply a metaphorical borrowing of "strike" in baseball” found in other Germanic languages where they don’t have baseball for a metaphoric source?

 

Karl W. Randolph.