This is one of the etymologies of 'whale' in Moby Dick:
Whale It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; a.s. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.
What does the abbreviation 'a.s.' stand for here?
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Sign up to join this communityThis is one of the etymologies of 'whale' in Moby Dick:
Whale It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; a.s. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow.
What does the abbreviation 'a.s.' stand for here?
Dut = Dutch
Ger = German
a.s. = Anglo Saxon. Also know as "Old English", the language spoken in the Southern and Eastern parts of Britain from roughly 500 AD to about 1100 AD
By the way, Melville includes lots of "scientific" facts like this into his book. They are nearly all wrong! The Dutch word is "walvis" and the German is "Wal" (Walen would be the dative plural). But the English is not derived directly from either. There is an Anglo Saxon word "hwal" that is the ancestor, which comes from Proto-Germanic *hwalaz, which is also the source of the other Germanic words. The word "whale" is unconnected to "wallow", or A.S. wealwian.