Abstract

HESE notes are of two types: those in which a new Romance etymology 1 is proposed for an English word, and those in which the already known Romance etymology of an English word is revised. 1. Eng. anlace 'a short two-edged knife or dagger, broad at the hilt and tapering to the point' (OED) occurs in earlier spellings as anlas, analasse, analace, and is Latinized as anelacius, analatius; OED remarks that there are 'no traces of it in any continental language.' But it is clearly borrowed, with metathesis, from OF alenaz, aleinaz, alesnaz 'petit poignard, poinSon' (Godefroy, I)ictionnaire de l'ancienne langue franSaise 1.217). The last-cited form of the word shows its relation to OF alesne 'awl' ( equity > asset'; and there is no morphological difficulty. 3. Eng. aventurine 'a brownish-coloured glass interspersed with small gold-coloured spangles, manufactured first at Murano, near Venice' is derived by OEI) from Fr. aventurine < It. avsenturino: avsentura 'chance,' with the remark 'so called from its accidental discovery.' Bloch (Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue fransaise), Gamillscheg (Etymologisches Worterbuch der franzosischen Sprache) and Hatzfeld-Darmesteter-Thomas (Dictionnaire gendral, 'HDT') do not mention Italian sources, but derive Fr. aventurine from the Fr. phrase a l'aventure 'by chance,' the element of chance being due to sla pierre artificielle dtant produlte par de la limaille jetde a laventure sur du verre en fusion' (HDT). But the Italian origin of the word can hardly be doubted, in

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