Post #4380719

The Germanic ancestor of ‘thing’ and its cognates, such as German ‘Ding’ and Swedish ‘ting’, meant “folk assembly”. The Latin ancestor of the Romance words for “thing”, such as French ‘chose’ and Spanish ‘cosa’, meant “legal case”. Both the Germanic and the Latin word underwent a long series of meaning shifts resulting in the modern meanings “matter; thing”. My infographic shows how.