# Toy origin



## j.Constantine

Hello i was wondering about the origin of word toy i couldn’t  find   were it comes from but it seem to be old
what do you thing


----------



## Stoggler

Look on Wiktionary, there’s an etymology there.


----------



## j.Constantine

Yes 
I found this

From Middle English toye (“amorous play, piece of fun or entertainment”), probably from Middle Dutch *toy*, tuyg (“tools, apparatus, utensil, ornament”)
Is interesting it comes from dutch  and also protogermanic


----------



## berndf

It has a Dutch cognate. calling it a likely Dutch loan is a bit too much. Dutch _tuig_, Low German _Tüch _and High German _Zeug _are obvious cognates. Swedish _tyg _and Danish _tøj _are probably loans from Low German. Old High German and Old Saxon (the predecessor of Low German) had the word with the collective prefix _ge-_,_ getiuc_ and _getiuh_, respectively. Old English has _sulhgeteog _meaning _ploughing implements_ (_sulh_ is Old English for _plough_). So, Old English had the root as well, probably just not very well attested. It is quite possible that the Middle English word is directly from Old English.


----------



## AndrasBP

berndf said:


> High German _Zeug _are obvious cognates.


I also thought of _Zeug_, but there does seem to be some uncertainty about the etymology of _toy_.
My Oxford Dictionary of Etymology (1986) says the word is _"of unknown origin"_.


----------



## berndf

I don't understand them as questioning the cognates. Just the precise path to Middle English is unclear.


----------



## Welsh_Sion

Interestingly enough, Cymraeg/Welsh calls these _tegan_ /'tegan/ meaning 'fair (in complexion' + 'diminutive ending'. (The words in Scandinavia reminded me of this. And then @berndf talks of "  (_sulh_ is Old English for _plough_) where Welsh uses '_swch' _ /su:X/.

Any relationships?


----------



## AndrasBP

berndf said:


> I don't understand them as questioning the cognates. Just the precise path to Middle English is unclear.


I see what you mean, but the cognates aren't even mentioned in that dictionary.


----------



## berndf

AndrasBP said:


> I also thought of _Zeug_, but there does seem to be some uncertainty about the etymology of _toy_.
> My Oxford Dictionary of Etymology (1986) says the word is _"of unknown origin"_.


This isn't there:
_Compare Middle Dutch toy, Dutch tuig "tools, apparatus; stuff, trash," in speeltuig "play-toy, plaything;" German Zeug "stuff, matter, tools," Spielzeug "plaything, toy;" Danish tøj, Swedish tyg "stuff, gear."_

I am surprised. This is from etymonline, which takes most of its definition from the OED and the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology is essentially a extract from the OED.


----------



## Sobakus

berndf said:


> I don't understand them as questioning the cognates. Just the precise path to Middle English is unclear.


The reason seems to rather be that there's no path by which OE /ēog(e)/ can develop into MoE /oy/ - compare the English reflexes of fleugǭ.


----------



## berndf

True. I suppose you could say the same about the MDu form. Equally hard to see a path to there or from there to ModDu _tuig_, for that matter.


----------



## Sobakus

berndf said:


> True. I suppose you could say the same about the MDu form. Equally hard to see a path to there or from there to ModDu _tuig_, for that matter.


This here etymological dictionary, for example, lists no form in -oy, and a brief overlook of relevant sound changes and orthography convinces me that the form isn't genuine. That said, the same dictionary says that the derivation of En. _toy _from this word "is niet waarschijnlijk". It seems to me that if the word was borrowed with an already- diphthongised /y: > œy̯/, /oy/ would be the most obvious choice. I'd like to know how MD /y:~œy̯/ is normally rendered in English. Looking through wiktionary's categories of Old/Middle Dutch derived terms in English only yielded a couple of terms like _hoyden_ and _buoy_, none of them fitting our bill.


----------



## berndf

Sobakus said:


> t seems to me that if the word was borrowed with an already- diphthongised


There is no need for any diphthongization to be involved; <y> is the expected outcome of a palatalized OE /g/, as in _day_ < _dag_ (like the ending <ch> in Low German, which results from palatalization and devoicing of /g/). What would speak against that is the spelling with <i(e)> in ME rather than <ȝ>. But then ME spelling is notoriously unreliable.


----------



## Sobakus

berndf said:


> There is no need for any diphthongization to be involved; <y> is the expected outcome of a palatalized OE /g/, as in _day_ < _dag_ (like the ending <ch> in Low German, which results from palatalization and devoicing of /g/).


You seem to be forgetting the other part of -oy. How did it end up with a (mid-)open vowel?


> What would speak against that is the spelling with <i(e)> in ME rather than <ȝ>. But then ME spelling is notoriously unreliable.


I'm confused. If you're talking about _toy_, no spelling with <i(e)> has been brought up so far. If _fly_, then, as you say, it both comes from /g/ and has spellings with <i(e)> - presumably because the two spelling were in fact equivalent, a crosslinguistically common thing with /j/ after /i/ - so I don't understand why you believe these spellings would speak against it coming from /g/. Were you expecting ME spelling to be etymologically faithful?


----------



## berndf

Well _fly_ exists as _flien_ in ME but also as _fle(i)ʒen_ and _fli(e)hen_. But if toy came from _teog_, you would expect to find at least some spellings with <ʒ>, <gh> or <h>.


----------



## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Well _fly_ exists as _flien_ in ME but also as _fle(i)ʒen_ and _fli(e)hen_. But if toy came from _teog_, you would expect to find at least some spellings with <ʒ>, <gh> or <h>.


I was under the impression that we were no longer entertaining the possibility that it came from _tēog_, but that it was borrowed. Albeit in this case the fact that the last consonant of the Dutch word is in no way indicated would also need to be explained. I'm wondering if /yɣ/ was even an allowed sequence in ME - perhaps _y_ was already felt to be an allograph of _ʒ_, so spelling the two in a row was unthinkable. It's good to keep in mind that we don't know for sure that there were no spellings besides _toy_.


----------



## berndf

I meant we should find _ʒ _or_ h _instead of _y _or_ i(e), _not in addition.


----------



## fdb

What the OED actually says:

*Etymology: *_Toy_ noun and verb (formerly _toye_) have been in common use since _c_1530, when both are given by Palsgrave, and used by Skelton and Tyndale. But a single instance of _toye_ noun, apparently the same word, occurs in Robert of Brunne. It is difficult to conceive how such a word in use _c_1300 should thus disappear for two centuries, and then should all at once burst into view with a wide sense-development. The etymology is equally problematic, and, in spite of current conjectures, must still be considered unascertained. 
Eduard Müller suggested the identity of _toy_  with Dutch _tooi_ , late Middle Dutch _tôi_ , 16th cent., ‘attire, ornament, finery, dress’, which suits the form, but hardly the sense (except ? in sense  10  or  7). Others have thought of Dutch _tuig_ ‘harness, horse-trappings’, in plural ‘sails, rigging, implements, tools; stuff, lumber, refuse, trash’; in Kilian 1599 _tuygh_, dialect _tuych_, _tugh_, ‘arms, implements, armaments, impedimenta, ornaments’, = German _zeug_ ‘apparatus, tools, gear, furniture, stuff, trash, etc.’, Low German _tüg_, _tüüg_, Middle Low German _tûch_, _tûg_. But, if the sense-development shown above is historically correct, it is difficult to see in either of these suggestions, the origin of the English word. It is indeed true that Dutch _speeltuig_, German _spielzeug_, and Danish _legetoi_, mean ‘play-tool or implement, plaything, toy’, and that Sidney in 1586 used ‘playing toy’, which might conceivably be a rendering of one of these compounds; but this would still leave the earlier English history unexplained.


----------

