# Très



## merquiades

Hello everybody.  I have been wondering about the origins of the adverb "très"*very) in French.   The word for "very" in all other Romance languages derives naturally from "multus" in Latin.  "Moult" is now obsolete in French.  According to dictionaries of etymology the origin is the Latin "trans"  which means "beyond, across, after, through" and could be used as a preposition similar to the way it still is in Spanish "tras" or also as a preverb particle "trans- "which of course is the origin of many English verbs like transport, translate, transpose...  This of course makes perfect sense: "carry across" "take to the other side" "put through".  
However when it comes to the French meaning of "very"  it doesn't.  How did "trans" mutate so much (part of speech, form, meaning) to be used before an adjective with the meaning "very", the other original meanings being eventually lost in French?  The "tra(ns)" particle verbs would be Latinisms like in English.  Was there a precedent to this usage in Latin?  Or are there any alternative explanations to the origin of "très"?  In its physical evolution did it pass through an intermediate stage "trans" > "tras" > "trais" > "très" (I'm basing this on the evolution of words like "amare" > "aimer" which I assume could have been written "èmer" if the academy had wanted)?  Is that correct?
 Any information on "très" or "trans" would be welcome.


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## francisgranada

An _ad hoc_ hypothesis: when something is _beyond, across, after, through ... _, it may express a more intensive/extensive/higher ... quality than the "standard", i.e. _much, very_. 

A quite similar example is the Hungarian _túl_, also meaning _beyond, across, after, through ..._ which is used in the sense of "too" (=excesively). This is surely nearer to the original meaning, but not far from _very_. 

(Interestingly, the English _very _comes from the Anglo-French _verrai_, finaly from the Latin _verus_, which also has a quite different meanig with regard to _multus_: _true, truthful, right ..._)


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## merquiades

That might not be a bad interpretation, semantically at least:  Très beau (beyond beautiful, through/ thoroughly beautiful, after beautiful).  It defies logic grammatically-speaking, but I can see how the intensification theory could work.  
Your information about "very" is also fascinating.  I didn't notice the origin until now:  verrai (vrai) (vraiment)= truthfully, truly.  So "very beautiful" is in essence the same thing as "really beautiful".


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## Gavril

Maybe worth noting is that Welsh *tra*, apparently a cognate of Latin _trans_, can mean both "beyond, across" (preposition) and "very, exceedingly" (adverb): for example,

_tramor_ "overseas, abroad" < _tra_- "across" + _mor_ "sea"
_tra hawdd_ "very easy"
_tra diddorol _"very interesting"

Since Latin had considerable lexical influence on Welsh, maybe this usage of _tra_ reflects the semantic influence of Latin _trans_, aided by the phonetic similarity (due to their being cognates) of the two words.


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## merquiades

Gavril said:


> Maybe worth noting is that Welsh *tra*, apparently a cognate of Latin _trans_, can mean both "beyond, across" (preposition) and "very, exceedingly" (adverb): for example,
> 
> _tramor_ "overseas, abroad" < _tra_- "across" + _mor_ "sea"
> _tra hawdd_ "very easy"
> _tra diddorol _"very interesting"
> 
> Since Latin had considerable lexical influence on Welsh, maybe this usage of _tra_ reflects the semantic influence of Latin _trans_, aided by the phonetic similarity (due to their being cognates) of the two words.



Hi Gavril.  Interesting it has both meanings in Welsh.  Do you think the Latin influence on Welsh is direct or did it come indirectly through Normand-French as was the case in English?  "Tra" could also be one of the intermediate steps between "trans" and "trè(s)".


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## Gavril

merquiades said:


> Hi Gavril.  Interesting it has both meanings in Welsh.  Do you think the Latin influence on Welsh is direct or did it come indirectly through Normand-French as was the case in English?



If you mean the Latin influence on Welsh in general, this is a result of the centuries of Roman rule over Britain; it wasn't mediated through French. For example, many Welsh words retain non-palatalized Latin -c- before a front vowel (such as _dis*g*ynnu_ to "descend" < _des*c*ende__re_).

That reminds me, though: in Breton, a close relative of Welsh, *tre *is a common term for "very" (_mat-tre_ "very good", _kozh-tre_ "very old", etc.). I am not sure if this is a loan from French _très_, or a cognate of Welsh _tra_ that has (possibly) been semantically influenced by the similar-sounding French word.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> Was there a precedent to this usage in Latin?


The shift in meaning "from one end to the other" → "completely, thoroughly" can be seen in (late) Latin formations like _transbibo_, _transvoro_. A similar change can be seen in English, where _through_ is an ordinary preposition, but _through and through_ is an intensive adverb. Cf. also the cognate pair _through_ vs. _thorough(ly)_.


merquiades said:


> In its physical evolution did it pass through an intermediate stage "trans" > "tras" > "trais" > "très"


Something like that, although it is a little unclear to me why this _a_ would diphthongize (since the syllable is neither open nor in most contexts accented).


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## francisgranada

For curiosity, also _extra, ultra, super_ are sometimes used in function of intensifiers.


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## Christo Tamarin

CapnPrep said:


> merquiades said:
> 
> 
> 
> In its physical evolution did it pass through an intermediate stage "trans" > "tras" > "trais" > "très"
> 
> 
> 
> Something like that, although it is a little unclear to me why this _a_ would diphthongize (since the syllable is neither open nor in most contexts accented).
Click to expand...

I would omit the "trais" stage.


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## Evgeniy

An interesting question:


merquiades said:


> That might not be a bad interpretation, semantically at least:  Très beau (beyond beautiful, through/ thoroughly beautiful, after beautiful).  It defies logic grammatically-speaking, but I can see how the intensification theory could work.


Why?


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## francisgranada

I suggest to extend this thread to other languages as well (with the permission of the moderators). There are also other "surprising" solutions for the concept of _very_, e.g.:

German *sehr* - from Old High German _sēr _"sored, injured"
Polish *bardzo *- from the Proto-Slavic *_brьzъ _"quick"
Russian *очень *[óčeň] - from the noun _o__ко  _"eye"


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> For curiosity, also _extra, ultra, super_ are sometimes used in function of intensifiers.


Especially *super *has entered the colloquial vocabulary in many langauges in the meaning "very".


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## Evgeniy

francisgranada said:


> I suggest to extend this thread to other  languages as well (with the permission of the moderators). There are  also other "surprising" solutions for the concept of _very_, e.g.:


I don't find anything surprising in the very idea that abstract terms  are borrowed from more basic vocabulary. (By the way, in Russian the  word самый, which expresses the superlative degree of an adjective, like  "most", has a meaning close to "very" as well, and that meanings  appears to be more basic in the sense more necessary for all mental  operations). What surprises me is that these derivations are noticed  here and there in modern languages, despite the fact that the history of  reasoning humans counts many dozens of millenia, and throughout all  those years people used language, so this process of abstractisation  should have been complete long before the PIE stage. This is just a  layman's observation, I did not do the work of finding out hints into  meanings of words throughout the modern (post-PIE) history, so my  impression may be simply wrong, and instead new abstract meanings were  a) derived from abstract as well as basic meanings, b) there were old  abstract words that fell out of use or changed into concrete terms.


Evgeniy said:


> merquiades said:
> 
> 
> 
> That might not be a bad interpretation,  semantically at least:  Très beau (beyond beautiful, through/ thoroughly  beautiful, after beautiful).  It defies logic grammatically-speaking, but I can see how the intensification theory could work.
> 
> 
> 
> Why?
Click to expand...

What I meant is that, first, at first I indeed did not see what might be logically&grammatically wrong with "beyond beautiful", just a normal phrase, even if unusual in English. Then I guessed that _if_ I posit that the meaning of the word 'beautiful' is supposed to encompass the description of the qualities belonging to an object, _then_ we have a contradiction: the object is still beautiful, it is not beyond that. However, I still don't believe there is anything logically wrong with that combination of words, because the method of combining similar meanings into words is not prescribed by any kind of deity or saint force. I could as well choose another method and say, "'beautiful' is what folk have used to call 'beautiful', but that object is beyond that, it is not what is supposed to be called 'beautiful', it is beyond that! "_Non bella, ma bellissima!"_ (The phrase is googlable). There is no reason to prefer one logic of meaning classification over another one, it's all my personal habit. Well, something in the kind of the latter logic (combine into one word whatever is supposed to be called a similar way) for example should be employed when names of uncountable abstract concepts are prepended with definite articles: the very concepts are indefinite, but their names are not.


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## merquiades

Gavril said:


> If you mean the Latin influence on Welsh in general, this is a result of the centuries of Roman rule over Britain; it wasn't mediated through French. For example, many Welsh words retain non-palatalized Latin -c- before a front vowel (such as _dis*g*ynnu_ to "descend" < _des*c*ende__re_).
> 
> That reminds me, though: in Breton, a close relative of Welsh, *tre *is a common term for "very" (_mat-tre_ "very good", _kozh-tre_ "very old", etc.). I am not sure if this is a loan from French _très_, or a cognate of Welsh _tra_ that has (possibly) been semantically influenced by the similar-sounding French word.



I meant specifically with "trans" but you answered the question anyway.  The use of "tra" in Welsh could be even older than French.  In Brittany "tre" may well be of French origin as the language has been highly influenced by this language.



			
				CapnPrep said:
			
		

> The shift in meaning "from one end to the other" → "completely, thoroughly" can be seen in (late) Latin formations like transbibo, transvoro. A similar change can be seen in English, where through is an ordinary preposition, but through and through is an intensive adverb. Cf. also the cognate pair through vs. thorough(ly).


  All right.  So the Late Latin meaning could have logically transitioned into French whereas the Iberian Romance languages kept the original meaning of "trans".



			
				Christo Tamarin said:
			
		

> I would omit the "trais" stage.


  The normal evolution after centuries was a > ai > ɛ.  Normally an /a/ didn't become /ɛ/ without the intermediate diphthong.  But CapnPrep bring out the point that this happened in open syllables, and "trans" was closed.  Unless both the "n" and "s" was lost early?  



			
				Evgeniy said:
			
		

> What I meant is that, first, at first I indeed did not see what might be logically&grammatically wrong with "beyond beautiful", just a normal phrase, even if unusual in English. Then I guessed that if I posit that the meaning of the word 'beautiful' is supposed to encompass the description of the qualities belonging to an object, then we have a contradiction: the object is still beautiful, it is not beyond that. However, I still don't believe there is anything logically wrong with that combination of words, because the method of combining similar meanings into words is not prescribed by any kind of deity or saint force. I could as well choose another method and say, "'beautiful' is what folk have used to call 'beautiful', but that object is beyond that, it is not what is supposed to be called 'beautiful', it is beyond that! "Non bella, ma bellissima!" (The phrase is googlable). There is no reason to prefer one logic of meaning classification over another one, it's all my personal habit. Well, something in the kind of the latter logic (combine into one word whatever is supposed to be called a similar way) for example should be employed when names of uncountable abstract concepts are prepended with definite articles: the very concepts are indefinite, but their names are not.


  What is irregular is "trans" not only took a function it hadn't had before, but it lost its original usage.  To my knowledge "trans" has never meant "beyond or through" in French.  There are other words to express those ideas.  "beyond good" used just like "beyond the mountain" is strange as a mutation.  But as CapnPrep, it Vulgar Latin "trans" already had acquired the notion of "completely" so 'French could have inherited it.  Other than that French adverbs are always "creative" compared to Latin origins and what we see in its sister languages.  For example,  "always" is "toujours"  literally "alldays" and has since also acquired the additional meaning of "still".  "Many/ much" is "beaucoup de" or "beautiful shot/blow of".  There are more of them.  All of these have replaced logical adverbs of Latin origin.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> What is irregular is "trans" not only took a function it hadn't had before, but it lost its original usage.  To my knowledge "trans" has never meant "beyond or through" in French.


_Très_ was still used as a preposition in Old French, with mostly temporal meanings like "since", "during", "until", but also spatial uses corresponding to "near", "behind". See Godefroy, for example. Many of these meanings can be straightforwardly derived from the original uses of Latin _trans_ ("through", "across", "beyond"), although it is true as you say that French eventually came to prefer other (combinations of) words to express these relations.


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## Cenzontle

Speakers can become *pretty *bored with *super*-common words like the intensifier "very", but they have *way *numerous options to replace it with, in *ultra*-colloquial language.  
*Mighty *few English-speakers can say they've never replaced "very".  I'm *dead *serious about this.
(Latin "n" before "s" was lost early, but still, why the vowel change?)


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## fdb

Cenzontle said:


> (Latin "n" before "s" was lost early, but still, why the vowel change?)



a > e in stressed syllables is normal in French (e.g. amare > aimer). The semantic and phonetic development is explained nicely by von Wartburg, FEW s.v. "trans", esp. 198b:

https://apps.atilf.fr/lecteurFEW/lire/132/197


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## sumelic

That's a bit of a confusing example to give, since the first syllable of "aimer" is not stressed! But it's true that in Modern French all forms have "ai" due to leveling with the vowel quality preserved in this case being that of the present singular forms{aime, aimes, aime} and third person plural form {aiment}.


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## Gavril

Cenzontle said:


> Speakers can become *pretty *bored with *super*-common words like the intensifier "very", but they have *way *numerous options to replace it with, in *ultra*-colloquial language.



Is it boredom, or is it that the more commonly an intensifying word (or intensifying affix, etc.) is used, the less adequate it may often be for its intended purpose?

For example:

A: "*Yawn.* I'm really tired."
B: "So am I."
A: "No, I'm *really* tired; dead tired; can't-lift-so-much-as-a-finger tired."


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## fdb

sumelic said:


> That's a bit of a confusing example to give, since the first syllable of "aimer" is not stressed! But it's true that in Modern French all forms have "ai" due to leveling with the vowel quality preserved in this case being that of the present singular forms{aime, aimes, aime} and third person plural form {aiment}.



I was referring to the stressed /a/ in the second syllable (-are > -er).


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## Evgeniy

Gavril said:


> Is it boredom, or is it that the more commonly an intensifying word (or intensifying affix, etc.) is used, the less adequate it may often be for its intended purpose


Why 'less adequate'? Those words show precisely the ways in which DescribedThings are DescriptionTerms to an excess, they show precisely the corresponding thought: forgiveness (it's too much, but that's pretty), excitation ("it's too much, and it's superb"), meditation ("something went too far on the road of acquiring the quality"), surprize ("it's too much so that it's beyond my capability to see usual things"). Some of these thoughts sound more socially acceptable ('adequate'), and some less, but that's not the matter: all these terms are meaningful and adequate to their meanings. At least you can see at once that Cenzontle did not choose the terms at random; so, they were chosen according to the context which prompted the ideas in need to express.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> a > e in stressed syllables is normal in French (e.g. amare > aimer).


It's normal in stressed _open_ syllables. Monosyllables have a separate, less systematic treatment, and since there are so few words like _trans_ that survived from Latin into French, I wonder if the development _trans _> _tres_ can really be considered regular.


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## fdb

von Wartburg’s idea was that très is not from the preposition trans, but from the emphatic preverb trans-.


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## Gavril

Evgeniy said:


> Why 'less adequate'? Those words show precisely the ways in which DescribedThings are DescriptionTerms to an excess, they show precisely the corresponding thought: forgiveness (it's too much, but that's pretty), excitation ("it's too much, and it's superb"), meditation ("something went too far on the road of acquiring the quality"), surprize ("it's too much so that it's beyond my capability to see usual things"). Some of these thoughts sound more socially acceptable ('adequate'), and some less, but that's not the matter: all these terms are meaningful and adequate to their meanings. At least you can see at once that Cenzontle did not choose the terms at random; so, they were chosen according to the context which prompted the ideas in need to express.



I am just talking about the potential for intensifying words to become semantically "bleached" through overuse. E.g., if you are accustomed to saying "I'm really tired" after you yawn slightly a few times, then it is possible that the phrase "really tired" will not achieve the desired communicative (or expressive) effect if you use it after you've run for 20 miles, and are exhausted to the point of collapsing. This is perhaps how the phrase _dead tired_ came about (or how it became widespread): i.e., as the replacement of a more generic and less expressive phrase (this phrase could have been something like _sore tired_, since _sore_ was once an all-purpose intensifier in English).


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## francisgranada

Gavril said:


> ...  _sore_ was once an all-purpose intensifier in English).


This _sore _seems to be cognate of the German _sehr _(see post #11). Is this a common Germanic  "solution" or the usage of these words in function of intensifiers are independent from each other?

As we can see from the previous posts, almost whatever word can be used as intensofier, e.g. in Hungarian also _marha_ (= cattle/beef) in the colloquial speech. However, this kind of words (including _death, dead, super_, ...) are expressive words used in certain situations and/or registers in many languages, but they typically (?) do not  replace the existing "neutral" or "standard" term. Under "neutral" terms I think of e.g. the Romance _molto/mucho/muy/muito_ (meaning many/much), variants of the Slavic _veľmi/velice_ (from _velik_-, meaning big), Romanian _foarte _(meaning strongly), Hungarian _nagyon_ (from _nagy_ - big), etc ... 

I think that's why terms like _très, sehr, bardzo, очень,_ etc ... seem to be "surprizing" (in case we know their origin/etymology), even if their usage as intensifiers is explainable or at least intuible. (It would be interesting to know what words are standardly used in other languages.)


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> von Wartburg’s idea was that très is not from the preposition trans, but from the emphatic preverb trans-.


Does this really make it more regular? (I.e. are there lots of other emphatic preverbs containing _a _in a closed syllable that diphthongized and became _e_?)


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## Gavril

francisgranada said:


> This _sore _seems to be cognate of the German _sehr _(see post #11). Is this a common Germanic  "solution" or the usage of these words in function of intensifiers are independent from each other?



Apparently this instensifying use of "sore" dates back to OE (sāre), maybe further.



> As we can see from the previous posts, almost whatever word can be used as intensofier, e.g. in Hungarian also _marha_ (= cattle/beef) in the colloquial speech. However, this kind of words (including _death, dead, super_, ...) are expressive words used in certain situations and/or registers in many languages, but they typically (?) do not  replace the existing "neutral" or "standard" term. Under "neutral" terms I think of e.g. the Romance _molto/mucho/muy/muito_ (meaning many/much), variants of the Slavic _veľmi/velice_ (from _velik_-, meaning big), Romanian _foarte _(meaning strongly), Hungarian _nagyon_ (from _nagy_ - big), etc ...



Slovene _zelo_, Croatian _vrlo_, Macedonian _многу_, etc.; German _sehr_, Dutch _heel_/_erg_, Norwegian _veldig_, Swedish _mycket_, etc.; Welsh _iawn_, Breton _-tre_, Irish _an_-; these all seem (though I'm not positive about all of them) to be the standard terms for "very" in each of these languages.

I think that there is a lot of potential for the neutral word for "very" to be replaced before a language has been standardized.


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## Evgeniy

Gavril said:


> I think that there is a lot of potential for the neutral word for "very" to be replaced before a language has been standardized.


Your post helped me reformulate my thought. I don't think there is such notion as "the neutral word for 'very'". For example, for the phrase "я соскучился" the Russian word "сильно" ("strongly"), which francisgranada lists as a neutral word, is used in the direct meaning and belongs nearly to the same group as "жутко", "страшно", "ужасно" (variations of "fearfully"), with "очень" being the "neutral" (i.e. the abstract one) variant. Note that usage of all these five words is not anything new, it is a language standard. All that makes wonder what makes a term "neutral" and not find a satisfying answer. I think the mistake is here: it is supposed that the abstract terms of some theory of quantity are in some way special to the human mind and have to be processed specially, which makes these terms be "neutral" in some way, i.e. ones chosen by the nature. While in reality this is not the case, and there is nothing specially "neutral" in the Italian "molto", for example.


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