Originally from the Latin praetendere , pre is the prefix prae meaning before and tend is from the stem tendere meaning to stretch out or extend. To pretend, in the classical meaning, is "to put forward as a pretext or reason, to allege, to offer or show deceptively, to make a pretence of."
It then goes through the French as prétendre, where it means primarily different things during different time periods, apparently:
to claim, demand (1320 in Old French),
to assert, allege (c1380),
to aspire to (1409),
to feign (a1412 or earlier),
to put forward as a pretext or reason (1470),
to intend (a1475),
to court (1638)
The word then comes into English to mean "to put forward as an assertion or statement; to allege, assert, contend, claim, declare" and especially "to allege or declare falsely or with intent to deceive."
I chose this word in remembering 'playing pretend' as a child, and now find it kind of depressing that the word has almost a negative connotation in the OED.
(all quotes and information in this are from the OED)
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Maybe you should be glad that "pretend" in the phrase "play pretend" has a more positive (or at least carefree) connotation. It's rarer for words' meanings to become more positive rather than more negative, so "pretend" in the childhood-game usage has bucked a trend.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's interesting to me that in the phrase "play pretend," "pretend" functions as a noun.
Some of your historical summarizing (or just your phrasing of it) might be a bit misleading. The full OED entry suggests that English borrowed various French meanings of the word at different times from the end of the 14th century through the 17th century. Or, if English didn't borrow from them directly from French it developed a similar range of similar meanings. Some of those earlier meanings aren't wholly negative. I think you're right that the negative one has mostly prevailed--but that's been a process over time rather than a result of borrowing the word in with one particular (and negative) meaning.
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