Timeline for Was the pronunciation of “symmetry” different in the past?

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

11 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Jul 6, 2020 at 3:20	history	edited	Peter Shor	CC BY-SA 4.0	added 83 characters in body
Dec 23, 2014 at 15:22	comment	added	John Lawler		Quite probably, but not necessarily. A lot of English Latin and French (i.e, Latin and French spoken by English speakers) words and phrases changed pronunciation right along with the GVS. Note legal English pronunciation of sine die as /sayni day/, et cetera.
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:45	vote	accept	Jorge Hounie
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:43	vote	accept	Jorge Hounie
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:43
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:43	comment	added	Janus Bahs Jacquet		@BlessedGeek That doesn’t really matter, because the vowel [i] in symmetry didn’t change. It was the vowel in die and eye (erstwhile [iː]) that changed and became diphthongised. Symmétrie in French has always ended in [-i(ə)] (whether the schwa was still there in the 16th century upper-class French I’m not sure), so whether it was borrowed into English before, during, or after the Great Vowel Shift, it would still have ended up with an [i] in English, too.
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:33	vote	accept	Jorge Hounie
Dec 22, 2014 at 21:42
Dec 22, 2014 at 17:28	comment	added	Peter Shor		@Blessed Geek: the OED has citations for simetry in the 16th century, which was in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift.
Dec 22, 2014 at 17:23	comment	added	Blessed Geek		Did the word symmetry even get invented before the "great vowel shift", or was it coined during the 18th century years of scientific renaissance?
Dec 22, 2014 at 17:10	comment	added	tchrist♦		Pope seems to have agreed with Blake in this regard — or, rather the other way around, insofar as Blake was the later poet.
Dec 22, 2014 at 16:37	history	edited	Peter Shor	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 112 characters in body
Dec 22, 2014 at 16:05	history	answered	Peter Shor	CC BY-SA 3.0