The be- prefix in behead doesn't seem to match similar words like become, besmirch, or befuddle. Of course, the same prefix could serve different roles depending on the word. What role is be- serving here, and are there any other English words that use the prefix in this way?
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6Related: How does the “be-” prefix change the words to which it is applied? How did it come about?– ermanenCommented Jan 6, 2015 at 18:54
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@ermanen: Not only related. That question and its answers seems to cover this one. Shouldn't this be closed as a dup?– DrewCommented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:29
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@Drew Are you sure? I think the answer to this question is the first sentence of my answer, which I don’t see how to infer from that question.– tchrist ♦Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:32
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@tchrist: OK, that adds to what is on the other page, by specifically addressing the de- alternative. It doesn't deal with Why be-? in a satisfying way, however, and that is answered over there. Answering Why be-? with Because we already had de- is leaves something to be desired (it is true, but a bit of a copout). It leaves out Then why not foo- or wup- instead of de-? Anyway, I see your point as to why to keep this as another question.– DrewCommented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:40
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2@Drew There is also the minor issue that the accepted (and very upvoted!) answer in the other is wrong and gives a completely anachronistic and incorrect etymology for the be- prefix. Also, that question does not deal with the last bit of this one: what other words use be- in this rare, privative sense. (Incidentally, “Why not be-? Because we already had de-” is not what tchrist’s answer says at all. It says, “Why not dehead? Because we already had behead.”)– Janus Bahs JacquetCommented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:45
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4 Answers
We didn’t use de-head because we already had a verb behead by the time we started using de- to create verbs: behead was a verb in Old English, behéafdian.
So behead was already used long before the de- privative prefix came to be used productively in English. That didn’t happen until Modern English with a few productive examples in the 17ᵗʰ century but most coming from the 19ᵗʰ century or after. As Janus mentions in comments, the de- word meaning the same thing, decapitate, was imported in full with the de- already there, from Latin via French, in the 17ᵗʰ century.
There are many different possible senses of be- in verbs; the OED lists six different primary senses with subsenses. This here in behead is one of the rarer ones. Under be- sense 6c, it says that this privative sense of be- used to create behead is an ancient sense that means bereave of:
- Forming trans. verbs on substantives used in an instrumental relation; the primary idea being;
- a. To surround, cover, or bedaub with, as in becloud, to put clouds about, cover with clouds, bedew. Thence, by extension,
- b. To affect with in any way, as in benight, beguile, befriend. In both sets there is often an accompanying notion of ‘thoroughly, excessively,’ as in 2.
- c. An ancient application, no longer in living use, was to express the sense of ‘bereave of,’ as in behead, belimb, etc., q.v. Cf. 3, above.
Although 6a and 6b are still productive, 6c no longer is so in the living language. Another Old English verb formed using 6c was belandian, meaning to deprive of one’s land. However, this verb did not survive into Modern English.
El destierro
Apropos de nada, the Spanish equivalent of the obsolete verb beland still very much exists in the verb desterrar, which combines the privative des‑ prefix with the noun tierra meaning land then puts that into an infinitive verb form. This is normally translated as “exile” in English, but sometime as “expel” or as a noun “expulsion”. There is also a substantive version, destierro, is famously found in “Cantar del destierro”, which is the title of the first canto from that most ancient of Castilian epic poems, El Cantar de Mio Cid.
Truly, el Cid was belanded of his lands by the King.
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2It's worth pointing out that the de- prefix didn't come into English until after that Old English beheafdian, so there was no point where it could have gone either way between dehead and behead. Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 19:37
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1Even much of the wholesale importing is newer than beheafdian. Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 20:05
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1@JonHanna Yes of course, but I still don’t count wholesales as productive uses. :)– tchrist ♦Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 20:06
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4Perhaps also worth noting that the wholesale import of the same procedure does in fact use de-, though with the accompanying Latin word for ‘head’: decapitate (from Latin capit- ‘head’). Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:36
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1@eltomito You mean bepintel —or more specifically, beballock. You can almost never derive a new English word by applying a Germanic prefix to a Latin base word, with only a few highly productive, well-known exceptions. Old English used pintel for Latin penis, and there are no surviving privative uses of be‑ that attached to anything but a word descended from Old English such as land, limb, head. In any case this ancient privative prefix is “no longer in living use” per the OED, and so it it is no longer productive…outside in-jokes amongst painfully erudite philologists. 🤨– tchrist ♦Commented Feb 14, 2023 at 0:18
From wiktionary:be- (rare or no longer productive) Off, away, over, across
becut, bedeal, betake, bego, behead, belimb, beland, benim, bereave, besleeve, betrunk
Behead.
From Saxon Be-=('to') and heawian=hew=cut off. The original is "Beheawon heafde" to cut off the head.
From "Beheawon heafde" to "Beheawonheafde" to "Beheafde" to "Behead". ( somewhere through the ages some lexicographer did away with the double 'hea' and further surgery carried out resulted to "Beheafde" and later "Behead".)
Be- [Germanic 'be'] is often used as a prefix. When prefixed to verbs, be- frequently expresses an active signification, as behabban to surround; begangan to perform or dispatch, &c. Sometimes be- prefixed indicates no perceptible variation in the sense ; as belifan to be remaining, or over and above, begyrdan to begird or gird, as in sprengan and bespren- gan to sprinkle, or besprinkle.
(1726 English Etymology Dictionary) (Anglo-Saxon Dictionary 1888)
answered Aug 12, 2018 at 13:26
This type of be- denoting separation ( only in certain older verbs) is in my view connected with German ab- (one meaning can be separation) and Latin ab-. Somehow the b has changed its position from after the vowel to before the vowel. This can be explained as metathesis or a right-left phenomenon.
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6No, it’s not. It’s simply one of many, many meanings by had already in Old English, especially when used as a preverb. The English equivalent to ab never had an actual [b] to begin with, only a [β], which very early on became a [v]. The equivalent preverb is of-, which has fallen out of use since Middle English, where it was generally replaced with off- in those verbs that survived in the language. German also has these privative senses of be- here and there, such as berauben, which is a precise equivalent to bereave. Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 21:35
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@JanusBahsJacquet bereave (and bereft) seem redundant, since reaving is depriving someone of something. Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 0:07
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I take it that to deprive is related to Latin privare + Abl and that privare belongs to the word family rapere/ripere and that p- of privare is a remainder of ab- in the sense of "away+to take"just as a robber does.– rogermueCommented Jan 7, 2015 at 15:39
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1English prive, deprive, privative, privacy, private all come from Latin privus meaning single, individual, private, peculiar, deprived. I don't guess there’s any p- element there to further decompose, but I’ll let @JanusBahsJacquet do any further tracing.– tchrist ♦Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 19:33
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There are a lot of German words using the Be- prefix as well, including "Behnehmen" which means "Behaviour". I wonder if the Be- prefix has similar Saxon roots to the old English Be- prefix.– Warren PCommented Jan 12, 2015 at 22:43