What’s the meaning of ‘kindle’?

Posted on 2011/11/04 , tagged as

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Mark Forsyth writes today about the history behind the word ‘kindle’ for, where else, but Amazon’s Kindle blog.

‘Etymologically, ‘kindle’ is in one of my favourite groups of words: the forgotten frequentative’ he says. ‘It’s a subject that I wrote a whole chapter about in my book, The Etymologicon. It’s a group that contains bustle, waddle and that old favourite disgruntle. When you did something frequently in Old English the Old Englishmen would just add an –le to the end of the word.’

Read the whole piece here and more about Mark’s book – which is indeed available on the Kindle alongside all other ereaders – here.