"traître", not "trâitre"

[John Cowan]

I think that in making this typo I was vaguely influenced by the
notion that the circumflex indicates a missing consonant that follows
(most often "s"), and in the reduction of _traditor_ to _traitre_
obviously it's the /d/ that is lost, hence the hat must go on the
"a". But it doesn't. It turns out that the circumflex, when it
indicates a loss, indicates one made during the history of French,
whereas intervocalic /d/ was lenited away before the Old French period.
See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_circumflex_in_French>.

--
Barry thirteen gules and argent on a canton azure John Cowan
fifty mullets of five points of the second, co...@ccil.org
six, five, six, five, six, five, six, five, and six.
--blazoning the U.S. flag http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

[marie-lucie]

Have you looked up "traître" itself?  in the TLFI the oldest attestations have "traïtre" (tra-i-tre) and similarly for the feminine), with a and i pronounced separately as in "naïf, naïve", and also as in the verb "trahir" 'to betray' where the h only indicates a separation between the vowels.  "Traistre(sse)" is attested much later (1700's), I guess under the influence of "maistre(sse)" where the -s- is etymological (and was probably not pronounced at the time).  So the path from "traditor" to "traître" has not been a direct one. 

Although most of the "hatted" letters indicate a consonantal loss, the lost consonant is not always s (at least etymologically):  one example is "âme" 'soul' from lat "anima", with three OF variants "anme, arme, asme".  From "anme" to 'arme" is not a problem from the point of view of historical sound change, but "arme" already existed with the meaning 'weapon'.  A change trom this "arme" to "asme" (most likely pronounced azme) (also according to an independently attested sound change) avoided the potential confusion between 'soul' and 'weapon'.  

[John Cowan]

marie-lucie scripsit:

> Have you looked up "tra�tre" itself?

I hadn't, and thanks for doing so.

> "Traistre(sse)" is attested much later (1700's), I guess under the
> influence of "maistre(sse)" where the -s- is etymological (and was probably
> not pronounced at the time).

This reminds me of a joke about an English student in France many years
ago, whose hostess complimented him on the sharpness of his trouser-crease
(presumably knowing that students could not afford to have their clothes
ironed by professionals). He replied that he kept his trousers "sous
ma ma�tresse", by which he merely meant "under my mattress"!

Which leads in turn to the purely anglophone jest "A mistress is something
between a mister and a mattress."

--
John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan co...@ccil.org
We want more school houses and less jails; more books and less arsenals;
more learning and less vice; more constant work and less crime; more
leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of
the opportunities to cultivate our better natures. --Samuel Gompers