differer

Forms

differer (present participle differant; past participle differé; first-person singular present differ)^[1]

• diferer, disferer, differir^[2][3]

The forms of the 14th- and 15th-century texts are mostly different, differe and differé, with disferent beside them.^[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin differō (“to carry apart; to differ; to put off”), taken over with a change of conjugation.^[1][5][6] Bloch and Wartburg note that the Latin verb already had both of the senses the French word shows, “to be different” and “to put off”.^[7] The Latin verb is formed dis- (“apart”) + ferō (“to carry, bear”),^[1][8] and the present stem of the simple verb goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to bear, carry”).^[1]

The FEW counts the word among the borrowings from Latin, in use since the 14th century, and names it as the source of English defer.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the surgery of Henri de Mondeville, written in the Cotentin in 1314, where the verb means “to be different”: two kinds of snake are said to be one and the same thing but to differ from the other snakes in their broader heads and longer teeth.^[5][9][10]

Semantic evolution

In Middle French the verb served both for difference and for delay.^[11] Guillaume de Machaut uses it transitively for “to tell one thing from another”, Nès differer le mal dou bien “not even to tell evil from good”,^[11] and Froissart has it for disagreeing in opinion, for disguising oneself and for rebelling.^[3] The sense “to put off” is recorded from Bersuire's translation of Livy, about 1355, where a plan avoit esté differee “had been put off” because of a man's absence, and differer a with an infinitive, “to delay doing”, from Oresme about 1370.^[12]

Modern French keeps both senses in French différer, which the TLFi treats as two verbs.^[5][7] In the dialects the verb came to mean “to refuse (to do something)” in the Gâtinais, the Morvan, Lyon and the Velay.^[6]

Timeline

• 1314 – different “differ” in Henri de Mondeville's surgery.^[5][9][13]
• c. 1341 – transitive “to distinguish” in Machaut's Remède de Fortune.^[11]
• c. 1355 – “to put off” in Bersuire's translation of Livy.^[12]
• c. 1370 – differer a “to delay (doing)” in Oresme's translation of the Ethics.^[12]
• 1425 – deferrer “to defer”, a law term, in England.^[14]
• 1469 – differer “to postpone” in England.^[15]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) to differ, be different.^[10][2][1]
2. (reflexive) to differ, be distinguished (from).^[10][3]
3. (transitive, absolute) to defer, postpone, put off.^[10][2][1]
4. (transitive) to distinguish (one thing from another).^[11][3]
5. to vary, appear in different forms.^[10]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the word differer and cites it only from 1469, in the sense “to defer, postpone”;^[15] it has a separate head deferrer, a law term “to defer, put off”, first cited from 1425.^[14] Middle English took the verb as differren and deferren, from the French word and directly from Latin, and, from about 1500 English split it into differ and defer, each with its own spelling and set of senses.^[16]

Descendants

• Middle French differer (→ French différer)^[11]
• Middle English differren (borrowed; → English differ, English defer)^[16]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch, the DEAF and Greimas head the word diferer,^[10][2][13] Godefroy and the AND differer,^[3][15] and the DMF differer under modern différer.^[11] Most of its records are Middle French, after 1330.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. diferer
3. ^ a b c d e Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 2:712
4. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
5. ^ a b c d Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
6. ^ a b c Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 3:73
7. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 234
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. differō
9. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. HMondB
10. ^ a b c d e f Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 2:1924
11. ^ a b c d e f Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. differer
12. ^ a b c Steinfeld, Nadine; Buchi, Éva, eds. (2005–), TLF-Étym: révision des notices étymologiques du Trésor de la langue française informatisé, Nancy: ATILF
13. ^ a b Greimas, Algirdas Julien (1979), Dictionnaire de l'ancien français jusqu'au milieu du XIVe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris: Larousse (printing of 1988), p. s.v. diferer
14. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. deferrer
15. ^ a b c Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. differer
16. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com