Facebook Today: The

I found this bit shared on Facebook by Karen Suzanne Wilkes and from someone named Hal Sawyer. I'd like to preserve it here. I do not know the origin, but love learning stuff like this. I had never really considered that "the" has more than one meaning.

 

My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems", or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "bā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if - then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if - then relationship you said "pà whatever, bã whatever", meaning "when such-and-such, then such-and-such". "ba" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "The more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier'; same as centuries ago.