On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, David Silberstein wrote: #The word "turn" appears to be from Latin, but it would appear to be a #*very* early borrowing; it exists in Old English, and also shows up in #Old High German and Icelandic, with an ultimately Greek root. OED #says: # # On the twofold representation of L. /tornre/ in OE. see # Pogatscher /Latein. u. Roman. Lehnworte im Altenglischen/, # §§9, 159, 271; he shows that the umlauted /tyrnan/ must # have already existed c 600. In the collection _All One Universe_, which is where I read "Uncleftish Beholdings", he writes in the foreword to that story, approximately, "I don't know much about the universe this story came from, other than that the Norman Conquest never took place." Since "turn" in English predates William the Bastard, its presence wouldn't be anomalous. OED online etymology (I have used "a=" to show the long a, 'a' with macron): OE. tyrnan and turnian, both ad. L. torna=re to turn in a lathe, round off, f. torn-us a lathe, a turner's wheel ... -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel