What is a linguistic doublet?

In etymology, doublets are distinct words in a given language that share a common etymological root. Many English doublets arose because words from the same source were borrowed at different times or through different linguistic paths. Examples include pyre and fire, or frail and fragile.

What we know

• Doublets are words in a given language that come from the same etymon. [1, 2]
• Many English doublets resulted from the borrowing of related words from other languages. [2]
• Pairs like frail and fragile both descend from the Latin adjective fragilis, but arrived via different routes. [2]

Where to go next

• a case in pointWhat are some classic examples of English doublets?
• how it workedHow do borrowed words change over time?
• the bigger pictureWhat is the Proto-Indo-European language root?
• what caused itHow did Old French influence English vocabulary?
• compared withWhat are words with opposite meanings from the same root?
• an unexpected connectionHow are sovereign and soprano related?Despite sounding quite different and having distinct modern meanings, sovereign and soprano share an underlying etymological connection.

Sources

• [1]doublet (Wikidata Q1210061) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Doublet (linguistics) · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Thylacine · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]History of miscegenation · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Asia · CC BY-SA 4.0