High, On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, Eric G. Miller wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 09, 2002 at 04:19:05PM -0300, Daniel Toffetti wrote: > > On Friday 08 March 2002 19:50, Gary Turner wrote: > > > > The full version costs AFAIK EUR 20. (BTW, it often causes > > > > confusion that you have no English word for kostenlos / gratuit. > > > > Can't you invent one?) > > > > > --- snipped > > > > > > Optionally we could adopt "kostenlos" as we have "kaput," "dumkopf," > > > and "blitzkrieg." Unlike the French, English speakers have no > > > problem using/stealing the words that best do the job. :-) > > > > I've seen many times that English native speakers use the Spanish word > > "gratis" to mean free as in beer. > > Apparently, it isn't from Spanish, but traces back to Latin and French. > Both Latin and French heavily influenced English. Webster's says it > came into common usage in Middle English, so it's been in the language > for hundreds of years (since 15 century). Seems to be commonly related > to other words like grace, gratitude, gratuity, gratuitous, etc... > > I'd suspect the Spanish "gratis", might have similar Latin roots ?? > As far as I can tell, it's Dutch. Well, I am pretty sure this is Dutch, but unsure if it originates from that. One thing is for sure: Dutch people like gratis goodies. Even if it is a product that we do not want, like, need or has an awfull taste when consumed, if it is free, gratis, we will take it :-) just my 2 zeuro cents Greetz, Sebastiaan -- NT is the OS of the future. The main engine is the 16-bit Subsystem (also called MS-DOS Subsystem). Above that, there is the windoze 95/98 16-bit Subsystem. Anyone can see that 16+16=32, so windoze NT is a *real* 32-bit system.
