etymology - Why the letter "g" discrepancy between *giant* and *gigantic*?


A little look through an etymology dictionary shows that the root is Latin gigas with adjective form gigant. So in its derivation to English, why did the second "g" get retained in gigantic but was dropped from giant?


I have an inkling that the word giant may have travelled through French on its way to English, where it may have been pronounced "gee-yant" or "jee-yant" with a change to the second "g" that was then dropped when taken into English. However, the "g" is retained as a hard "g" in gigantic.



Answer



The word gigantic comes to English relatively recently. Giant, as you probably know if you've investigated the etymology, appears in Middle English by way of Old French geant [NOAD]. Gigantic, on the other hand, appears first in Modern English in the 16th or 17th century, three or four hundred years later. The reference at that time was probably to the original Latin (via Greek) gigas.


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