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From: gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: On "orphaned" words.
Message-ID: <7169@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Apr-85 00:09:53 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.7169
Posted: Wed Apr  3 00:09:53 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Apr-85 03:09:01 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
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<DDT>
	A friend and I play a type of word association game that I
made up in which you think up a word and your opponent has to think
of another one which is related to the previous in some (usually
obscure) way. Your job is then to find the connection and find
another word which is related to the second and so on.
	During one of these marathon sessions the word "to" came up
and we noticed that the word "fro" in the phrase "to and fro" has
no independent meaning in English. i.e. fro has no meaning
outside of the phrase to and fro.
	Questions : Why is this? Are there any other such orphaned words?
	(You might even call them "appendix" words, by analogy with
our appendix :-)
		greg.

-- 
Gregory Rawlins CS Dept.,U.Waterloo,Waterloo,Ont.N2L3G1 (519)884-3852
gjerawlins%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet                              CSNET
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