#498 Nigh

So the other day I was talking to my neighbor and I heard a horse neigh in the distance. For the first time the two words clicked together in the same place in my head. Neigh and Neighbor. Where did the word neighbor come from? Is it a farm term of some sort? Someone who lives close enough to hear your filly neigh, or your spouse nag? So I looked it up in my favorite online etymological dictionary. Guess what? Nope, no relation. Neighbor derives from the Old English “neahgebur”—“neah” meaning near and “gebur” meaning dweller. Neah is an example of language regression, as with the return to Old English practiced in Boston. Nee-ah. “Neah” is also where we get the word nigh. As in, I wish the end of this essay was nigh.
Neigh is imitative in origin. Like the word nicker, or the highly expressive bovine elocution, moo. Interestingly, when you look up the word neigh it gives as a synonym another word of imitative origin, whinny. Sorry. I don’t buy it. That’s like giving scream as a synonym for whisper. Another example of human arrogance. As if horses can’t have a range of expression. That are different and not repetitively the same over and over in a redundant way.
I admit it, sometimes my brain draws weird conclusions just based on the sound of things. And the neigh/neighbor deal isn’t the only one. Like I heard the singer Nelly Furtado the other day. I’m sorry but for some reason her name sounds like something on the menu at Taco Bell. Yeah, I’ll have the Nelly Furtado please, and a chalupa and some mexi-fries. I don’t know about you, but I envision the Nelly Furtado as a rolled tortilla stuffed with spicy unidentifiable chicken parts. Or no, wait a minute, an open-faced Mexican egg dish. A Taco Bell Frittata. And they load on that melted cheese sauce that’s not really cheese until you say whoa nelly. You know, like what you tell your horse when it’s running out of control. Or I should tell my brain.
America, ya gotta love it