merg-

Boundary, border. Oldest form *merg̑-, becoming *merg- in centum languages.

Derivatives include marquee, demarcation, and margin.

1.

a. mark¹, from Old English mearc, boundary, landmark, sign, trace;

b. margrave, from Middle Dutch marc, border;

c. march², marquee, marquis, marquise, from Old French marc, marche, border country;

d. marchese, marchioness, from Medieval Latin marca, boundary, border;

e. demarcation, from Old Italian marcare, to mark out;

f. mark², from Old English marc, a mark of weight or money;

g. markka, from Swedish mark, a mark of money;

h. marka, from Middle High German marke, mark of money. a-h all from Germanic *mark-, boundary, border territory; also to mark out a boundary by walking around it (ceremonially “beating the bounds”); also a landmark, boundary marker, and a mark in general (and in particular a mark on a metal currency bar, hence a unit of currency); these various meanings are widely represented in Germanic descendants and in Romance borrowings.

2. letters of marque, marquetry; remark, from Old Norse merki, a mark, from Germanic *markja-, mark, border.

3. marc, march¹, from Frankish *markōn, to mark out, from Germanic denominative verb *markōn.

4. margin; emarginate, from Latin margō, border, edge.

5. Celtic variant form *mrog-, territory, land. Cymry, from Welsh Cymro, Wales, from British Celtic *kom-brogos, fellow countryman (*kom-, collective prefix; see kom), from *brogos, district.

 

[Pokorny mereg̑- 738.]

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