thing

A thing, also known as a folkmoot, assembly, tribal council, and by other names, was a governing assembly in early Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by a lawspeaker. Things took place at regular intervals, usually at prominent places that were accessible by travel. They provided legislative functions, as well as being social events and opportunities for trade. In modern usage, the meaning of this word in English and other languages has shifted to mean not just an assemblage of some sort but simply an object of any sort. Etymology The word appears in Old Norse, Old English, and modern Icelandic as þing, in Middle English (as in modern English), Old Saxon, Old Dutch, and Old Frisian as thing (the difference between þing and thing is purely orthographical), in German as Ding, in Dutch and Afrikaans as ding, and in modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese, Gutnish, and Norn as ting. The place where a thing was held was called a "thingstead" (Old English þingstede, Old Norse þingstaðr) or "thingstow" (Old English þingstōw). An alternative Proto-Germanic form of the word ‘thing’ was *þingsō, whence Gothic þeihs 'time'. All of these terms derive from *þingą meaning "appointed time", possibly originating in Proto-Indo-European *ten-, "stretch", as in a "stretch of time for an assembly". In English, the term is attested from 685 to 686 CE in the older meaning "assembly"; later it referred to a being, entity or matter (sometime before 899), and then also an act, deed, or event (from about 1000). The original sense of "meeting, assembly" did not survive the shift to Middle English. The meaning of personal possessions, commonly in the plural, first appears in Middle English around 1300., and eventually led to the modern sense of "object". This semantic development from "assembly" to "object" is mirrored in the evolution of the Latin causa ("judicial lawsuit", "case") to modern French chose, Spanish/Italian/Catalan cosa, and Portuguese coisa (all meaning "object" or "thing").