Noun: tau
Gender: Neuter, Masculine
Hyphenation:
Definite
| Sg. | tauet; tauen |
| Pl. | taua; tauene |
Sample Sentences
Nouns inflected like tau
sekund,
script,
museklikk,
appendiks,
lesepuff,
eid,
lag,
tau,
sku,
smell,
kapitel,
felt,
lokk,
bord,
holt,
host,
tegn,
pant,
sett,
Etymology
1. Inherited from Danish toug (now spelt tov), from Old Norse tog, from Proto-Germanic *tugą. The unusual spelling ⟨oug⟩ was pronounced according to dialectal Norwegian (as in baug, plog). Underlying dialectal forms continue the Old Norse ablaut variant taug, from Proto-Germanic *taugō. Standardized as taug in 1907, the spelling was altered to tau in 1917.
2. Cognate with Swedish tåg (from *tugą) and Icelandic taug (from *taugō). Closely related also with Norwegian tog (“train”), which comes via Middle Low German from *tugiz, a stem variant of *tugą. All ultimately from the root of *teuhaną (“to pull”). To the contrary, the similarity with Dutch touw, German Tau (“strong rope”) is merely accidental (although this West Germanic word did influence the Scandinavian one, e.g. in compounds like tauverk). See: Old Norse Nouns '
tog', Swedish Nouns '
tåg', Icelandic Nouns '
taug', Dutch Nouns '
touw', German Nouns '
Tau'.
Translations