[101] We have a parallel in Fr. flan, Eng. flawn, Ger. Fladen, etc., a kind of omelet, ultimately related to Eng. flat—
"The feast was over, the board was clear'd,
The flawns and the custards had all disappear'd."
(Ingoldsby, Jackdaw of Rheims.)
Cotgrave has flans, "flawnes, custards, eggepies; also, round planchets, or plates of metall."
CHAPTER X
DOUBLETS
The largest class of doublets is formed by those words of Latin origin which have been introduced into the language in two forms, the popular form through Anglo-Saxon or Old French, and the learned through modern French or directly from Latin. Obvious examples are caitiff, captive; chieftain, captain; frail, fragile. Lat. discus, a plate, quoit, gave Anglo-Sax. disc, whence Eng. dish. In Old French it became deis (dais), Eng. dais, and in Ital. desco, "a deske, a table, a boord, a counting boord" (Florio), whence our desk. We have also the learned disc or disk, so that the one Latin word has supplied us with four vocables, differentiated in meaning, but each having the fundamental sense of a flat surface.
Dainty, from Old Fr. deintié, is a doublet of dignity. Ague is properly an adjective equivalent to acute, as in Fr. fièvre aigue. The paladins were the twelve peers of Charlemagne's palace, and a Count Palatine is a later name for something of the same kind. One of the most famous bearers of the title, Prince Rupert, is usually called in contemporary records the Palsgrave, from Ger. Pfalzgraf, lit. palace count, Ger. Pfalz being a very early loan from Lat. palatium. Trivet, Lat. tripes, triped-, dates back to Anglo-Saxon, its "rightness" being due to the fact that a three-legged stool stands firm on any surface. In the learned doublets tripod and tripos we have the Greek form. Spice, Old Fr. espice (épice), is a doublet of species. The medieval merchants recognised four "kinds" of spice, viz., saffron, cloves, cinnamon, nutmegs.