entry
four
/fɔr/The number following three and preceding five
From Proto-Indo-European four (four).
from PIE root *kwetwer- "four." The phonetic evolution of the Germanic forms has not been fully explained; Watkins...
from Proto-Germanic *fedwores (source also of Old Saxon fiuwar , Old Frisian fiower , fiuwer , Frankish *fitter- ,...
+1 more sourcefrom Old English fēower
from Middle English four
Word Ancestry
from PIE root *kwetwer- "four." The phonetic evolution of the Germanic forms has not been fully explained; Watkins...
from Proto-Germanic *fedwores (source also of Old Saxon fiuwar , Old Frisian fiower , fiuwer , Frankish *fitter- ,...
+1 more sourcefrom Old English fēower
from Middle English four
Before English had its modern “four,” the word was already traveling across the Indo-European world, changing outfits as it went: Proto-Germanic speakers said something like *fedwōr, while Gothic preserved fidwōr and Latin kept quattuor. English’s Old English fēower looks surprisingly elaborate, but centuries of sound change trimmed it down to four. The same ancient counting word also produced Latin quattuor, which later became Spanish cuatro, French quatre, and Italian quattro—the family resemblance is hiding in plain sight. That Italian form appears in quattrocento, literally “four hundred,” the label for the art of the 1400s, a period beginning in 1400. So every time you say “four,” you are joining a multilingual counting chorus whose oldest surviving echo may be more than five thousand years old.
The Story
Before English had its modern “four,” the word was already traveling across the Indo-European world, changing outfits as it went: Proto-Germanic speakers said something like *fedwōr, while Gothic preserved fidwōr and Latin kept quattuor. English’s Old English fēower looks surprisingly elaborate, but centuries of sound change trimmed it down to four. The same ancient counting word also produced Latin quattuor, which later became Spanish cuatro, French quatre, and Italian quattro—the family resemblance is hiding in plain sight. That Italian form appears in quattrocento, literally “four hundred,” the label for the art of the 1400s, a period beginning in 1400. So every time you say “four,” you are joining a multilingual counting chorus whose oldest surviving echo may be more than five thousand years old.
Modern Usage
Online slang meaning agreement or “yes,” sometimes used as a shortened form of “10-4.”
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entries describe “four” as an agreement response and as a character from BFB.
Kin & Kindred
From 'four'·four
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Etymonline
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary