Laudator Temporis Acti

W.H. Auden, Lullaby (April 1972), line 31:

Let your last thinks all be thanks.

Auden wasn't just idly playing with words that superficially sound similar. He was aware of the etymological connection between thank and think. See the following, originally written for but eventually omitted from Auden's "The Giving of Thanks" (Mademoiselle Magazine, 1944):

So let's turn to that best of all desert-island books, Murray's New English Dictionary. There we find that, in the teutonic languages, to thank is to think, to think is to thank.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) s.v. thank, n.:

OE. þanc, þo̢nc = OFris. thonk, OS. *thank (MDu. danc, D. dank), OHG., MHG. danc (G. dank), ON. þökk (:-þanku fem.), Sw. tack, Da. tak, Goth. þagks:-OTeut. *þanko^z, f. ablaut stem þenk: þank: þunk: see THINK. The primary sense was therefore thought.

OED, s.v. think, v.²:

Cognate with Old Frisian thanka, thenkia, thenzia, tinsa, etc., past tense thogte, tochte (present stem forms with stem vowel i may perhaps result from merger with a cognate of THINK v.¹; West Frisian tinke), Old Dutch thenken, past tense thāhta (Middle Dutch denken, dinken, Dutch denken), Old Saxon thenkian, past tense thāhta (Middle Low German denken), Old High German thenken, denken, past tense thāhta, dāhta (Middle High German denken, German denken), Old Icelandic þekkja, past tense þekkti, in early use also þátti, Old Swedish þækkia, Old Danish tække, Gothic þagkjan, past tense þāhta < the same Germanic base as THOUGHT n., THANK n., and I-THANK n., probably < the same Indo-European base as Old Latin tongēre to know (only in Ennius, as reported in a quotation in the 8th cent. A.D. writer Paulus Diaconus), Oscan tanginom opinion; a different ablaut grade is shown by THINK v.¹

Labels: etymology