gold

\ \ [OE] Gold gets its name from its colour. The perception of what this is has varied. In the ancient Germanic languages, red was often used as a poetic epithet for ‘gold’, and in English this survives into the present day as an archaism.

\ \ And Latin aurum ‘gold’, source of French or and Italian and Spanish oro, is probably related to words for ‘dawn’ (such as Latin aurora), the inspiration in both cases being ‘redness’. The word gold, however, depends on the metal’s yellowness. It goes back to Indo-European *ghel-, source of English yellow. From this was formed *ghltom ‘gold’, which was the ancestor of Russian zoloto ‘gold’, Polish złoto (whence złoty ‘golden’, used as the name of a Polish coin), Sanskrit hiranya- ‘gold’, and the various Germanic words for ‘gold’: English and German gold, Dutch goud, and Swedish and Danish guld. Golden [13] is a Middle English derivative of gold, replacing the earlier gilden, which came from Old English gylden. Of related forms in other Germanic languages, Dutch gulden is the source of the former coin-name guilder [15].

\ \ The verb gild, from Old English gyldan, retains its original vowel; gilt [14] began life as its past participle.

\ \ Cf.⇒ GALL, GILD, GILT, GUILDER, YELLOW