When I use a word . . . Medicines regulation—pharmacological offences against the person

OffenceIt may not look like it, but the word “offence” can be traced back to its origins in a hypothetical IndoEuropean root that looks unpromising—GWHEN, in older texts spelt GUHEN—which meant to strike, wound, or kill.The most obvious English word to have descended from this unusual hypothesised root is “gun,” and even that is not straightforward. Its immediate precursor was supposedly the Old Norse word gunn-r, meaning war or strife, from a suffixed form of GWHEN. However, evidence cited by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggests that “gun” may have been a shortened form of the Old Norse woman’s name Gunnhild-r,1 since female names were often given to engines of war, such as a cannon mentioned in a 14th century munitions inventory of Windsor Castle, with the name of “Domina Gunilda.” This is a habit on which I make no comment, merely recalling, as I do, the name of the…
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