Love is an egg and ‘un œuf’
By Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson
When is love ‘un œuf’? When it is enough! This sounds like ‘enuff’ when spoken by an English speaker, and ‘un oeuf’ is French for ‘An egg’.
So is love an egg? Well yes and this is why.
In tennis we have the word love meaning ‘zero’ or ‘nil’ which numerically is represented thus – 0. This explains two theories as to why zero became ‘love’.
To open the link paste into your browser.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-origin-of-love-in-tennis
The first theory is that l’œuf, French for ‘the egg’ sounds like love. In German a ‘v’ is pronounced like ‘f’ so love can become ‘lofe’. It requires little effort for this to become l’œuf.
Indeed an anagram of l’œuf is ‘u love’. ‘U’ sounds like ‘you’ so we have ‘you love’.
If you take ‘un œuf’ this can anagram to ‘fou une’ meaning in essence ‘crazy one’ in French, albeit that is not how you would phrase it in speech.
And who would deny that love can be mad?
The second theory is that people were happy to play regardless of whether they scored points or not, that is they played for love, the love of the game.
It is often said it is not the winning or losing that matters in sport, but that you play the game. The benefits are the exercise and friendship it can generate.
And these are both aspects of love, to love yourself by exercising and maintaining your fitness and to love others in your friendship.
Going back to zero, the symbol ‘0’ is egg shaped, so l’œuf or love as it sounds corresponds to a zero.
Interestingly zero is an anagram of roze, in Dutch meaning pink or rose coloured, like the flower a rose.
And an anagram of rose is ‘Eros’ the god of love and sex.
Back to ‘an egg’ I note an anagram of this is ‘gange’. This reminded me of the River Ganges. Apparently Ganges गङ्गा in Sanskrit, means ‘swift-goer’.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ganges#Etymology
Of course, to ‘gang’ is to ‘go’ in Geordie, the dialect of the Tyneside area of North East England including Newcastle.
The word “gang” derives from the past participle of Old English gan, meaning “to go”. It is cognate with Old Norse gangr,[1] meaning “journey.”
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang
As regards the Ganges it is said in the Hindu religion that to wash in the waters of the Ganges is to remit your sins, your sins are washed away.
And that is what love does, washes away sins. It is written that love covers over a multitude of sins.
So I hope you can see some of the links between love and l’œuf and ‘an egg’ or un œuf.
Love is enough.
Final thought
Of course if love is zero or nil, in essence nothing, does that mean love is nothing? Well, I will keep that for another day.
P.S. For those interested, I wrote this as opening up some of the meaning of what is called the Lord’s Prayer.