'Dear' means "valued; precious; beloved".... - Random

yvanspijk, 1 month ago

'Dear' means "valued; precious; beloved".

However, in certain expressions it also means "expensive", such as in 'to cost dear'.

This meaning, inherited from Proto-Germanic, became dominant in cognates of 'dear', such as Dutch 'duur', German 'teuer', Swedish 'dyr'.

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turbobob, 1 month ago

@yvanspijk In French, 'cher' means both 'dear' and 'expensive' https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cher#fr-adj
Apparently the same two meanings were also contained in the original latin word, 'carus': https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/carus#Latin
Very interesting how those same concepts are covered by a single common word in so many different languages.

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