The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 189 by Various Authors
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m>thunder. The very same root tan, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but rough and noisy. The English tender, the French tendre, the Latin tener are derived from it. Like tenuis, the Sanskrit tanu, the English thin, tener meant originally what was extended over a larger surface, then thin, then delicate. The relationship betwixt tender, thin, and thunder would be hard to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been its rumbling noise.
'Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French sucre, sucré? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called 'sarkhara, which is anything but sweet sounding. This 'sarkhara is the same word as sugar; it was called in Latin saccharum, and we still speak of saccharine juice, which is sugar juice.'
It may appear, on a closer inspection at this point, that it is Professor Müller who is deceived, and not the common verdict, both in respect to the question whether such words as thunder, sucré, etc., really do or do not have some inherent and organic relation in the Human Mind to the ideas of rumbling noise and sweetness respectively; and in respect to the value and significance of the fact. He has, it would seem, confounded two separate and distinct questions. 1st. Is there such a relation between the sound and the sense? and 2d. Were these words introduced into speech because of that resemblance?
In respect to the latter of these questions, Professor Müller's answer, so far as the word thunder is concerned, is rather in favor of an affirmative answer than against it. So far from its being 'hard to establish the relationship betwixt tender, thin, and thunder,' on the hypothesis that 'the original conception of thunder had really been its rumbling noi