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A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: ''þing''; German, Dutch: ''ding''; modern Scandinavian languages: ''ting'') was the governing assembly of a Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by lawspeakers. Its meeting-place was called a ''thingstead''. The Anglo-Saxon ''folkmoot'' or ''folkmote'' (Old English — "folk meeting", modern Norwegian; ''folkemøte'') was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemot and in some respects the precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom. Today the term lives on in the English term husting, in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions of Nordic countries and, in the Manx form ''tyn'', as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man. ==Etymology== The Old Norse, Old Frisian, and Old English ''þing'' with the meaning "assembly" is identical in origin to the English word ''thing'', German ''Ding'', Dutch ''ding'', and modern Scandinavian ''ting'' when meaning "object".〔Harper ''Online'', s.v. “thing”〕 All of these terms derive from Proto-Germanic *''þingą'' meaning "appointed time", and some suggest an origin in Proto-Indo-European *''ten-'', "stretch", as in a "stretch of time for an assembly".〔 The word shift in the meaning of the word ''thing'' from "assembly" to "object" is mirrored in the evolution of the Latin ''causa'' ("judicial lawsuit") to modern French ''chose'', Spanish/Italian/Catalan ''cosa'', and Portuguese ''coisa'' (all meaning "object" or "thing").〔 A word with similar meaning, ''sak'' in Norwegian and Swedish, ''sag'' in Danish, ''zaak'' in Dutch, and ''Sache'' in German, still retains the meaning "affair, matter" alongside "thing, object". In English the term is attested from 685 to 686 in the older meaning "assembly"; later it referred to a being, entity or matter (sometime before 899), and then also an act, deed, or event (from about 1000). The early sense of "meeting, assembly" did not survive the shift to Middle English.〔Chantrell (ed.) ''Oxford'', s.v. “thing”.〕 The meaning of personal possessions, commonly in plural, first appears in Middle English around 1300.〔Barnhart (ed.) ''Concise''〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thing (assembly)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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