Surrounded by; in the company of; occurring in or shared by members of a group; in the number or class of.
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Old Englishbefore 900 CEwell-attested
From OldEnglish "on gemang" ("in a crowd, in a mingling"), where "gemang" meant "a mingling, a crowd, an assembly," from Proto-Germanic *mangą ("mixture, crowd"), related to the verb *mangijaną ("to mix, to mingle"). The Old English compound contractedthrough "onmang" and "amang" to Middle English "among." The Proto-Germanic roottraces to PIE *menk- ("to knead, to press together"), which also produced
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Theword 'mongrel' — a mixed-breed animal — comes from the same root as 'among.' OldEnglish 'gemang' (mixture, crowd) produced 'mong' (mixture), and adding the diminutive '-rel' suffix gave 'mongrel': literally 'a little mixture.' Similarly, 'fishmonger' and 'warmonger' contain '-monger' from the same root, originally meaning
Old English "mengan" ("to mix," yielding modern "mingle"), Dutch "mengen" ("to mix"), and German "mengen" ("to blend"). The variant form "amongst" arose in Middle English by adding the adverbial genitive -s and parasitic -t, paralleling "
but did not displace the native form. Key roots: on (Old English: "in, on"), gemang (Old English: "crowd, assembly, mixture"), *mangjan (Proto-Germanic: "to mix, to mingle").