Redo
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re- + do
From Middle English re-, from Old French re-, from Latin re-, red- (“back; anew; again; against”), of uncertain origin but conjectured by Watkins to be from Proto-Indo-European *wret-, a metathetic alteration of *wert- (“to turn”). Displaced native English ed-, eft-, a-, with-/wither-, gain-/again-.
From Middle English don, from Old English dōn, from Proto-West Germanic *dōn, from Proto-Germanic *dōną, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place, do, make”).
For senses 4 and 5, compare Old Norse duga, whence Danish du.
The past tense form is from Middle English didde, dude, from Old English dyde, *diede, from Proto-Germanic *dedǭ/*dedē, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰédʰeh₁ti, an athematic e-reduplicated verb of the same root *dʰeh₁-.
The obligatory, meaningless use of do in interrogative, negative, and—formerly—affirmative sentences, existing in some form in most Germanic languages[1], is thought by some linguists to be one of the Brittonicisms in English, calqued from Brythonic.[2] It is first recorded in Middle English, where it may have marked the perfective aspect, though in some cases the meaning seems to be imperfective. In Early Modern English, any meaning in such contexts was lost, making it a dummy auxiliary, and soon thereafter its use became mandatory in most questions and negations.
Doublets include deed, deem, -dom, but not deal.
Other cognates include, via Latin, English feast, festival, fair (“celebration”), via Greek, English theo-, theme, thesis, and Sanskrit दधाति (dadhāti, “to put”), धातृ (dhātṛ, “creator”) and धातु (dhātu, “layer, element, root”).
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The root ʿayn wāw dāl (ع و د)
