The everyday word thing has a remarkable history that serves to illustrate the power of generalization. In Old English, thing meant "an assembly or meeting of people, such as a law court or parliament," a meaning shared by related Germanic words such as Dutch dinc, German ding (in modern German, Ding), and Norwegian, Danish, ans Swedish ting. After several centuries, the word's original meaning became narrowed down in all of these languages to "matter before an assembly or law court, lawsuit." This meaning, in turn, was gradually generalized to "any matter, any thing". Curiously, a similar development occurred in languages derived from Latin: The Latin word causa "legal matter, case, cause" was generalized in French chose and Italian and Spanish cosa to mean "matter, thing".
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