Here's something really keen: In the era of Old English, the adjective keen was originally spelled cene and meant “brave” or “daring,” but sometime during the eighth century, the spelling changed to kene and the meaning shifted to “skilled” or “adroit.” The senses of “sharp” (as in the edge of a blade) and “enthusiastic or eager” came into use circa 1200, which was also about the same time the spelling changed to keen, yet it wasn't until the mid-fourteenth century or so that the senses of “intense” and “mentally alert or intellectually shrewd” first appeared. Interestingly, the verb keen (“to lament, mourn, or complain loudly”) and its associated noun (“a loud wailing or lament”) are etymologically unrelated to the adjective. Both verb and noun were actually derived from the Irish Gaelic verb caoin, which means “to grieve” or “to weep in mourning,” and neither entered the English lexicon until around 1810. A little more than a hundred years later, American teenagers developed the informal usage in which keen means “wonderful” or “excellent,” but alas, the majority of today's hip youth aren't all that keen on the slangy word.
©2022 Michael R. Gates
