Doublet doubled

[muckefuck]

pne responds in this this entry to my last WotD with a bit about the joy of etymological doublets, wherein he muses on the possible existence of quadruplets. Well, having discovered that jaunty derives from a sailors' pronunciation of French gentil, I've now got a doozy: gentle:gentile:genteel:jaunty. And every one of them borrowed rather than inherited! The dates of first attestation, according to the OED, are respectively 1225, c1380, 1599, and 1662.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

God rest ye merry, gentles. Nancylebov just linked to an article that introduced me to "gentility" as the condition of being a gentile. So now I'm curious about the noun, jaunt: "to ride a horse (up and down), origin unknown", according to Onions.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

What's the rule for these doublets/triplets/etc.? Derived directly from the same root word at different times, and members of the same class?

And I guessed poorly.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the "members of the same class" part. If, say, a Latin adjective was borrowed twice, once as an adjective and once as a noun (due to substantivisation), then I would still consider it a doublet.

There's also a question of what constitutes a "root word". For instance, aquarium and ewer both ultimately derive from aquarius, but whereas the former is a neutre substantivised form of the adjective, the latter derives from a feminine form. I consider that a near miss.