Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who Is Richest Of Them All?

I suppose everyone has heard the tale of "Snow White," made even more popular in the U.S., and indeed, the world, in the late 1930s on by the Walt Disney animated screen version, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." The story was first popularized back in the earlier 1800s by famous German storytellers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, also simply known as "the Brothers Grimm." The tale is about envy by Snow White's stepmother, who is so insecure, she uses a magic mirror to reassure herself by asking, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?"* She is comforted to hear the mirror answer that she is the fairest, until Snow White's beauty eventually becomes the mirror's answer, terribly shaking the stepmother who then tries to have her killed. The stepmother gets a hunter to kill the girl, but he leaves Snow White to what he believes will be certain death in the forest. Snow White comes upon a cottage owned by seven dwarfs who go digging for gold and ore every day. She tells them her story and the dwarfs ask her to keep house for them, which she accepts. The stepmother, however, asks the question of the magic mirror, only to learn that the hunter failed to kill the girl. She then sets out to accomplish the task herself, but fails three times, each time learning that Snow White has survived when the mirror tells her that Snow White is still the fairest.

While the story is about envy over beauty, it could just as easily be about envy over money. People with such insecurity can do just about anything when their egos feel threatened, including wage and benefit cuts and jobs shipped to low wage countries, where not only low wages prevail, but where there are often less environmental regulations; after all, what's a little pollution, when it comes to these insecure maniacs making more money. Just about anyone perceived to be standing in their way can become a victim. They're trying to get that answer from the magic mirror, "YOU are the richest one of all."  

* There are some variations in the English versions, as the original German couldn't be made to rhyme easily in word for word translation into English. The German is, "Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist die schönste im ganzen Land?"  Literally, "Little mirror, little mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful in the entire land? (or, 'in all the land')." Some English versions, in order to have the words rhyme, had the stepmother use a handheld mirror and say, "Mirror, mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in all the land?" German "Wand" (interior wall, partition) is related to English "wound" (not the word for "injury," but from "wind," with a long "i"). It goes back to the time when many building materials were fashioned from branches and twigs "wound" together. German also has "Wall," but it is used only for fortification walls and earthworks and a "Mauer" (closely related to "mural"), a word German borrowed from Latin, is an exterior wall, usually including walls around a city. The famous (infamous) wall that divided Berlin was also called "die Mauer," a feminine noun; thus, "die" is the article, "the wall."

WORD HISTORY:
Enough-This word, meaning "be sufficient, be of the necessary amount," is actually a compound going back to Indo European "ko(m)," which had the idea of "with, near," and whose Old Germanic descendant was "ga/ge." The second part goes back to Indo European "hnak/hnek," which had the notion of "attain." The two gave Old Germanic the compound "ganogaz," which meant "be sufficient, be of the necessary amount." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "genog," with the same meaning. This later became "inough/ynough," before the modern version.^ Common in the other Germanic languages: German has "genug," Low German has "noog," Dutch has "genoeg," West Frisian has "genôch," Danish and Norwegian have "nok," Swedish has "nog" and Icelandic has "nóg."

^ While English is from the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages and is closely related to German, it is even more closely related to Low German, which is natural, as the ancestral homeland of English (Anglo-Saxon) is north/northwestern Germany, an area where Low German is still spoken with some regularity, although it has been in decline for quite some time, as standard German, based more so on high dialects, has been reducing the number of Low German speakers. Anyway, the "ga/ge" prefix on Low German words is pronounced "ya," as opposed to standard German hard "g" sound. So English "ynough/inough" reflects the connection to Low German pronunciation, and you must remember, the "gh" sound was pronounced in English years ago, but it morphed into an "f" sound, while the "gh" spelling was continued. Further, dialectal English pronunciation has given English "nough," corresponding to its Low German and North Germanic relatives (see above).