A Friend in West Virginia, Part Seven

One of the main things that certainly grabbed my attention about my friend's problems was his relationship with his mother. It was tough to gauge at first, and I assumed it was his mother's fault, because it seemed out of character for him, but then I saw other things that began to tell me it wasn't his mother; at least, not all of it. It first showed when we were discussing food, and I had asked him what he considered to be his favorite dish, "what your mother may have fixed for you on your birthday," I wrote. "My mother never did anything for me, trust me," came his reply. I apologized for hitting a sensitive issue, but he said not to worry about it. Later he told me, he and his mother clashed constantly, writing, "we can't be around each other for 10 minutes, without being at each other's throat." Now, all of us have undoubtedly had disputes with our mother, but he mentioned, what I would say, was his contempt for his mother, and more than one or two times; there was definitely a problem here. He told me his mother was just a mean and nasty person, who tried to make people feel miserable. The thing was, later I saw how he accused others of having the traits or problems that he himself had. More and more I saw how he wrote so negatively about many things and many people, including his mother. In spite of all the talk of how nasty his mother was, he also told me at a point or two that she worried about him. Could it be that his negativity was expressed against people who cared about him? Could such negativity toward Randy be far off?

WORD HISTORY:
Sill-This word, with the most common modern meaning of, "support base for a window," goes back to Indo European "swel/suel," which had the notion of "beam, board;" thus also, "frame, base, foundation." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "sulja," with essentially the same meanings. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "syll," also meaning "foundation beam, support beam;" thus also, "threshold." This then became "sille," before the modern form. Beginning in the 1400s, the meaning gradually narrowed to "support base for a window." There are many relatives in the other Germanic languages: German has "Schwelle" (meaning primarily, "threshold," ^ but also, "railroad tie"), Low German Saxon "Süll" (threshold, sill), Dutch "zulle" (support beam, sill), Danish "svelle" (railroad tie) ^^ and "syld" (seemingly archaic for frame support beam), Norwegian and Swedish "syll" (railroad tie) and Icelandic "sylla" (sill). I could not find a form in Frisian, but I would assume there once was a form.
  
^ Also used as English uses "threshold," in the symbolic/figurative sense, "be about to do something;" as in, "The team is on the threshold of victory."

^^ This may be a borrowing from German, but I'm not certain.