"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 09/03/18 (newfangled)

I have a tweet form Jake Isham who wondered where newfangled comes from. What's the "fangled" in newfangled, and what is it all about? It's a good question. Its source its a really, really old verb, fang, which meant... And this is in the ninth century, so going back a long way. In fact, you can still find it in some dialects today. It meant to grasp, or to seize, or to catch, and it comes from a Germanic word, fangen, to catch. So newfangled really emerged... First of all, it was newfangle, I have to say, as something that was newly seized, if you like. So it was something that was novelty, so it was kind of cought on to, or latched on to, because it seemed new and exiting, and we all know all about that. So you'll find lots and lots of proverb warning people away from looking at newfanglers, cos they were sort of  fripperies, or trumperies, as they used to be called as well. The first citation of newfangled, the adjective with an -ed, is from A Disputation of Purgatory, and that was a polemic written in 1531 by English Protestant writer who was called John Frith. And he said, "Let us see and examine more of this newfangled philosophy". He came unstuck because he was quiestioning the belief in purgatory and ended up being burned at the stake for it. But newfangled clearly wasn't taken particularly well when he was talken about purgatory. Just to say, that fang, that fangen, that fang word meaning to capture or sieze also, of course, gave us fang, meaning a sharp tooth. It went on a long journey from something that was caught, it was applied to prey, and then to the teeth that did that catching and did that eating of the prey. So, strangely, strange to think that newfangled and teeth and canines of the animals comes together, but they do in that single word.