Where the word "with" comes from is unclear to me, it doesn't sound like it's related to either 'med/mit/mee' or 'avec', not even to 'cum'.
Quote from OED:
OE. wið = OFris. with, OS. wið, ON. við (Sw. vid, Da. ved): app. a shortening (peculiar to the Anglo-Frisian and Scandinavian areas) of the Com. Teut. *wider- (see s.v. wither a. and adv. and wither-1), perh. taking place orig. in compounds (cf. with- and the parallelism of OE. wiþcéosan and wiþercéosan to reject, wiþstandan and wiþerstandan to withstand, etc.).
Maybe someone understands that . . .
Looks like I'm way late to this party, so here are the abbreviations
AbreviationsOE. Old English
OFris. Old Frisian
ON.
the opposite of OFF Old Norse
Sw. Swedish
Da.
Russian for 'yes' Danish
Com. Teut,. Common Teutonic
OS.
Operating System Old Saxon
s.v. [couldn't find]
perh. perhaps
orig. originally
c.f. [couldn't find]
And as a bonus, here's what I got from the
1968 college edition of the 'Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language' (I collect old books).
with (
with, with), preposition. [Middle English; Anglo-Saxon, origin, against; in opposition to; probably shortened < AS.
wither, against; Indo-European base
*wi-, asunder, separate, of which AS.
wither, against (German
wider) would represent the comparison (dual) form]
*hypotheticalHopefully this doesn't get moved to Discuss