the university of Connecticut libraries BOOK 422.W4 18 c. 1 WEEKLEY # ROMANCE OF WORDS 3 T153 QOOfiBOST a f3 5 THE ROMANCE OF WORDS THE ROMANCE OF WORDS BY ERNEST WEEKLEY, M.A PKOFESSOR OF FRENCH AND UEAD OF THE MODSP.N LANGUAGE DEPABTMENT AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM SOIIBTIME SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE :>tH /■J H ! ^ " Vous savez le latin, sans doute ? " — "Oui, mais faites comne si je ne le savais pas." (MOLIERE, Le Bourgeois Gentil/tomme, ii, 6.) ..; ■V)\ni'i^ . NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 1912 \9 PREFACE A LONG and somewhat varied experience in language teaching has convinced me that there are still, in spite of the march of science, many people who are capable p of getting intellectual pleasure from word-history. I \j^ hope that to such people this little book, the amusement of occasional leisure, will not be unwelcome. It differs, :, p"^ I believe, from any other popular book on language in that ut^^eals_essentiaUyi:vv^ and \ makes no attempt to enforce a moral. gMy aim has $ been to select especially the unexpected ^ety myology, i " things not , generally., known," such as the fact that <::^^ fa7nmany was an Indian chief, that assegai occurs in v^ Chaucer, that jilt is identical with Juliet^ that brazil ^ wood is not named from Brazil, that to curry favotir ^^^<, means to comb down a horse of a particular colour, and ^^^ so forth. The treatment is made as simple as possible, a bowing acquaintance with Latin and French being all that is assumed, though words from jrian}^ other I lajiguages_are^ecessanly^|ncluded. In the case of each " word I have traced the history just so far back as it is tP likely to be of interest to the reader who is not a philo- Y---^ logical specialist. .^-^ I have endeavoured to state each proposition in its \^ simplest terms, without enumerating all the reserva- --^ tions and indirect factors v/hich belong to the history of almost every word. vu viii PREFACE ' The chapter headings only indicate in a general way the division of the subject matter, the arrangement of which has been determined rather by the natural associa- tion which exists between words. The quotations are, with few exceptions, drawn from my own reading. They come from very varied sources, but archaic words are exemplified, when possible, from authors easily acces- sible, generally Shakespeare or Milton, or, for revived archaisms, Scott. In illustrating obsolete meanings I have made much use of the earliest dictionaries^ available. It seemed undesirable to load a small work of this kind with references. The writer on word-lore must of Tiecessity build on what has already been done, happy if he can add a few bricks to the edifice. But philologists will recognise that this book is not, in the etymological sense, a mere compilation,^ and that a considerable portion of the information it contains is here printed for the first time in a form accessible to the general reader.^ Chapter VII., on Semantics, is, so far as I know, the first attempt at a simple treatment of a science which is now admitted to an equality with phonetics, and which to most people is much more interesting. Throughout I have used the New English Dictionary, in the etymological part of which I have for some years liad a humble share, for purposes of verification. With- out the materials furnished by the historical method of that great national work, which is now complete from A to R, this book would not have been attempted. For words in S to Z, I have referred chiefly to ^ For a list of these see p. xii. 2 Compilation "pillage, polling, robbing" (Cooper). ^ Among words on which the reader will find either entirely new information or a modification of generally accepted views are akimbo, a^iface, hranks, caulk^ ccckney^ fdon (a whitlow), foil^ kestrel^ lugger^ ymdligrnhs^ ?r.ystery (a craft), oriel, patch, petronel, salet, sentry ^ sullen, tret, etc. PREFACE ix Professor Skeat's Ety^nological Dkttonary (4th ed, Oxford, 1 910). It is not many years since what passed for etymology in this country was merely a congeries of wild guesses and manufactured anecdotes. The persistence with which these crop up in the daily paper and the class- room must be my excuse for " slaying the slain " in Chapter XIII. Some readers may regret the disap- pearance of these fables, but a little study w ill convince them that in the life of words, as in that of men, truth is stranger than fiction. Ernest Weekley. Nottingham, /^;z«rtrK 191 2. THE ROMANCE OF WOPvDS CHAPTER I OUR VOCABULARY The bulk of our literary language is Latin, and consists of words either borrowed directly or taken from " learned " French forms. The every-day vocabulary of the less educated is of Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon, origin ; and from the same source comes what' we may call the machinery of the language, i.e., its inflexions, numerals, pronouns, prepositions, and con- junctions. Along with Anglo-Saxon, we find a con- siderable number of words from the related Norse languages, this element being naturally strongest in the dialects of the north and east of England. The third great element of our working vocabulary is furnished by Old French, i.e., the language naturally developed from the spoken Latin of the Roman soldiers and colonists, generally called Vulgar Latin. To its composite char- acter English owes its unequalled richness in expression. Fpr most ideas we have three separate terms, or groups of terms, which, often starting from the same metaphor, serve to express diiTerent shades of meaning. Thus a deed done with malice prepense (an Old French com- pound from Lat. pensare, to weigh), is deliberate or pondered, both Latin words which mean literally 2 OUR VOCABULARY *' weighed " ; but the four words convey four distinct shades of meaning. The Gk. sympathy is Lat. com- passzon^ rendered in English hy fellow-feeling. Sometimes a native word has been completely sup- planted by a loan word, e.g.^ Anglo-Sax. here^ army {cf. Ger.' Heer)^ has given way to Fr. arm^e^ a past parti- ciple like Span, armada^ and Jwst (see p. 147)- Here has survived in Hereford^ harbour {^. 122), harbinger {^. 83), etc., and in the verb harry (cf Ger. verheeren, to harry). Or a native word may persist in some special sense, e.g., weed^ a general term for garment in Shakespeare — " And there the snake throws her enamel'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in." {Midsummer Nighfs Dream^ ii. 2.) survives in " widow's 2t^^^<^j." CJiare^ a turn of work — "the maid that milks And does the meanest chares^'' {Antony and Cleopatra^ iv. 15.) survives \.x\ charwoman^ and in American cJwre — " Sharlee was . . . concluding the post-prandial chores" (H. S. Harrison, Queed^ Ch. 17.) Sake^ cognate with Ger. Sache^ thing, cause, and origin- ally meaning a contention at law, has been replaced by cruise^ except in phrases beginning with the preposition for. See also bead (p. 6Z\ U^ikenipt^ uncombed, and iuicotithj unknown, are fossil remains of obsolete verb forms. In addition to these main constituents of our language, we have borrowed words, sometimes in considerable numbers, sometimes singly and accident- all}^ from almost every tongue known to mankind, and every year sees new words added to our vocabulary. The following chapters deal especially with words LATIN WORDS 3 borrowed from Old French and from the other Romance languages, their origins and journeyings, and the various accidents that have befallen them in English. It is in such words as these that the romance of language is best exemplified, because we can usually trace their history from Latin to modern English, while the earlier history of Anglo-Saxon vrords is a matter for the philologist. Words borrowed directly from Latin or Greek lack this intermediate experience, though the study of their original meanings is full of surprises. This, however, is merely a question of opening a Latin or Greek dictionary, if we have not time for the mom.ent's reflexion which would serve the same purpose. Thus, to take a dozen examples at hazard, to abcnninate is to turn shuddering from the evil C7?ien^ c, generous man is a man of " race " {geyiiis), an i7inuendo can be conveyed "by nodding," to insiclt is to "jump on," a legend is something "to be read," a viamw.1 is a " /z^7;?^-book," an obligation is essentially "binding," to relent is to "go slow]^ rivals are people living by the same stream {riviis), a salary is an allovrance for "salt" (^^/), a supercilioiLS man is fond of lifting his eyebrozvs {super- ciliic7n\ and a trivial matter is so commonplace that it can be picked up at the meeting of "three ways" (JrivizDn), Dexterity implies skill with the "right" hand {dexter), while sinister preserves the superstition of the ill-omened " left." It may be remarked here that the number of Latin words used in their unaltered form in every-day English is larger than is generally realised. Besides such phrases as bona-fide, post-morte7nj viva-voce, or such abbreviations as A.M., a7ite 7neridie}?i, D.V., Deo volente, and L. s. d., for libm, solidi, denarii, we have, without including scientific terms, many Latin nouns, e.g., 4 ' OUR VOCABULARY animal^ genius y index ^ odium, omen, p7'emium, radius, scintilla, stimulus, tribimal, and adjectives, e.g., complex, lucifer, miser, pauper, rnaxirmim, senior, and the un- grammatical bonus. The Lat veto, I forbid, has been worked hard of late. The stage has given us exit, he goes out, and the Universities exeat, let him go out, while law language contains a number of Latin verb forms, e.g., affidavit (late Latin), he has testified, caveat^ let him beware, cognovit, he has recognised — "You gave them a cognovit for the amount of your costs after the trial, I'm told." {Pickwick, Ch. 46.) due to the initial words of certain documents. Similarly item, also, is the first word in each paragraph of an inventory. With this we may compare the puruieiv of a statute, from the Old Fr. pourveu {pourvti), provided, with which it used to begin. A tenet is what one "holds." Fiat means "let it be done." When Mr Weller lamented, " Vy worn't there a alleybi?'' it is safe to say that he was not consciously using a Latin adverb, nor is the printer who puts in a viz. always aware that this is an old abbreviation for videlicet, i.e., videre licet, it is permissible to see. A tiostrtcm is "our" unfailing remedy, and ta?tdem, at length, instead of side by side, is a university joke. Sometimes we have inflected forms of Latin words. A rebus^ is a word or phrase represented "by things." Requiem, accusative of 7'eqtiies, rest, is the first word of an antiphon used in the mass for the dead, ^' Requiein ceternam dona eis, Domine," while dirge is the Latin imperative dirige, in another antiphon, " Dirige, Dominus ^ But the \vord comes to us from French. In the 1 6th century such puzzles were called rebus de Picardie, because of their popularity in that province. LATIN WORDS 5 meus, in conspectu tuo vitam meam." The spelling dirige was once common — "Also I byqwethe to eche of the paryshe prystys beying at my dyryge and masse xiid." (Will of John Perfay, of Bury St Edmunds, 1509.) Qtcery was formerly written qtuzre^ seek, and plaudit is ior plaudile, clap your hands. Debenture is for debentur^ there are owing. Dominie is the Latin vocative domine^ formerly used by schoolboys in addressing their master, vAxA^ pandy, a stroke on the hand with a cane, is from pande palmavt, hold out your hand. Parse is the Lat. pars^ occurring in the question Qucb pars orationis ? What part of speech? Omnibus, for all, is a dative plural. Limbo is the ablative of Lat. limbus, an edge, hem, in the phrase "in limbo patrum," where lijnbus is used for the abode of the Old Testament saints on the verge of Hades. It is already jocular in Shake- speare — " I have some of 'em in Umbo patmm, and there they are like to dance these three days." {Henry VIIL, v. 3.) Folio, quarto, etc., are ablatives, from the phrases in folio, in quarto, etc., still used in French. Premises, earlier premisses, is a slightly disguised Lat. prcsmissas, the aforesaid, lit. sent before, used in deeds to avoid repeating the full description of a property. It is thus the same word as logical prejnisses, or assumptions. Quoruin is from a legal formula giving a list of persons "of whom" a certain number must be present. A teetotum is so called because it has, or once had, on one of its sides, a T standing for totum, all. It was also called simply a totum. The other three sides also bore letters to indicate what share, if any, of the stake they represented. Cotgrave has totum {toton), " a kind of A 2 6 OUR VOCABULARY game with a whirle-bone.'* In spite of the interesting anecdote about the temperance orator with an impediment in his speech, it was probably teetottini that suggested teetotaller. We have also a few words unaltered from Greek, e.g., analysis, aroina^ atlas^ the world-sustaining demi- god whose picture used to decorate map-books, colon^ coinnia^ dogma, epitome^ viiasma, natisea^ lit. sea-sickness, nectay, whence the fruit called a nectarine — " Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs Yielded them, sidelong as they sat recline." {Paradise Lost, iv., 332.) pathos^ python. pyx, synopsis, etc. ; but most of our Greek words have passed through French via Latin, or are newly manufactured scientific terms, often most unscientifically constructed. Ganntt contains the Gk. gamma and the Latin conjunction nt. Guy d'Arezzo, who flourished in the nth century, is said to have introduced the method of indicating the notes by the letters a to g. For the note below a he used the Gk. gamma. To him is attri- buted also the series of monosyllables by which the notes are also indicated. They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn to St John — Ut queant laxls r\ language, dates mostly from the 17th ^ This applies also to seme of the clan names, e.g., Macpherson^ son of the parson, Macnah^ son of the abboL ^ My own conviction is that it is identical with Dan. dirik, dirk^ a pick- lock. See dietrick (p. 38). An implement used for opening an enemy may well have been named in this way. Cf. Du. opsUeker (up sticker), " a pick- lock, a great knife, or a dagger" (Sewel, 1727). B IS WANDERIiNGS OF WORDS and i8th centuries, and includes contributions from most of the European languages, together with a large Romany element. The early dictionary makers paid great atten- tion to this aspect of the language. Elisha Coles, who published a fairly complete English dictionary in 1676, says in his preface, "'Tis no disparagement to understand the canting terms : it may chance to save your throat frorti being cut, or (at least), your pocket from being pick'd." Words often go long journeys. Boss is in English a comparatively modern Americanism. But, like many American words, it belongs to the language of the Dutch settlers who founded New Amsterdam (New York). It is Du. baaSy master, which has thus crossed the Atlantic twice on its way to England. A number of Dutch words have become familiar to us in recent years in consequence of the South African war. One of them, slim^ 'cute, seems to have been definitely adopted. It is cognate with Ger. schlimm, bad, and Eng. slzm, slender, and the latter word has for centuries been used in the Eastern counties in the very sense in which it has now been re-introduced. Apricot is a very travelled word. It comes to us from Fr. abrzcot^ while the Shakespearean apj^icock {Richard ILy iii. 4) represents the Spanish or Portu- guese form. Ger. Aprikose comes, via Dutch, from the French plural. The word was adopted into the Romance languages from Arab, al-barkok, where al is the definite article {cf. examples on p. io6),\v\\\\q barkok comes, through medieval Greek, from Vulgar Lat. prcBcoquum, for prcucoXy early-ripe. Thus the word first crossed the Adriatic, passed on to Asia Minor or the North coast of Africa, and then travelling along the Mediterranean re-entered Southern Europe. Many other Arabic trade words have a similar history. Carat comes to us, through French, from Italian carato^ ARABIC TRADE WORDS 19 "a waight or degree called a caract" (Florio). The Italian word is from Arabic, but the latter is a corrup- tion of Gk. Kcpdriov, fruit of the locust tree, lit. little horn, also used of a small weight. The verb to garble, now used only of confusing or falsifying,^ meant origin- ally to sort or sift, especially spices — " Garbler of spices is an officer of great antiquity in the city of London, who may enter into any shop, warehouse, etc., to view and search drugs, spices, etc., and to garble the same and m.ake them clean." — (Cowel's Interpreter.) It represents Span, garbellar^ from garbello, a sieve. This comes from Arab, garbil, a sieve, borrowed from Lat. cribelhim^ diminutive of cribrmn. Qumtal, an old word for hundredweight, looks as if it had something to do with five. Fr. and Span, quintal are from Arab, qintar^ hundredweight, which is Lat. cen- tenarium (whence directly Ger. Zentner^ hundredweight). The French word passed into Dutch, and gave, with a diminutive ending, kindekijn, now replaced by ki?metje, a firkin.^ We have adopted it as kilderkin. With these examples of words that have passed through Arabic may be mentioned talisman, not a very old word in Europe, from Arab, telsam, magic picture, ultimately from Gk. Tekuv, to initiate into mysteries, lit. to accomplish, and effendi, a Turkish corruption of Gk. auOePTrjg, a master, cognate with authentic. Hussar seems to be a late Latin word which passed into Greece and then entered Central Europe via the Balkans. It comes into 16th-century German from Hungar. Jmszar, freebooter. This is from a ^ "It was a wholly garbled version of what never took place" (Mr Bu-rell, in the House, 26th Oct. 1911). The bull appears to be a laudable concession to Irish national feeling. ^ Formerly ferdekin, a derivative of Du. vierde^ fourth ; cf. farthing, a little fourth. 20 WANDERINGS OF WORDS Servian word which means also pirate. It represents medieval Gk. Kovpcrdpio^y a transliteration of Vulgar Lat. cicrsaritis, from ciirrere^ to run, which occurs also v/ith the sense of pirate in medieval Latin. Hussar is thus a doublet of corsair. The immediate source of sketch is Du. schets^ " draught of any picture " (Hexham), from Ital. schizzo^ " an ingrosement or first rough draught of anything " (Florio), whence also Fr. esqiiisse and Ger. Skizze. The Italian word represents Greco-Lat schedium^ an extempore effort. Assassin and slave are of historic interest. Assassin^ though not very old in English, dates from the Crusades. Its oldest European form is Ital. assassifzo, and it was adopted into French in the i6th century. Henri Estienne, whose fiery patriotism entered even into philological questions, reproaches his countrym.en for using foreign terms. They should only adopt, he says, Italian words which express Italian qualities hitherto unknown to the French, such as assassin, charlatan, poltro?i I Assassin is really a plural, from the hachaschin, eaters of haschish, who executed the decrees of the Old Man of the Mountains. It was one of these who stabbed Ed^vard Longshanks at Acre. The first slaves were captive Slavonians. We find the word in most of the European languages. The fact that none of the Western tribes of the race called themselves Slays or Slavonians shows that the v/ord could not have entered Europe via Germany, where the Slavs were called Wends. It must have come from the Byzantine empire via Italy. Some Spanish words have also come to us by the indirect route. The cocoa, which is grateful and com- forting, was formerly spelt cacao, as in French and German. It is a Mexican word. The cocoa of cocoa-7iut is for coco, a Spanish baby word for an ugly face or COW-BOY WORDS 21 bogie-man. The black marks at one end of the nut give it, especially before the removal of the fibrous husk, some resemblance to a ferocious face. Stevens (1706) explains coco as " the word us'd to fright children ; as we say the Bulbeggar." Mustafig seems to represent two words, ineste7igo y 7nostrenco, " a straier " (Percyvall). The first appears to be connected with inesta^ "a monthly fair among herdsmen ; also, the laws to be observed by all that keep or deal in cattle " (Stevens), and the second with moslrary to show, the finder being expected to advertise a stray. The original ip^us tangs were of course" descended from the strayed horses of the Spanish conquistadors. Ranch, Span, rancho, a row (of huts), is a doublet of rank^ from Fr. ra)ig, old Fr. I'cng, Old High Ger. kring, a ring. Thus what is now usually straight was once circular, the ground idea of ^.xrange- ment surviving. Another doublet is Fr. harangue, due to the French inability to pronounce hr (see p. 50), a speech delivered in the ring. 6"A also Ital. artngo/' ^. riding or carreering place, a liste for horses, or feates of armes : a declamation, an oration, a noise, a common loud speech " (Florio), in which the " ring " idea is also prominent. Other "cow-boy" words of Spanish origin are the less familiar cinch, girth of a horse, Span. cincJia, from Lat. cinguia, also used metaphorically — "The state of the elements enabled Mother Nature 'to get a cinch^ on an honourable ssstheticism." — (Snaith, Mrs Fitz, Ch. i.) and the formidable riding-whip called a qnirt, Span. ctierda, cord. We have the same transference of mean- ing in Span, reata, a rope, from the verb reatar, to bind together, Lat. re-aptare. This means a tethering rope in Bret Harte, but in contemporary novels of Californian B 2 22 WANDERINGS OF WORDS life it is used for a whip. Combined with the definite article, la reata^ it has given lariat^ a familiar word in literature of the Buffalo Bill character. LassOy Span, lasoy Lat. laqiieus, snare, is a doublet of Eng. lace. When, in the Song of Hiawatha — " Gitche Manito, the mighty, Smoked the calumet^ the Peace-pipe, . As a signal to the nations," he was using an implement with a French name. Caluinet is an Old Norman word for chahimeaii^ reed, pipe, a diminutive from \.2l\.. calamus. It was naturally applied by early French voyagers to the "long reed for a pipe stem." English shawm is the same word without the diminutive ending. Another Old French word, once common in English, but now found only in dialect, is felon^ a whitlow. It is used more than once by Mr Hardy — "I've been visiting to Bath because I had 2l felon on my thumb.*' — {Far from the Madding Crowd^ Ch. xxxiii.) This is still an everyday word in Canada and the United States. It is a metaphorical use oi felon ^ a fell villain. A whitlow was called in Latin fiirimculus, " a little theefe; a sore in the bodie called a fellon" (Cooper), v/hence Fr. fiironcle, or froncle, *' the hot and hard bumpe, or swelling, tearmed, a fellon " (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was iagax^ " a felon on a man's finger " (Cooper), lit, thievish. One of ' its Spanish names is padrastro^ lit. step-father. I am told that an " agnail " was form.erly called a "step-mother" in Yorkshire. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology (see pp. 92-6). Some of the above instances show how near to home we can often track a word which at first sight appears PORTUGUESE WORDS 23 to belong to another continent. This is still more strikingly exemplified in the case of Portuguese words, which have an almost uncanny way of pretending to be African or Indian. Some readers will, I think, be surprised to hear that assegai occurs in Chaucer, though in a form not easily recognisable. It is a Berber word which passed through Spanish and Portuguese into French and English. We find Fr. archegaie in the 14th century, azagaie in Rabelais, and the modern form zagaie in Cotgrave, who describes it as " a fashion of slender, long, and long-headed pike, used by the Moorish horsemen." In Mid. English rarchegaie was corrupted by folk etymology (see p. 106) into laricegay^ lanncegayey the form used by Chaucer. The use of this weapon was prohibited by statute in 1406, hence the early disappearance of the word. Another " Zulu "* word which has travelled a lone way is kraal. This is a contracted Dutch form from Port, curralj a sheepfold {cf. Span, con-al^ a pen, enclosure). Both assegai and kraal were taken to South East Africa by the Portuguese and then adopted by the Boers and Kafirs.^ Sjambok occurs in 17th-century accounts of India in the form chawhick. It is a Persian word, spelt chabotik by Moore, in Lalla Rook/i. It was adopted by the Portuguese as chabuco\ " (in the Portuguese India) a whip or scourge " - (Vieyra, Port. Diet. J 1794). Fetish^ an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Purchas and Hakluyt. It is the V ort. feitico^ Lat. factitiuSy artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers * Ka/ir (Arab.) means infidel. ^ Eng. chawhuck is used in connection with the punishment we call the bastinado. This is a corruption of Span, hastojiada, •* a stroke with a club or staff" (Stevens, 1706). On the other hand, we extend the meaning of drub^ the Arabic word for bastinado^ to a beating of any kind. 24 WANDERINGS OF AVORDS to the graven images of the heathen. The correspond- ing Old Fr. faitis is rather a complimentary adjective, and everyone remembers the lady in Chaucer who spoke French fairly and fetotisli. Palaver^ also a travellers' word from the African coast, is Voxt.palavra^ v/ord, speech, Greco-Lat. parabola. It is thus a doublet oi parole 3.nd parable, and is related to parley. Ayah, an Indian nurse, is Port, aia,, nurse, of unknown origin. Caste is Port casta, pure, and a doublet of chaste. Tank, an Anglo-Indian word of which the meaning has narrowed in this country, is Port, tanqtie, a pool or cistern, Lat. stagmim, whence Old Fr. estajig (/tang) and provincial Eng. stank, a dam, or a pond banked round. Cobra is the Portuguese for snake, cognate with Fr. cotileuvre, Lat. coluber (see p. 7). We use it as an abbreviation for cobra de capello, hooded snake, the second part of which is identical with Fr. chapeaii and cognate with cape, chapel (p. 141), chaplet, a garland, and chaperon, a " protecting " hood. From still further afield than India Q.o\iit.sjoss, a Chinese god, a corruption of Port, deos, Lat. dens. Even mandarin comes from Portuguese, and not Chinese, but it is of Eastern origin, probably Malay. The word gorilla is perhaps African, but more than two thousand years separate its first appearance from its present use. In the 5th or 6th century, B.C., a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules along the west coast of Africa. He probably followed very much the same route as Sir Richard Dalyngridge and Saxon Hugh when they voyaged with Witta the Viking. He wrote in Punic a record of his adventures, which was received with the incredulity usually accorded to travellers' tales. Among the wonders he encountered were some hairy savages called gorillas. His work was translated into SILK ^ 25 Greek and later on into several European languages, so that the word became familiar to naturalists. In 1847 it was applied to the giant ape, which had recently become known to naturalists. The origin of the word silk is a curious problem. It is usually explained as from Greco-Lat. sericiini^ a name derived from, an Eastern people called the Seres^ presumably the Chinese. It appears in Anglo-Saxon as seolc. Now, at that early period, words of Latin origin came to us by the overland route and left traces of their passage. But all the Romance languages use for silk a name derived from Lat. scsta^ bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German {Sezde) and Dutch {zijde). The derivatives of seriacm stand for another material, serge. Nor can it be assumed that the r of the Latin word would have become in English always /and never r. There are races which cannot sound the letter r, but we are not one of them. As the word silk is found also in Old Norse, Swedish, Danish, and Old Slavonian, the natural inference is that it must have reached us along the north of Europe, and, if derived from serictmi, it must, somewhere in Asia, have passed through a language which had nor. CHAPTER III WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE In a sense, all nomenclature, apart from purely scientific language, is popular. But real meanings are often so rapidly obscured that words become mere labels and cease to call up the image or the poetic idea with which they were first associated. To take a simple instance, how many people realise that the daisy is the ''day's eye ? " In studying that part of our vocabulary which especially illustrates the tendencies shown in popular name-giving, one is struck by the keen observation and im.aginative power shown by our far-off ancestors, and the lack of these qualities in later ages. Perhaps in no part of the language does this appear so clearly as in the names of plants and flowers. The most primitive way of naming a flower is from some observed resemblance, and it is curious to notice the parallelism of this process in various languages. Thus our crowfoot, crane's bill, larkspur, vionkshood, snap- dragon, are in German Hahnenfuss (cock's foot), Storch- schnabeKstoxk's bill), Rittersporn (knight's spur), Eise?thut (iron hat), Lbwenmaiil (lion's mouth). I have purposely chosen instances in which the correspondence is not absolute, because examples like Lbwenzahn (lion's tooth), da?idelion (Fr. dent de lion) may be suspected 26 . NAMES OF PLANTS 27 of being mere translations. I give the names in most general use, but the provincial variants are numerous, though usually of the same type. The French names of the flowers mentioned are still more like the English. The more learned words which sometimes replace the above are, though now felt as mere symbols, of similar origin, e.g., geranium and pelargonium, used for the cultivated crane's bill, are derived from the Greek for crane and stork respectively. So also in chclidGuiunt, whence our celandine or szvalloiu-zvort, we have the Greek for swallow. In the English names of plants we observe various tendencies of the popular imagination. We have the crudeness of cowslip for earlier cow slop, cow-dung, and many old names of unquotable coarseness, the quaint- ness of Sweet William, lords and ladies, bachelors' buttons, dead men's fingers, and the exquisite poetry of /"^/'^e'/-;//^- not, hearfs ease, love in a mist, travellet^s joy. There is also a special group named from medicinal properties, such as feverfew, a doublet of febrifuge, tansy, Fr. tanaisie, from Greco- Lat. athanasia, immortality. We may compare the learned saxifrage, stone-breaker, of which the Spanish doublet is sassafras. The German name is Steinbrech. There must have been a time when a simple instinct for poetry was possessed by all nations, as it still is by uncivilised races and children. Am.ong European nations this instinct appears to be dead for ever. We can name neither a mountain nor a flower, Our Mount Costigan, Mount Perry, Mount William cut a sorry figure beside the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the Monk, the Maiden, the Storm Pike, the Dark Eagle Pike. Occasionally a race v/hich is accidentally brought into closer contact with nature may have a happy inspiration, such as the Drakenberg (dragon mountain) 28 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE or Weenett ^ (weeping) of the old vortrekkers. But the Cliff of the Falling Flowers, the name of a precipice over which the Korean queens cast themselves to escape dishonour, represents an imaginative realm which is closed to us.- The botanist who describes a new flower hastens to join the company of Messrs Dahl, Fzichs, Lobel^ Magnol and Wister^ while fresh varieties are used to imm.ortalise a florist and his family. The names of fruits, perhaps because they lend themselves less easily to imaginative treatment, are even duller than modern names of flowers. The only English names are the apple and ^'t berry. New fruits either retained their foreign names {cherry, peacJi^ p ear ^ q?imce) or were violently converted into apples or berries, usually the former. This practice is common to the European languages, the apple being regarded as the typical fruit Thus the orange is usually called in North Germany Apfelsine, apple of China, with which we may compare our " China orange." In South Germany it was called Pomeranze (now used especially of the Seville orange), from Ital. ponio, apple, arancia, orange. Fr. orange is folk-etymology {or, gold) for ^ a range, from Arab. 7iarandj, whence Span, naranja. Melon is simply the Greek for "apple," and has also given us viarvialade, which comes, through French, from Port, inannelada, quince jam, a derivative of Greco-Lat. mcliinehiin, quince, lit. honey-apple. Pine-apple meant " fir-cone" as late as the 17th century, as Yx.poinme de pin still does. The fruit (Fr. ananas^ was named from its shape, which closely resembles that of a fir-cone. ^ A place where a large number of settlers with their wives and children wei e massacred by the Zulus. " "Two mountains near Dublin, which we, keeping in the grocery line, have called the Great and the Little Sugarloaf, are named in Irish the Golden Spears." — (Trench, On the Sludy of Words^ POMEGRANATE— CATERPILLAR 29 Pomegranate means " apple with seeds," We also find the apricot, lemon {j)omcitro7i), peach, and quince all described as apples. At least one fruit, the greejigagc^ is named from a person, Sir William Gage, a gentleman of Suffolk, who popularised its cultivation early in the iSth century. It happens that the French name of the fruit, reiyie^ clatide (pronounced glaicde), is also personal, from the wife of Francis I. Animal nomenclature shows some strange vagaries. The resemblance of the hippopotaviiis, lit. river-horse, to the horse, hardly extends beyond their common possession of four legs. The lion v/ould hardly recognise himself in the aiit-lioyi or the sea-lioii^ still less in the chameleon^ lit. earth-lion, the first element of which occurs also in camomile^ earth-apple. The guinea-pig is not a pig, nor does it come from Guinea (see p. 47). Porcupine means "spiny pig." It has an extraordinary number of early variants, and Shakespeare wrote \\. por- pentine. One Mid. English form was porkpoint. The French name has hesitated between spine and spike. The modern form" is pore-epic, but Palsgrave has '^ porkepyn a beest, pore espin^ Porpoise is from Old Fr. porpeis, for porcpeis {1^2,t.porcus piscis\ pig-fish. The modern French name is marsotiiii, from Ger. Meerschwein, sea-pig ; cf. the name sea-hog, formerly used in English. Old Fr. peis survives also in grampus, Anglo-Fr. granipais for grand peis, big fish, but the usual Old French word is craspeis or graspeis, fat fish. The caterpillar seems to have suggested in turn a cat and a dog. Our word is corrupted by folk-etymology from Old Fr. chatepeleuse, " a corne-devouring mite, or weevell " (Cotgrave). This probably means " woolly cat," just as a common species is popularly called woolly ' bear, but it was understood as being connected with the 30 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE French verb peler, "to////, pare, barke, unrinde, unskin" (Cotgrave). The modern French name chenille is a derivative oi chien, dog. It has also been applied to a fabric of a woolly nature ; cf. the botanical catkin^ which is in Fr. chaton, kitten. Some animals bear nicknames. Dotterel means " dotard," and dodo is from the Port, doudo, mad. Ferret is from Fr. ftiret^ a diminutive from Lat. fiir^ thief. Shark was used of a sharper or greedy parasite before it was applied to the fish. This, in the records of the Elizabethan voyagers, is more often called by its Spanish name iiburon^ whence Cape Tiburon, in Haiti. The origin of shark is unknown, but it appears to be identical with shirks for which we find earlier sherk. We find Ital. scrocco (whence Fr. escroc)^ Ger. Schiirke^ Du. schiirky rascal, all rendered "shark" in early dictionaries, but the relationship of these words is not clear. Th^ palmer^ i.e. pilgrim, worm is so called from his wandering habits. Ortolan means "gardener" (Lat. hortus, garden). It comes to us through French from Ital. ortolano^ " a gardener, an orchard keeper. Also a kinde of daintie birde in Italie, some take it to be the linnet" (Florio). We may compare Fr. bouvreuil^ bull-finch, a diminutive of bouvier, ox-herd. This is called in German Dompfaffe, a contemptuous name for a cathedral canon. Fr. vioineau^ sparrow, is a diminu- tive of vioine, monk. The wagtail is called in French lavafidiere, laundress, from the up and down motion of its tail suggesting the washerwoman's beetle, and bergeronnette, little shepherdess, from its habit of follow- ing the sheep. Adjutant, the nickname of the solemn Indian stork, is clearly due to Mr Atkins, and the secretary bird is so named because some of his head feathers suggest a quill pen behind an ear. The converse process of people being nicknamed SHREW— MEGRIMS 31 from animals is also common and the metaphor is usually pretty obvious. An interesting case is shrew^ a libel on a very inoffensive little animal, the shrew- niousey Anglo-Sax. screawa. Cooper describes inns arafieus as " a kinde of mise called a shrew, which if he go over a beastes backe he shall be lame in the chyne ; if he byte it swelleth to the heart and the beast dyeth." This "information" is derived from Pliny, but the superstition is found in Greek. The epithet was, up to Shakespeare's time, applied indifferently to both sexes. From shrew is derived shrewd, earlier shrewed, the meaning of which has become much milder than when Henry VHI. said to Cranmer — "The common voice I see is verified Of thee which says, * Do my lord of Canterbury A shrewd turn, and he's your friend for ever.'" {Henry VIIL, v. 2.) The title Dauphin, lit. dolphin, commemorates the- absorption into the French monarchy, in 1349, of the lordship of Dauphine, the cognisance of which was three dolphins. The application of animals* names to diseases is a familiar phenomenon, e.g., ca7icer (and canker), crab, and hipiis, wolf To this class belongs imilligrubs, for which we find in the 17th century also moiildy grubs. Its oldest meaning is stomach-ache, still given in Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1864). Mnlly is still used in dialect for mouldy, earthy, and grub was once the regular word for worm. The Latin name for the same discomfort was venninatio. For the later transition of meaning we may compare viegrims, from Fr. migraine, head-ache, Greco-Lat. hemicrania, lit. half skull, because supposed to affect one side only of the head. A good many names of plants and animals have a V 32 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE religious origin. Hollyhock is for hofy hock, from Anglo- Sax, hoc, mallow: for the pronunciation cf. holiday. Halibut means holy butt, the latter word being an old name for flat fish ; for this form of holy, cf Jialidom. Lady in names of flowers such as lady's bedstraiv, lady's garter, lady's slipper, is for Our Lady. So also in lady- bird, called in French bete a bon Dieu and in German Marienkdfer, Mary's beetle. Here may be mentioned samphire, from Old Fr. Jierbe de Saint Pierre, " sampire, crestmarin" (Cotgrave). The filbert, 02ix\\e.r: phi liber t, is named from St Philibert, the nut being ripe by St Philibert's day (22nd Aug.). We may compare Ger. LambertsTiiiss, filbert, originally "Lombard nut," but popularly associated with St Lambert's day (17th Sept.). The application of baptismal names to animals is a very general practice, though the reason for the selection of the particular name is not always clear. The most famous of such names is Renard the Fox. The Old French for fox is goupil, a derivative of Lat. vulpes, fox. The hero of the great beast epic of the Middle Ages is Renard le goupil, and the fact that renard h^s, now com- pletely supplanted ^^z//// shows how popular the Renard legends must have been. Renard is from Old High Ger. regin-hart, strong in counsel ; cf. our names Reginald and Reynold, and Scot. Ronald, of Norse origin. From the same source come Chantecler, lit. sing clear, the cock, and Partlet, the hen, while Bruin, the bear, lit. " brown," is from the Dutch version of the epic. In the Low German version, Reinke de Vos, the ape's name is Mo7ieke, a diminutive corresponding to Ital. monicchio, " a pugge, a munkie, an ape " (Florio), the earlier history of which is much disputed. The cat was called Tibert, whence the allusions to Tybalt's nine lives in Ronico and Juliet (iii. i). The fact that the donkey was at one time regularly NAVVIES OF BIRDS 33 called Ctiddy made Cuthbert for a long period unpopular as a baptismal name. He is now often called Neddy. The hare was called Wat ( Walter) in Tudor times. In the Roman de Renard he is Couard^ whence coward^ a derivative of Old Fr. cone {queue) ^ tail, from Lat, cauda. The idea is that of the tail bet^veen the legs, so that the name is etymologically not \^ry appropriate to the hare. Parrot^ for earlier perrot, means " little Peter." Fr. pierrot is still used for the sparrovv^. The family name Perrot is sometimes a nickname, "the chat- terer," but can also mean literally "little Peter," just as Eitwiot means "little Emma," and Harriot "little Mary." The extension Poll Parrot is thus a kind of hermaphrodite. Petrel is of cognate origin, with an allusion to St Peter's v/alking upon the sea ; cf. its German name, Sankt Peters Vogel. Sailors call the petrel Mother Carey's chicken, probably a nautical corruption of some old Spanish or Italian name. -But in spite of ingenious guesses, this lady's genealogy remains as obscure as that of Davy Jones or the Jolly Roger. Robin has practically replaced red-breast. The martin is in French Diartinet, and the name may have been given in allusion to the southward flight of this swallow about Martinmas ; but the king-fisher, not a migrant bird, is called vtarti-n-pichezir^ formerly also fnartinet pechetir or oiseau de Saint-Martin^ so that ftiartin may be due to some other association. Some- times the double name survives. We no longer say Philip sparroiVy but Jack ass. Jack claw, Jenny wren, Tom tit (see p. 113), and the inclusive Dicky bird, are still familiar. With these we may compare Hob {i.e. Robert) goblin. Madge owlet, or simply Madge, was once common. For Mag pie we find also the diminutive Maggot pie. Cotgrave has pie, " a pye, pyannat, meg- C 34 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE gatapie." In Old French it was also called jaquette^ *■ a proper name for a woman ; also, a piannat, or megatapie." The connection of this word, Fr./z>, Lat. J)zca, with the comestible //e is uncertain, hut it seems likely that the magpie's habit of collecting miscellaneous trifles caused its name to be given to a dish of uncertain constituents. It is a curious coincidence that the obsolete c/iue^ or cJiewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw. It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince Hal applies the name to Falstaff (i Henry IV.y V. i). Fr. ckouettBy screech-owl, formerly meant also "a chough, daw, jack-daw " (Cotgrave). A piebald horse is one balled like a magpie. Ball is a Celtic word for a white mark, especially on the forehead ; hence the tavern sign of the Baldfaced Stag. Our adjective bald is thus a past participle. Things are often named from animals. Crane^ kite, donkey-engine, 7nonkey-wrench, pig-iron, etc., are simple cases. The crane picture is so striking that we are not surprised to find it literally reproduced in many other languages. For kite we have Fr. cerf-vclant, flying stag, a name also applied to the stag-beetle, and Ger. Drachen, dragon. It is natural that terrifying names should have been given to early fire-arms. Many of these, e.g., basilisk, serpe?it, falconet, saker (from Fr. sacre, a kind of hav/k), are obsolete. More familiar is cnl- verin, Fr. coiileiivrine, a derivative of couleiivre, adder, Lat coluber — "And thou hast talked Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, ^f^Z-z/^^V/z." {I Henry IV., ii. 3.) One name for a handgun was dragon, whence our '[■X'- --^/'-.'^ ■ MUSKET-^MAXIM :0t:\'' ;>--35-^ '■dragoon, originally applied to a kind of mounted infantry ^ or carbineers. Mtisket was. the name of a small hawk. Mistress Ford uses it playfully to her page — • .; " How now, my eyas ^-musket, what news with you ? " {Merry WiveSy iii. 3.) But the hawk was so nicknamed from* its small size. Fr. 7nousquety now replaced in the hawk sense by imouchet, is from ItaL 7noschetto^ a dim.inutive from. Lat ?nusca^ fly. Thus mosquito (Spanish) and rmishei are doublets. Porcelain comes, through French, from \'i2\.porcella7ia^ " a kinde of fine earth called/^rr^/<^;^^, whereof they make fine china dishes, a^M^^ porcellan dishes" (Florio). This is, however, a transferred meaning, /c^r^^//^;?^ being the name of a particularly gloissy shell called the " Venus shell." It is a derivative jof Lat. porcus, pig. Easel comes, with many other painters' terms, from Holland. It is Du. ezel, ass, which, like Ger. Esel, comes from Lat asinus. For its metaphorical application we may compare Fr. chevalet, easel, lit. "little horse," and Eng. " clothes horsed Objects often bear the names of individuals. Such are albert chain, broicgharn, victoria, Wellington boot. Middle aged people can remember ladies wearing a red blouse called a garibaldi? Sometimes an inventor is immortalised, e.g., 7nackintosh and shrapnel, both due to 19th-century inventors. The more recent maxi7n is named from one who, according to the late Lord Salisbury, has saved many of his fellow- men from dying of old age. Other benefactors are commemorated in derringer, first recorded in Bret * For eyas^ see p. 105. ' To the same period belongs the colour magenta^ from the victory of the French over the Austrians at Magenta in 1859. 36 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE 7 Harte, and bowie^ which occurs in Dickens* Ameri^ ca7i Notes, Sandwich and spencer are coupled in an old rime — ' ' ' rjl': I. ■ ■ ' "Two noble earls, v/hom, if I quote, Some folks might call me sinner ; The one invented }ialf a coat, The other half a dinner." An Earl Spencer (i 782-1 845) made a short overcoat fashionable for some time. An Earl of Sandwich ( 1 718-1792) invented a form of light refreshment which enabled him to take a meal v/ithout leaving the gaming table. It does not appear that Billy Cock is to be classed with the above, or with Ckesterfield, Chippendale & Co. The New English Dictionary quotes (from 1721) a description of the Oxford V blood " in his " hdly-cocked hat,'* worn aggressively" on one side. Pinchbeck was a London watchmaker {fl-. c. 1700), and doily is from Day ley ^ a linen-draper of the same period. Etienne de Silhotiette\vd.s French finance minister in 1759, but the application of his name to a black profile portrait is variously explained. Negits was first brewed in Queen Anne's reign by Colonel Francis Negus. The first orrery was constructed by the Earl of Orrery {c. 1700). Galvani and Volta were Italian scientists of the l8th century. Mes??ier \YdiS a German physician of the same period. Nicotine is . named from Jean Nicot, French ambassador at Lisbon, who sent some tobacco plants to Catherine de M^dicis in 1560. He also compiled the first Old French dictionary. The gallows-shaped contrivance called a derrick perpetuates the name of a famous hangman who officiated in London about 1600. It is a Dutch name, identical \wh\i^ Dietrich, Theodoric, and Dirk (Hatteraick). Con- versely the Fr. potence, gallows, meant originally a VERBS FRO?vI NAZVIES 37 bracket or support, Lat. poteniia^ power. The origin of darbies^ handcuffs, is unknown, but the line — "To bind such babes in father Derbies bands," (Gascoigxe, The Sieel GlasSy 1576.) suggests connection with some eminent gaoler or thief- taker. Occasionally a verb is formed from a proper name. On the model of tantalise, from the punishment of Tantalus, we have, bowdlcrise^ from Bawdier, who published an expurgated " family Shakespeare " in 1818; cf viacadamise. Burke and bcryco tt commQmora.te a scoundrel and a victim. The latter word, from the treatment of Captain Boycott cf Co. Mayo in 1880, seems to have supplied a want, for Fr. boycotter and Ger. boycottieren are already e very-day words. Burke was hanged at Edinburgh in 1S29 for murdering people by suffocation in order to dispose of their bodies to medical schools. We now use the verb only of "stifling" discussion, but in the Ingoldsby Legends it still has the original sense — "But, when beat on his knees, That confounded De "Guise Came behind with the 'fogle' that caused all this breeze, Whipp'd it tight round his neck. and. v/hen backward hed jerk'd him, The rest of the rascals jump'd on him and BurJ^dYixiar {The Tragedy.") Jaruey, the slang name for a coachman, was in the 1 8th cQntury J erois ox Jaruis, but history is silent as to this English Jc/m. A pasquinade was originally an anonymous lampoon affixed to a statue of a gladiator which still stands in Rom.e. The statue is said to have been nicknamed from a scandal-loving cobbler named Pasquino. Florio has pasquino^ "a statue in C 2 38 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE Rome on whom all libels, railings, detractions, and satirical invectives are fathered." Pamphlet is an extended use of Old Fr. Parnpkilet^ the name of a Latin poem by one Patnphihis which was popular in the Middle Ages. The suffix -et was often used in this way, e.g., the translation of ^sop's fables by Marie de France was called Ysopet^ and Cato's moral maxims had the title Catonet^ or Parvus Cato. Modern Yt.pa7nphlet^ borrowed back from English, has always the sense of polemical writing. In Eng. libel, lit. "little book," we see a converse development of meaning. A three- quarter portrait of fixed dimensions is called a kitcat — *'• It is not easy to see why he should have chosen to produce a replica, or rather a kitcat." {Journal of Education, Oct. 191 1.) The name comes from the portraits of members of the Kitcat Club, painted by Kneller. Kit Kat, Christopher Kat, was a pastrycook at whose shop the club used to dine. Implements and domestic objects sometimes bear christian names. We may mention spinmng-jenny, and the innumerable meanings of jack. Davit, earlier davioty is a diminutive of David. Fr. davier, formerly daviet, is used of several mechanical contrivances, including a pick-lock. A kind of davit is called in Ger. Jilite, a diminutive of Judith. The implement by which the burglar earns his daily bread is now called 7}L jemmy, but in the 17th century we also find bess and betty. The French name is rossignol, nightin- gale. The Germ.an burglar calls it Dietrich, Peterchen, or Klaus, and the contracted forms of the first name, dyrk and dirk, have passed into Swedish and Danish with the same meaning. In Italian a pick-lock is called grimaldello, a diminutive of the name Grimaldo. A kitchen wench was once called a malkin GRIMALKIN— JUG 39 {Corwla?22iSj n. i). This is a diminutive of Matilda or Mary, possibly of both. Grinialkiti^ applied to a fiend in the shape of a cat, is for gray ninlkin — "I come, Graymalkiny {Macbeth^ \. i.) Malkin was also the regular name for a mop. Cotgrave has escouillo7i {ecoiroillofi)^ " a wispe, or dish-clowt ; a viankin^ or drag, to cleanse, or sweepe an oven." Ecotivillon is a derivative of Lat. scopa^ broom. Now another French word which means both " kitchen servant" and "dish-clout" is soiiillon^ from soiiiller^ to soil. What share each of these words, the sense development of which has been the converse of that of 7nalkin^ has in Eng. sctdlion is hard to say. The only thing certain is that scullion is not related to scullery^ Old Fr. escuelene, a collective from Old Fr. esaielle (Jcuelle), dish, from Lat scutella. A doll was formerly called a baby or puppet. It is the abbreviation of Dorothy, for we find it called a doroty in Scottish. We may compare Fr. viarionnette, a double diminutive of Mary, explained by Cotgrave as "little Marian or Mai; also, a puppet." Little Mary, in another sense, has been recently, but perhaps definitely, adopted into our language. Another old name for doll is rnammet. Capulet uses it contemptuously to his daughter — "And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining 77iam7net, in her fortune's tender, To answer : ' I'll not wed,' — ' I cannot love.' " {Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5.) Its earlier form is maumet, meaning " idol," and it is a contraction of Mahomet. The derivation oijiigxs not capable of proof, but a 17th-century etymologist regards it as identical with the 40 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE female iiame/?/^/ for Joan or Jane. This is supported hy jack used in a similar sense, and by toby jug and demi- john. The latter word is in French daine-jearme^ but both forms are probably due to folk-etymology. A coat of mail was called in English a jack and in French jaqtie, " 2. jack ^ or coat of maile " (Cotgrave) ; hence the diminutive 7*^r/l^^/. The German miners gave to an ore which they considered useless the name kobalt^ from kobold^ a goblin, gnome. This has given Eng. cobalt. Much later is the similarly formed nickel^ a dim.inutive of Nicholas. It comes to us from Sweden, but appears earliest in the German compound Kttpfernickel. Appar- ently nickel here means something like goblin ; cf Old Nick and, probably, the dickens — " I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of. — What do you call your knight's name, sirrah?" {Merry Wives, iii. 2.) Pantaloons come, via France, from Venice. A great many Venetians bore the name of Pantaleoney one of their favourite saints. Hence the application of the name to the characteristic Venetian hose. The " lean and slippered pantaloon " was originally one of the stock characters of the old I talian comedy. Torriano ( 1 65 9) has pantalone, " a pantalone, a covetous and yet amorous old dotard, properly applyed in comedies unto a Venetian." Knickerbockers take their name from Diedrich Knicker- bocker, the pseudonym under which Washington Irving wrote his Histoi-y of Old New York, in which the early Dutch inhabitants are depicted in loose knee-breeches. Certain christian names are curiously associated with stupidity. In modern English we speak of a 1 For extraordinary perversions of baptismal names see Chap. XII. It is possible that the rather uncommon family name Juggins is of the same origin. NINNY— JACKANAPES 41 silly Johmiy^ while the Germans say eiri dumvier Peter and French uses Colas {Nicolas), Nicodeme and Claude, the reason for the selection of the name not always being clear. English has, or had, in the sense of " fool," the words ninny, nickznn, noddy, zany. Nin7iy is for Innoce7it, " Innocent, Ninny, a proper name for a man " (Cotgrave). With this we may compare French hc7iH {i.e. Benedict), "a simple, plaine, doltish fellow; a noddy peake, a ninny hammer, a peagoose, a coxe, a silly companion" (Cotgrave). Nichuni and 7ioddy are pro- bably for Nicodemus or Nicholas, both of which are used in French for a fool. The reader will remember that Noddy Boffin was christened Nicodemus. Noddy- peak, nin7iy-ha7}inier, nicktnnpoop, now nincompoop, seem to be arbitrary elaborations. Zayiy, formerly a con- juror's assistant, is zanni, an Italian diminutive of Giovafini, John. With the degeneration of Irmocent and Benedict we may compare Fr. creti7i, idiot, an Alpine patois form of c/urtien. Christian, and Eng. silly, which once meant blessed, a sense preserved by its German cognate selig. Diince \s, a libel on the disciples of the great medieval schoolman John Duns Scotus, born at Dunse in Berwickshire. Dago, now usually applied to Itah'ans, was used by the Elizabethans, in its original form Diego, of the Spaniards. The derivation of guy and bobby (peeler) is well known. Jockey is a diminutive of the north country Jock, for Jack. The history of jacka7iapes is obscure. The earliest record of the name is in a satirical song on the unpopular William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who was beheaded at sea in 1450. He is called Jack Napes, the allusion being apparently to his badge, an ape's clog and chain. But there also seems to be association with Naples ; c{. fustia?i-anapes for Naples fustian. A poem of the 15th century tells 42 WORDS OF POPULAR MANUFACTURE us that from Italy came " apes and japes and marmus- ettes tayled/' Dandy is Scottish for Andrew; cf. Dandie Dinmo7it. Jilt was once a stronger epithet than at present. It I's for earlier jillet^ which is a diminutive of ////, the companion of Jack. Jill, again, is short for Gillian^ i.e. Juliana, so that jilt is a doublet of Shakespeare's sweetest heroine. Termagojit, like shrew (p. 31), was formerly used of both sexes. In its oldest sense of a Saracen god it regularly occurs with Mahotmd (Mahomet) — " Marsilies fait porter un Hvre avant : La lei i fut Mahum e Tervagan." '^ {Chanson de Roland^ 11. 610- 11.) Ariosto has Trivigante. Being introduced into the medieval drama, the name became synonymous with a stage fury^ — *' I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Ter??taganfy {Hamtetf iii. 2.) F'alstaff calls Douglas "that hot termagant Scot" (i Heyiry IV., v. 4). The origin of the word is un- known, but its sense development is strangely different from that of Mahomet (p. 39). ^ " Marsil has a book brought fonvard : the law of Mahomet and Termacrant was in it." CHAPTER IV WORDS AND PLACES A VERY large number of wares are named from the places from which they come. This is especially common in the case of woven fabrics, and the origin is often obvious, ^.^.^ arras, casJunere (by folk-etymology, kerseymere) damask, holland. The following are perhaps not all so evident— /ri'ese from Fries/and;'^ fiistia7i. Old Fr. fustaine {fiitaine), from F us tat, a suburb of Cairo; 7mtslin, Fr. moussclzne, from Mosul in Kurdistan ; shalloon from Chdlons-sur-^ldirne ; laivn from Laon \jean, formerly jane, ^r ova Genoa (French Genes -) ; ca^nbrzc from Kamerijk, the Dutch name of Cambrai {cf. the obsolete dornick, from the Dutch name of Tour?my) ; tartan from the Tartars (properly Tatars^, used vaguely for Orientals ; sarcenet from the Saracens ; sendal, ultimately from India {cf. Greco-Lat. sindon, Indian cloth); tabby. Old Fr. atabis, from the name of a suburb of Bagdad, now chiefly used of a cat marked something like the material in question. ' Whence also cheval de /rise, a contrivance used by the Frieslanders against cavaky. The German name is die spanischen Reitsr^ explained by Ludwig as "a bar ^Yith iron-spikes ; cheval di /rise, a warlick instrument, to keep off the horse." - The form jea)ts appears to be usual in America, e.g., '* His hands were thrust carelessly into the side pockets of a gray jeans coat." (Meredith Nicholson, War of the Carolmas, Ch. 15.) 43 44 WORDS AND PLACES Brittany used to be famous for hempen fabrics, and the villages of Locrenan and Daoulas gave their names to lockrav/i {Coriolamis^ ii. i) and dowlas — Hostess. You owe me money, Sir John ; and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it : I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back. Falstaff. Dowlas^ filthy dowlas ; I have given them away to bakers' wives, and they have m.ade bolters of them. (i Henry IV.y iii. 3.) Dttffel is a place near Antwerp — " And let it be of duffd gray, ^ As warm a cloak as man can sell." (Wordsworth, Alice Fell.) and Worstead is in Norfolk. Of other commodities majolica comes from Majorca^ called in Spanish Mallorca^ and in medieval Latin Majolica \ bronze from Bricn- dusiian (Brlndisi), delf from Delft^ the magnet from Magnesia^ the shallot^ Fr. cchalotte, in Old French also escalogne^ whence archaic Eng. scallioUy from Ascalon ; the sardine from Sardinia. A milliner^ formerly inilaner^ dealt in goods from Milan. Cravat dates from the Thirty Years' War, in which the Croats^ earlier Cravats^ played a part. Ermine is in medieval Latin mns Armenius, Armenian mouse, but comes, through Fr. hermine^ from Old High Ger. liarmo^ weasel. Buncombe^ more usually bunknm^ is the name of a county in North Carolina. To make a speech "for Buncombe" means, in American politics, to show your constituents that you are doing your best for your ;;f400 a year or its American equivalent. Cf. Billingsgate and Liniehoicse. The adjective j^r^f^ was formerly /r/^/:^ and meant Prussia. Todd quotes from Holinshed, "Sir Edward Howard then admirall, and with him Sir Thomas Parre in doubletts of crimsin velvett, etc., were apparelled BEZANT-^MAZURKA 45 after the fashion of Prussia or Spruced' Of similar origin are spruce-leather, spruce-beer^ and the spruce-fir, of which Evelyn says, "Those from Prussia (which we call spruce^ and Norway are the best." Among coins the bezant comes from Byza7itiuvi, the florin from Florence, and Shylock's ducat, chiefly a Venetian coin, from the ducato d'Apuglia, the Duchy of Apulia, where it was first coined in the 12th century. The dollar is the Low Ger. dalcr, for Ger. Taler, originally called 2, Joachimstaler, from the silver-mJne of Joachimstal, Joachim's dale, in Bohemia. Cotgrave registers a curious Old French perversion y<7r^//') In morris da?ice, Fr. dafise matiresqtie, the same adjective is used with something of the vagueness to be noticed in connection with India and Turkey (p. 47). Shake- speare uses the Spanish form — " I have seen him Caper upright, like to a wild morisco. Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells." (2 Henry VI., iii. i.) Other " local " dances are the polka, which means " Polish woman " ; mazjirka^ woman of Massovia ; and 46 WORDS AND PLACES the obsolete polojiaise^ cracovienne^ from Cracow, and varsovienne^ from Warsaw. The V(^r«;^/^// escole {/cole), spongia> esporige i/ponge), stabulum > estahle {etable). English words derived from French generally show the older form, but without the initial vowel, school^ sponge^ stable. The above are very simple examples of sound change. There are certain less regular changes, which appear to work in a more arbitrary fashion and bring about more picturesque results. Three of the most important of these are assimilation, dissimilation, and metathesis. Assimilation is the tendency of a sound to imitate its neighbour. The tree called the li7ne was formerly the line^ and earlier still the lind. We see the older form in linden and in such place-names as LyndJmrst^ lime wood. Liyie often occurred in such compounds as line-bark^ line-bast, line-wood, where the second com- ponent began with a lip consonant. The n became also a lip consonant because it was easier to pronounce, and by the 17th century we generally find lime instead of line. We have a similar change in Lombard for Ger. lang-bart, long-beard. For Liverpool we find also Litherpool in early records. If the reader attempts to pronounce both names rapidly, he will be able to form his own opinion as to whether it is more natural for Liverpool to become Litherpool or vice versa, a vexed question with philologists. Fr. vdin, a derivative of Old Fr. veel {veati), calf, and veniri, Lat. venemim^ have given Eng. velliun and venom, the final consonant being in each case assimilated^ to the initial labial. So also mushroom, Mid. Eng. muscheron, Fr. ?notissero?i, from 7?ionsse, moss. 1 Apart from assimilation, there is a tendency in English to substitute -m for -«, e.g. grogram for grogran (see p. 62), In the family name Hansom^ for Hanson, the son of Hans, we have dissimilation of « (see p. 52). 52 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS Vulgar Lat. circare (from circa^ around) gave Old Fr. cerchier^ Eng. search. In modern Fr. chercher the initial consonant has been influenced by the medial ch. The in of the curious word ampersand, variously spelt, is due to the neighbouring /. It is applied to the sign &. I thought it obsolete till I came across it on successive days in two contemporary writers — " One of my mother's chief cares was to teach me my letters, which I learnt from big A to Ampersand in the old hornbook at Lantrig." (Quiller Couch, Dead Man's Rock^ Ch. ii.) "Tommy knew all about the work. Knew every letter in it from A to Eniperzan." (Pett Ridge, In the Wars.) Children used to repeat the alphabet thus — "A per se A, B per se B," and so on to " and per se and^ The symbol & is an abbreviation of Lat. et, written &. Dissimilation is the opposite process. The archaic word pomander — " I have sold all my trumpery ; not a counterfeit stone, not a riband, glass, po??iander^ brooch, ... to keep my pack from fasting." (JVznfer's Tale, iv. 3.) was formerly ^^€\.\. po7neamber. It comes from Old Fr. po7ne amhre^ apple of amber, a ball of perfume once carried by the delicate. In this case one of the two lip consonants has been dissimilated. A like change has occurred in Fr. nappe ^ cloth, from Latin mappa, whence our napkin^ apron (p. 104), and the family name Napier. The sounds most frequently affected by dissimilation are those represented by the letters /, n^ and r. Fr. gonfalon is for older gonfanon. Chaucer uses the older form, Milton the newer — " Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced. Standards dind gonfalons, 'twixt van and rear. Stream in the air." {Paradise Lost, v. 589.) DISSBIILATION 53 Gonfanon is of Germanic origin. It means literally "battle-flag," and the second element is cognate with English fane or vatie (Ger. Fahne). Eng. pilgrim and Fr. pclerifi, from LaL pcrcgrirnis, illustrate the change from r to /, while the word frail^ an osier basket for figs, is due to a change from / to r, which goes back to Roman times. A grammarian of imperial Rome named Probus compiled, about the 3rd or 4th century, A.D., a list of cautions as to mispronunciation. In this list we find ^^ flagcllum, non fragelluinr In the sense of switch, twig, fragelluyrt gave Old Fr. freely basket made of twigs, whence Eng. frail ; while the correct fMgelhim gave Old Yr.fleel {Jieaii)^ v/hence Eng. flail. A Vulgar Lat ^//lora, mulberry, from Lat. morus, mulberry^ tree, has given Fr. 7u/cre. The r of derrj- has brought about dissimilation in Eng. imilberry and Ger. Maidbeerc. Cclmiel has the spelling of Fr. colonel^ but its pronunciation points rather to the dissimilated Spanish form cororiel which is common in Elizabethan English. Cotgrave has colonel, "a colonell, or coronell ; the commander of a regiment." Sometimes dissimilation leads to the disappearance of a consonant, e.g., Eng. feeble, Fr. faible, represents Lat yf^^/Z/i-, lamentable, from _;fc re, to weep. Fuglenian was once flitglehnan, from Ger. Flilgebnann, wing man, i.e., a tall soldier on the right vring v.ho exaggerated the various movements of musketry drill for the guidance of the rest. The female name ^7/;/-r2^c:-'/is a dissimilation of Amabel, whence Mabel. By an irregular change, of which, however, we have other exaimples, A7i)iabel has become Arab el ox Arabella. Our Ic-jel is Old Yx. livel, Vulgar Lat. ^libelliim, for libella, a plummet, diminutive of libra, scales. Old Fr. livel became by dissimilation 7iivel, now niveau. Many conjectures have been made as to the etymology of oriel. It is from Old Fr. oriol, a D2 54 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS recess, or sanctum, which first occurs in a Norman French poem of the I2th century on Becket This is from a late Latin diminutive aulceoluvt, a small chapel or shrine, which was dissimilated into aurcBolum. Metathesis is the transposition of two sounds. A simple case is our trouble^ Fr. trotihler^ from Lat. tiirbulare. Maggot is for Mid. Eng. maddok, a diminutive of Anglo- Sax, vid^a ; cf. Ger. Made^ maggot. Kittle, in the phrase "kittle cattle," is identical with tickle; cf. Ger. kitsehi, to tickle. The only reasonable theory for the origin of tankard is that it stands for ^cantar^ from Lat. cantharus, with which it corresponds exactly in meaning ; e.g., canthaj'us, "a pot, a jugge, a ta7ikerd" (Cooper); cantharo, " a tankard or ^M-g that houldeth much " (Florio) ; cantkare, " a great jugge, or tankard" (Cotgrave). Fr. moustiqtce, from Span. mosq?uto, is for earlier inoiisquife, Thisel is Fr. etincelle, spark, earlier estincele, which supposes a Lat. ^stincilla for scintilla. The old vv^ord anlace, dagger, common in Mid. English and revived by Byron and Scott — " His harp in silken scarf was slung. And by his side an anlacc hung." {Rokeby, v. 15.) has provoked many guesses. Its oldest form, anelas, is a metathesis of the common Old Fr. alejtas, dagger. This is formed from alene, of Germanic origin, cognate with awl; cf. cutlass, Fr. coutelas (p. 116). Beverage is from Old Fr. bevrage, or betivrage, now bretroage, Vulgar Lat. '^biberaticmn, from bibere, to drink. Here, as in the case of level (p. 53), and search (p. 52), English preserves the older form. In Martcllo tower, from a fort taken by the British (1794) in Mortella, i.e., Myrtle, Bay, Corsica, we have vowel metathesis. Wattle and wallet are used indifferently in Mid. English for a little bag. Shake- IRREGULAR CHANGES 55 . speare no doubt had in mind the wattles of a cock or turkey when he made Gonzalo speak of mountaineers — "Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Ji^«//^/i- of flesh." {Je?nj)est,\\\. 2,') It goes without saying that such linguistic phenomena are often observed in the case of children and uneducated people. Not long ago the writer was urged by a gardener to embellish his garden with a ruskit arch. When metathesis extends beyond one word we have what is known as a spoonerism^ the original type of which is said to be " Kinqiierings congs their titles take." We have seen (p. 52) that the letters /, n, r are particularly subject to dissimilation and metathesis. But we sometimes find them alternating without apparent reason. Thus banister is a modern form for the correct baluster} This was not at first applied to the rail, but to the bulging colonets on which it rests. Fr. balustre comes, through Italian, from Greco- Lat. balaustium, a pomegranate flower, the shape of which resembles the supports of a balustrade. Cotgrave explains balustres as " ballisters \ little, round and short pillars, ranked on the outside of cloisters, terraces, galleries, etc." Glamour is a doublet of gramjnar (see p. 134), and flounce was ioixm^xXy froutice, from Fr. froncery now only used of "knitting" the brows — " Till civil-suited morn appear, Not trickt ■axidi frounc' t as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt." ( M I LTON, Penseroso, 123.) ¥r. flibustier, whence omx filibuster, was ^dsXi^x fribustier^ * Cf. the similar change in the family name Banister (p. i65). 56 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS a corruption of Du. vrijbuiter^ whence directly the Eng. freebooter} All words tend in popular usage to undergo a certain amount of shrinkage. The reduction of Lat. digitale, from digiUis, finger, to Fr. . atteinie, touch — " I will not poison thee with my attaint.^'' {Lucreccy 1. 1072.) Puzzle was in Mid. Eng. opposaile, i.e., something put before one. We still speak of " a poser." Spital, for hospital^ survives in Spitalfieids, and Spittlegate at Grantham and elsewhere. Crew is for accrewe (Holinshed). It meant properly a reinforcement, lit. on-growth, from Fr. accrottre, to accrue. In rccricit, we have a later instance of the same idea. Fr. recrue, recruit, from reci^ottre, to grow again, is still feminine, like many other military terms which were originally abstract or collective. Cotgrave has recreue^ " a supplie, or filling up of a defective company of souldiers, etc." We have possum for opossum, and coon for racoon, and this for arrahacoune, which I find in a 16th-century record of travel ; cf American skeeter for mosquito. In these two cases we perhaps have also the deliberate intention to shorten (see p. 61), as also in the obsolete ^ Our ancestors appear to have been essentially pacific. '^'x'Chfcnce^ for defence, we may compare Ger. schirmen^ to fence, from Schirni^ screen (cf. Regenschinn, umbrella), which, passing through Italian and French, has given \xs skirmish^ scrimmage^ scaramouch (see p. 1 31), and Shakespeareaii scrimer, fencer {Hamlety iv. 7). So also Ger. Gewehr^ weapon, is cognate with Eng. weir, and means defence — *• Get animal est tres mechant ; Quand on I'attaque, il se defend." 60 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS Australian tench^ for the aphetic 'tentzary, i.e., peni- tentiary. With this we may compare ^tec for detective. Drawing-room is for withdr^awing room^ and only the final t of saint is left in Tooley St., famed for its three tailors, formerly Saint Olave Street, and tawdry. This latter word is well known to be derived from Saint Audrey's fair. It was not originally depreciatory — " Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet gloves." ( Winters Tale, iv. 3.) and the full form is recorded by Palsgrave, who has Seynt Andries (read Aiidrie's) lace, "cordon." In drat, formerly 'od rot, zoimds, for God^s wounds, 'sdeath, odsbodikins, etc., there is probably a deliberate avoidance of profanity. The same tendency is seen in Gogs {Shrew, iii. 2), Fr. parbleu, and Ger. Potz in Potztaii- send, etc. The verb vie comes from Fr. envi, Lat. invitus, unwilling, in the phrase a Venvi Vun de V autre, "in emulation one of the other " (Cotgrave) ; cf gin (trap), Fr. engin, Lat. ingenitini. The prefix dis or des is lost in Spe7icer (see p. 153), spite, splay, sport, stain, etc. This English tendency to aphesis is satirised by a French song of the 14th century, intentionally written in bad French. Thus, in the line — " Or sont il vint le tans que Glais voura vauchier.'' Glais is for Anglais and vauchier is for chevauchier {ckevaucker), to ride on a foray. The literary language runs counter to this instinct, though Shakespeare wrote haviour for behaviour and longing for/ belonging, while billiinents for habilifnents is regular up to the 17th century. Children keep up the national prac- tice when they say member for reme7nber and zainine for exami7te. It is quite certain that baccy and later would be recognised literary forms if America had been CLIPPED WORDS 61 discovered two centuries sooner or printing invented two centuries later. Many words are shortened, not by natural and gradual shrinkage, but by deliberate laziness. The national distaste for many syllables appears in wire for telegra7n, the Artful Dodger's ivipe for the cXMmsy pocket handkerchiefs soccer for association^ and such portmanteau words as sqziarson^ an individual who is at once squire 3ind parson, or Bakerloo for Baker St. and Waterloo. The simplest way of reducing a word is to take the first syllable and make it a symbol for the rest Of com- paratively modern formation are//^^ and Zoo^ with which we may compare Barfs^ for Saint Bartholomew's, Cri, Pav^ "half a ;W," bike, and Q\Qn paj\ {or pageant. This method of shortening words was verj^ popular in the 17th century, from which period date <://(izen), mod(i\e vulgus) and pun(dignon). We often find the fuller mobile used for mob. The origin of pu?idigrio7i is uncertain. It may be an illiterate attempt at Ital. puntiglio^ which, like Fr. pointe, was used of a verbal quibble or fine distinction. Most of these clipped forms are easily identified, e.g., r<^(riolet), ^t^/2/(Ieman), hack{nQy), ^'^/(erinary surgeon). Cad is for Scot, caddie, errand boy, now familiar in connection 'with golf, and caddie is from Fr. cadet. The word had not always the very strong meaning we now associate with it Among Sketches by Boz is one entitled, "The last Cab driver and the first Omnibus Cadi' where cad means conductor. On tick, for on ticket , is found in the 17th century. We may compare the more modern biz and spec. B?'ig is for brigantine, Ital. brigantino, ** a kinde of pinnasse or small barke called a brigantine'' (Florio). The original meaning is pirate ship; cf brigand. \Vag\\2.s improved in meaning. It is for older wagiialter. Cotgrave has baboin {baboimt), " a trifling, busie, or crafty knave ; a 62 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS crackrope, waghalter, etc." The older sense survives in the phrase " to play the zvagl' i.e. truant. For the " rope " figure we may compare Scot, kempie, a minx, and obsolete Ital. cavestf-olo, a diminutive from Lat. capistrumy halter, explained by Florio as " a zvag^ a haltersacke." Modern Ital. capes fro is used in the same sense. Crack- rope is shortened to C7^ack. Justice Shallow remembered Falstaff breaking somebody's head " when he was a crack, not thus high" (2 Henry IV., iii. 2). C/iap is for c/iapman, once in general use for a m.erchant and still a common family name. It is cognate with cheap, c/ia^er, and Ger. kazifen, to buy, and probably also with Lat. caiipo, tavern keeper. We have the Dutch form in horse-coiiper, and also in the word coopering, the illicit sale of spirits by Dutch boats to North Sea fishermen. Merchant was used by the Elizabethans in the same way as our chap. Thus the Countess of Auvergne calls Talbot a "riddling merchant (i Henry VI., ii. 3). We may also compare Scot. callant, chap, from the Picard form of Fr. chaland, customer, and our own expression "a rum customerl^ reduced in America to "a rum cilss^ Hock, for Hoch- heimer, wine from Hochheim, occurs as early as Beaumont and Fletcher ; and mm, spirit, is for earlier rumbullion, of obscure origin. Gi7i is for geneva, a corruption of Fr. genievre, Lat. jimiperiis, from the berries of which it is distilled. The history of g?'og is more com.plicated. The stuff called grograin, earlier grograyfie, is from Fr. gros grain, coarse grain. Admiral Vernon (i 8th century) was called by the sailors "Old Grog" from his habit of wearing grogram breeches. When he issued orders that the regular allowance of rum was henceforth to be diluted with water, the sailors promptly baptized the mixture with his nick- name. CLIPPED FORMS 63 Sometimes the two first syllables survive. We have navvy for navigator^ brandy for brandywine, from Du. brandewyn, lit burnt wine, and whisky for usquebaugh^ Gaelic uisge-beatha^ water of life (cf. eau-de-vie)^ so that the literal meaning of whisky is very innocent. Before the 1 8th century usquebaugh is the regular form. " The prime is usquebaugJi^ which cannot be made anywhere in that perfection ; and whereas we drink it here in aqua vitcB measures, it goes down there by beer-glassfuls, being more natural to the nation." Canter is for Canterbury gallop, the pace of pilgrims riding to the shrine of St Thomas. John Dennis, known as Dennis the Critic, says of Pope, " Boileau's Pegasus has all his paces. The Pegasus of Pope, like a Kentish post-horse, is always on the Canterbury T In bugle ^ for bugle-horn, lit. wild-ox-horn. Old Fr. bugle, Lat. buculus, a diminutive of bos, ox, we have perhaps rather an ellipsis, like waterproof {co^X), than a clipped form — " Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn : Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle- horn." {Lockshy Hall.) Patter is no doubt for paternoster — " Fitz-Eustace, you, with Lady Clare, May bid your beads d^Vidi patter prayer." {Alarmion, vi. 27.) and the use of the word marble for a toy originally made of that stone makes it pretty certain that the alley, most precious of marbles, is short for alabaster. Less frequently the final syllable is selected, e.g., bus for 07nnibus, loo for lanterloo, variously spelt in the 17th and 1 8th centuries. Fr. lanturelu was originally the meaningless refrain or " tol de rol " of a popular song in Richelieu's time. Van is for caravan, a Persian 64 PHONETIC ACCIDENTS word, properly a company of merchants or ships travelling together, "also of late corruptly used with us for a kind of waggon to carry passengers to and from London" (Blount, Glossographia^ 1674). Wig is for periwigs a corruption of Fr. pernique^ of obscure origin. ' Varsity^ for university, and Sam Weller's ^Tizer^ for Morning Advertiser^ belong to the 19th century. Christian names are treated in the same way. Alexa7idcr gives Alec and Sandy, Herbert, ^Erb or Bert, lb (see p. 160) was once common for Isabella, while the modern language prefers Bella; Maud for Matilda is rather a case of natural shrinkage, while 'Tilda is perhaps due to unconscious aphesis, like Denry — " She saved a certain amount of time every day by addressing her son as Denry, instead of Edward Henry ^^ (Arnold Bennett, The Card, Ch. i.) Among conscious word formations may be classed many reduplicated forms, whether riming, as hurly- burly, or alliterative, as tittle-tattle, though reduplication belongs to the natural speech of children, and in at least one case, Fr. tante, from ante-ante, Lat. amita, the baby word has prevailed. In a reduplicated form only one half as a rule needs to be explained. Thus seesaw is from saw, the motion suggesting two sawyers at v/ork on a log. Zigzag is based on zag, cognate with Ger. Zacke, tooth, point. Shilly-shally is for shill I, shall I? Namby-pamby commemorates the poet Ambrose Philips, who was thus nicknamed by Pope and his friends. The weapon called a snickersnee — " As he squirmed and struggled And gurgled and guggled, I drew my snickersnee.^^ {The Mikado, ii.) is of Dutch origin and means something like "cut and PICKABACK 65 thrust" It is usually mentioned in connection with the Hollanders — "Among other customs they have in that town, one is, that none must carry a pointed knife aboui: him ; which makes the Hollander, who is us'd to snik and sme, to leave his horn-sheath and knife a ship-board v.hen he comes ashore." (HowELL, letter from Florence, 162 1.) The compound does not occur in Dutch. It is rather an English variant on Du. S7ice. cut. Reduplication is also responsible for pichMback^ earlier pickpack, from pack, bundle. The modern form is due to popular asso- ciation with back. CHAPTER VI WORDS AND MEANINGS We have all noticed the fantastic way in which ideas are linked together in our thoughts. One thing suggests another with which it is accidentally asso- ciated in memory, the second suggests a third, and, in the course even of a few seconds, we find that we have travelled from one subject to another so remote that it requires an effort to reconstruct the series of links which connects them. The same thing happens with words. A great number of vrords, despite great changes of sense, retain the fundamental m.eaning of the original, but in many cases this is quite lost. A truer image than that of the linked chain v/ould be that of a sphere giving off in various directions a number of rays each of which may form the nucleus of a fresh sphere. Or we may say that at each link of the chain there is a possibility of another chain branching off in a direction of its own. In Cotgrave's time to garble (see p. 19) and to cayivass, i.e. sift through canvas^ meant the same thing. Yet how different is their later sense development. There is a word ban^ found in Old High German and Anglo-Saxon, and meaning, as far back as it can be traced, a proclamation containing a threat, hence a command or prohibition. We have it in ba?ush^ to put m BAN— BURExVU— ROMANCE 67 under the ban. The proclamation idea survives in the banns of marriage and in Fr. arriere-ban^ "a proclama- tion, whereby those that hold authority of the king in mesne tenure, are summoned to assemble, and serve him in his warres " (Cotgrave). This is folk-etymology for Old Fr. arban, Old High Ger. hari-ban^ army summons. Slanting off from the primitive idea of proclamation is that of rule or authority. The French for outskirts is baniteiie, properly the "circuit of a league, or thereabouts" (Cotgrave) over which the local authority extended. All public institutions within such a radius were associated with ban, e.g., unfoiir, icn 7noidi7i a ban, " a comon oven or mill whereat all men may, and every tenant and vassall must, bake, and grind " (Cotgrave)- The French adjective banal, used in this connection, gradually developed from the meaning of "common" that of "common place," in which sense it is now familiar in English.^ Btirean, a desk, was borrowed from French in the L7th century. In modern French it means not only the desk, but also the office itself and the authority exercised by the office. Hence our familiar bureaucracy, likely to become increasingly familiar. The desk is so called because covered with bureau, Old Fr. buret, " a thicke course cloath, of a brown russet, or darke mingled, colour" (Cotgrave), whence Mid. Eng. borel, rustic, clownish, lit. roughly clad. The source is per- haps Lat. hirms, fiery, from Gk. irvp, fire. Romance was originally an adverb. To write in the vulgar tongue, instead of in classical Latin, was called romanice scribere. Old Fr. romanz escrire. When roinanz became felt as a noun, it developed a "singular" roynan or romant, the latter of which gave the archaic Eng. ro7naunt. The most famous of Old French romances * Archaic Eng. i5a;z/za/ already existed in the technical sense. 68 WORDS AND MEAfsflNGS are the epic poems called Chansons de geste^ songs of exploits, geste coming from the Lat. gesta^ deeds. Eng. gcst or jest is common in the i6th and 17th centuries in the sense of act, deed, and y^i-Z-book meant a story-book. As the favourite story-books were merry tales, the word gradually acquired its present meaning. A part of our Anglo-Saxon church vocabulary was supplanted by Latin or French words. Thus Anglo- Sax, ge-bed, prayer, was gradually expelled by Old Fr. preiere {priere), Lat. p7'ecaria. It has survived in beadsynan — " The beadsjnan^ after thousand aves told, For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold." (Keats, Eve of St Agnes.) beadroll, and bead^ now applied only to the humble device employed in counting prayers. Not only the Romance languages, but also German and Dutch, adopted, with the Roman character, Lat. scribere^ to write. English, on the contrary, preserved the native to write^ i.e. to scratch (runes), giving to scribere only a limited sense, to shrive. The meaning which we generally give to pudding is comparatively modern. The older sense appears in bhuk ptidding, a sausage made of pig's blood. This is also the meaning of Fr. bo2idi?i, whence pudding comes. A still older meaning of both words is intestine. A hearse^ now the vehicle in which a coffin is carried, is used by Shakespeare for a coffin or tomb. Its earlier meaning is a framework to support candles, usually put round the coffin at a funeral. This frame- work was so named from some resemblance to a harrow,^ Fr. herse^ Lat. hirpex^ hirpic-^ a rake. ^ This is the usual explanation. It seems possible that the framework suggested a portcullis. See p. 142. TREACLE— PASTERN . 69 ■Treacle is a stock example of great change of ' meaning. In Jeremiah, viii. 22, where the Vulgate has " Numquid resina non est in Galaad ? '* Coverdale's Bible has " There is no more triacle at Galaad." Old Fr. triacle is from Greco-Lat. tJieriaca^ a remedy against poison or snake-bite (dt)p, a wild beast). In Mid. English and later it was used of a sovereign remedy. It has, like sirup (p. 135), acquired its present m.eaning via the apothecary's shop. A stickler is now a man who is fussy about small points of etiquette or procedure. In Shakespeare he is one who parts combatants — "The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth, And, stickler-\\V^^ the armies separates." {Troilus and Cressida^ -v. Z.) An earlier sense is that of seeing fair-play. The deriva- tion is disputed, but the word has been popularly associated with the stick, or staff, used by the umpires in duels. Torriano (1659) gives stickler as one of the meanings of bastoniere, a verger or mace-bearer. Infantry comes, through French, from Italian. It means a collection of "infants" or juniors, so called by contrast with the proved veterans who composed the cavalry. The pasteni of a horse, defined by Dr Johnson as the knee, from " ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," still means in Cotgrave and Florio " shackle." Florio even recognises a verb to pastern^ e.g., pastoiare^ " to fetter, to clog, to shackle, to pastern, to give {gyv€)'^ It comes from Old Yx. pastJiroji {patunvi), 2i derivative oi pasture, such shackles being used to prevent grazing horses from straying. Pester {^. 155) is connected with it. The modern French word has changed its meaning in the same way. E 2 70 WORDS AND MEANINGS To rummage means in the Elizabethan navigators to stow goods in a hold. A rummager was what we call a stevedore} Rummage is Old Fr. arriimage (arri7nage), from arriimer^ to stow, the middle syllable of which is probably cognate with English room; cf. arranger^ to put in " rank." The Christmas waits were originally watchmen, Anglo-Fr. waite. Old Fr. gaite, from the Old High German form of modern Ger. Wacht, watch. Modern French still has the verb g2ietter^ to lie in wait for, and guet, the watch. Minstrel comes from an Old French derivative of Lat. minister^ servant. Modern Fr. mene- trier is only used of a country fiddler who attends village weddings. The lumber-room is supposed to be for Lombardnoom, i.e.^ the room in which pawnbrokers used to store pledged property. The Lombards introduced the three golden balls into this country. Livery is thus explained by the poet Spenser : " What livery is, we by common use in England know well enough, nam.ely, that it is allowance of horse-meat, as they com.monly use the word in stabling ; as, to keep horses at livery ; the which v/ord, I guess, is derived of livering or deliveri?ig forth their nightly food. So in great houses, the livery is said to be served up for all night, that is, their evening allowance for drink ; and livery is also called the upper weed which a serving-man wears; so called, as I suppose, for that it was delivered and taken from him at pleasure." This passage explains also livery stable.^ Our word ^ A Spanish word, Lat. siipator, " one that stoppeth chinkes " (Cooper). It came to England in connection with the wool trade. - In " livery and bait " there is pleonasm. Bait^ connected with bit/!, is the same word as in heTix-baiting and fishermen's bait. We have it also, via Old French, in abe'^ whence the aphetic bet, originally to tgg on. PEDIGREE— WAFER 71 comes from Fr. livree, the feminine past participle of livrer, from Lat. liberare^ to deliver. Pedigree was in Mid. ^ngVishpedegrew^petigrew^ etc. It represents Old Fr. pie {pied) de gnie^ crane's foot, from the shape of a sign used in showing lines of descent in genealogical charts. The older form survives in the family name Pettigrew. Here it is a nicknam.e, like Pettifer^ iron foot ; cf Sheepshanks. Fairy is a collective, ¥r.f/erie^ its modern use being perhaps due to its occurrence in such phrases as Faerie Qtieen, i.e., Queen of Fairyland. Cf payjiini, used by some poets iox pagan y but really a doublet o{ paganism^ occurring in pay?iim host, paynivi knight, etc. The correct name for the individual fairy is fay, Fr. fee, \j?X. fata, plural oi fatuni,{2i\.^. This appears in Ital. fata, "a fairie, a witch, an enchantres, an elfe" (Florio). The fata morgana, the mirage sometimes seen in the Strait of Messina, is attributed to the fairy Morgana of Tasso, the Morgan le Fay of our own Arthurian legends. Many people must have wondered at some time why the cltibs and spades on cards are so called. The latter figure, it is true, bears some resemblance to a spade, but no giant of fiction is depicted with a club with a triple head. The explanation is that we have adopted the French pattern, carreau (see p. i $o), diamond, c(Bur, hQTirt, pique, pike, spear-head, trefe, trefoil, clover- leaf, but have given to the two latter the names used in the Italian and Spanish pattern, which, instead of the pike and trefoil, has the sword (Ital. spadd) and mace (Ital. bastone). Etymologically both spades are identical, the origin being Greco-Lat. spatha, the name of a number of blade-shaped objects; cf the diminutive spatula. Wafer, in both its senses, is related to Ger. Wabe, honeycomb. We find Anglo-Fr. wafre in the sense of a thin cake, perhaps stamped with a honeycomb pattern. 72 WORDS AND MEANINGS The cognate Fr. gmifre is the name of a similar cake which not only has the honeycomb pattern, but is also largely composed of honey. Hence our verb to goffer^ to give a cellular appearance to a frill. The meanings of adjectives are especially subject to change. Quaint now conve3^s the idea of what is unusual, and, as early as the 17th century, we find it explained as "strange, unknown." This is the exact opposite of its original meaning, Old Fr. cointe, Lat. cognitus ; cf., acquaint^ Old Fr. acointier, make known. It is possible to trace roughly the process by which this remark^^ble volte -face has been brought about. The intermediate sense of trim or pretty is common in Shakespeare — " For a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion, yours is worth ten on't." {Much Ado, iii. 4.) We apply restive to a horse that will not stand still. It means properly a horse that will not do anything else. Fr. retif Old Fr. restif] from rester^ to remahi, Lat. re-stare^ has kept more of the original sense. Scot, to reest means to stand stock-still. Dryden even uses restive m the sense of sluefo-ish — *' So James the drowsy genius wakes Of Britain, long entranced in charms, Restive, and slumbering on its arms." ( Threnodia A ugtcstalis. ) Rcasty, used of meat that has "stood" too long, is the same word, (cf testy, Old Fr. testif, heady), and rusty bacon is probably folk-etymology for reasty bacon — " And then came haltyng Jone, And brought a gambone Of bakon that was reasty" ( S K ELTON, Elyjiotir Rnni7nyng. ) STERLING— PETTY 73 Sterling has a curious history. It is from Old Fr. esterlin, a coin which etymologists have until lately connected with the Eastcrlings^ or Hanse merchants, who formed one of the great mercantile communities of the Middle Ages; and perhaps some such association is responsible for the meaning that sterling has acquired ; but chronology shows this traditional etymolog>^ to be impossible. We find tmus sterlingus in a medieval Latin document of 1184, and the Old French estcrlin occurs in Wace's Roman de Roic (Romaunt of Rollo the Sea King), which was written before 1175. Hence it is conjectured that the original coin may have been stamped v/ith a star or a starliiig. When Horatio says— " It is a nipping and an eager air." {Hamlet^ L 4.) we are reminded that eager is identical with the second part of vin-^^^^r, Fr. aigre, sour, Lat. acer, keen. It seems hardly possible to explain the modern sense oiyiice^ which in the course of its history has traversed nearly the whole diatonic scale between "rotten" and "ripping." In Mid. English and Old French it means foolish. Cotgrave explains it by "lither, lazie, sloathful, idle ; faint, slack ; dull, simple." It is supposed to come from Lat nescius, ignorant. The transition from fond^ foolish, which survives in ''fond hopes," to fond, loving, is easy. French foit is used in exactly the same way. Cf also to dote on, i.e., to be foolish about. Puny is Fr. putney from puis 7ie\ later born, junior, whence the piis7ie justices. Milton uses it of a minor— " He must appear in print like 2. puny with his guardian." {Areopagitica.) Petty^ Fr. petit, was similarly used for a small boy. In some cases a complimentary adjective loses its true meaning and takes on a contemptuous or ironic 74 WORDS AND MEANINGS sense. None of us care to be called bland^ and to describe a man as worthy is to apologise for his existence. We may compare Fr. bonhonime^ which now means generally an old fool, and ^^;2^'^/6';;2w^, good -wife, goody. Dappej-^ the Dutch for brave {cf. Ger. tapfer\ and pert. Mid. Eng. ape7't, representing in meaning Lat expertics, have changed much since Milton wrote of — " The /^r/ fairies and the dapper q\\&s'^ {Comus, ii8.) Pert seems in fact to have acquired the meaning of its opposite vialapej't. Smug, s. variant of Ger. sc/inmck, trim, elegant, beautiful, has its original sense in Shakespeare — "And here the smug and silver Trent shall run In a new channel, fair and evenly." (i Henry /K, iii. i.) The degeneration of an adjective is sometimes due to its employment for euphemistic purposes. The favourite substitute for fat is stoict, properly strong,^ dauntless, etc., cognate v/ith Ger. stolz, proud. Pre- cisely the same euphemism appears in French, e.g., ti7ie dame un pen forte. Ugly is replaced by plai?iy or homely , "ugly, disagreeable, course, m^ean " (Kersey's Dictioyiaiy, 1720). Hojnely has been rehabilitated in English, but in America it still has the sense given by Kersey. Change of meaning may be brought about by association. A miniature is a small portrait, and we even use the word as an adjective meaning "small, on a reduced scale." But the true sense of viiniatiire is something painted in vmiium, red lead. Florio explains ^ Hence the use of sto2it for a "strong" beer. Portgr was once the favourite tap ol porters^ and a mixture of stout and ale, now known as cooper, was especially relished by the brewery cooper. DEGENERATION IN MEANING 75 miniatiira as "a limning (see p. 58), a painting with vermilion." Such paintings were usually small, hence the later meaning. The word was first applied to the ornamental red initial capitals in manuscripts. Vignette still means technically in French an interlaced vine- pattern on a frontispiece.! Cotgrave has vignettes^ "vignets; branches, or branch-like borders, or flourishes in painting, or ingravery." The degeneration in the meaning of a noun ma)^ be partly due to frequent association with disparaging adjectives. Thus Jmssy^ i.e. housewife, qiiea7i;- lit. woman, ivench^ child, have absorbed such adjectives as impudent, idle, light, saucy, etc. Shakespeare uses quean only three times, and these three include "cozening quean" {Merry Wives, iv. 2) and "scolding quean" {AlVs Well, \\. 2). With wench, still used without any disparaging sense by country folk, we may compare Fr. garce, lass, and Ger. Dime, maid-servant, both of which are now insulting epithets, but, in the older language, could be applied to Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary respectively. Garce was replaced by fille, which has acquired in its turn a meaning so offensive that it has now given way to jeune fMe. Minx, earlier ntinkes, is probably the Low Ger. viinsk, Ger. MenscJi, lit human, but used also in the sense of "wench." For the consonantal change cf luuiks, Dan. hiindsk, stingy, lit. doggish. These examples show that the indignant " Who are you calling a woman ? " is, philologically, in all likelihood a case of intelligent anticipation. Adjectives are affected in their turn by being regularly coupled with certain njuns. A buxan help- * Folk-etymology iox frontispice, 'L-x\../ronlispiciuw, front view. 2 Related to, but not identical with, jueen. 78 WORDS AND MEANINGS mate was once obedient, the word being cognate with Ger. biegsaiHy flexible, yielding — " The place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen Wing silently the buxom air." {Paradise Lost^ ii. 840.) An obedient nature is "buxom, blithe and debonair," qualities which affect the physique and result in heartiness of aspect and a comely plumpness. An arcJi damsel is etymologically akin to an ^xr^r/^bishop, both descending from the Greek prefix apxi, from apx*i> a beginning, first cause. Shakespeare uses arch as a noun — - . ^ "The noble duke my master, My worthy arch and patron comes to-night." {Lear^ ii. i.) Occurring chiefly in such phrases as arch enemy, arch heretic, arch hypocrite, arch rogue, it acquired a depreciatory sense, which has now become so weakened that archness is by no means an unpleasing attribute. The same double meaning is developed in the cognate German prefix Ers^ so that we find, in Ludwig, as successive entries, Ertz-dieb^ "an arch-thief, an arrant thief," and Ertz-engel^ "an arch-angel." The meaning of arrant is almost entirely due to association with " thief." It means lit. wandering, vagabond, so that the arrant thief is nearly related to the knight errant^ and to the Justices in eyre. Old Fr. eire, Lat. iter, a way, journey. Fr. errer, to wander, stray, is compounded of Vulgar Lat. iterare, to journey, and Lat. errare, to stray, and it would be difficult to calculate how much of each enters into the composition oi le Juif errant. As I have suggested above, association accounts to some extent for changes of meaning, but the process is PLUCK— SCAVENGER 77 in reality more complex, and usually a number of factors are working together or in opposition to each other. A low word may gradually acquire right of citizenship. "That article blackguardly called pluck'' (Scott) is now much respected. It is the same word as plucky the heart, liver, and lungs of an animal — "During the Crimean war, plucky^ signifying courageous, seemed likely to become a favourite lerm in Mayfair, even among the ladies." (Hotten's Slang D:citor..an\^ 1864.) Having become respectable, it is nov/ replaced in sporting circles by the more emphatic gnts^ which reproduces the original metaphor. A word may die out in its general sense, surviving only in some special meaning. Thus the poetic sivard, scarcely used except with "green," meant originally the skin or crust of anything. It is cognate with Ger. ScJiwarte^ " the "s-zvavd, or rind, of a thing" (Ludwig), which now means especially bacon-rind. Related words may meet with very different fates in kindred languages. Eng. kiiight is cognate with Ger. Ktiechf^ servant, which had, in Mid. High German, a wide range of meanings, including "warrior, hero." There is no' more compli- mentary epithet than knightly, while Ger. hiecJitisch means servile. The degeneration of words like booi\ churl, farmer, is a familiar phenomenon (cf villaiii, p. 139). The same thing has happened to blackguard^ the modern meaning of which is a libel on a humble but useful class. The name black guard was given collectively to the kitchen detachment of a great man's retinue. The scavenger has also come down in the world, rather an unusual phenomenon in the case of official titles. The rnQditVcil ' scavager'^ was an ^ English regularly inserts n in words thus formed ; cf. harbinger^ messenger, passenger^ poUinger, etc. 4^ 7S WORDS AND MEANINGS important official who originally seems to have been a kind of inspector of customs. He was called in Anglo- French sca7vagco2ir, from the noun scaivage^ showing. The Old French dialect verb escaiiwer is of Germanic origin and cognate with Eng. show and Ger. schauen, to look. The cheater^ now usually cheats probably deserved his fate. The escheators looked after escheats^ i.e., estates or property that lapsed and were forfeited. The origin of the word is Old Fr. escheoir {/choir), to fall due, Lat. ex ^cadere for cadere. Their reputation was unsavoury, and cheat has already its present meaning in Shakespeare. He also plays on the double meaning — " 1 will be cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me." {Merry Wives, i. 3.) Beldatn implies " hag " as early as Shakespeare, but he also uses it in its proper sense of "grandmother," e.g., Hotspur refers to "old beldam earth" and "our grandam earth" in the same speech (i Henry IV., iii. i), and Milton speaks of " <^^/<^^;;/ nature." It is of course from helle-danie, used in Old French for " grandmother," as belsire v^as for " grandfather." Hence it is a doublet of belladonna. The masculine belsire survives as a family name. Belcher; and to Jim Belcher, most gentlemanly of prize - fighters, we owe the belcher handkerchief, which had large white spots with a dark blue dot in the centre of each on a medium blue ground. It was also known to the " fancy " as a "bird's-eye wipe." CHAPTER VII SEMANTICS The convenient name semantics has been applied of late to the science of meanings, as distinguished from phonetics, the science of sound. The comparative study of languages enables us to observe and codify the general laws which govern sense development, and to understand why meanings become extended or restricted. One phenomenon which seems to occur normally in language results from what we may call the simplicity of the olden times. Thus the whole vocabulary which is etymologically related to icn'tzn^ and books has developed from an old Germanic verb that means to scratch and the Germanic name for the beecli. Our earliest books were wooden tablets on which inscriptions were scratched. The word book itself comes from Anglo-Sax. boc^ beech; cf. Ger. BucJistabe^ letter, lit. beech-stave. Lat. liber^ book, whence a large family of words in the Romance languages, means the inner bark of a tree, and bible is ultimately from Greek /Sv^Xog, the inner rind of the papynis, the Eg}^ptian rush from which /(^/^r was made.^ The earliest measurements were calculated from the human body. All European languages use they^(?/, and ^ Parchment (see p. 45) was invented zs> a substitute when the supply of papyrus failed. 30 SEMANTICS we still measure horses by hands ^ while span survives in table-books. Ctibit is Latin for elbow, the first part of ■which is the same as ell, cognate with Lat tilna, also used in both senses. Fr. brasse, fathom, is Lat. brachia^ the two arms, ^.x\^ police, thumb, means inch. A further set of measures are represented by simple devices : 2Lyard\^ a small "stick," and the rod, pole, or perch (cf. percJi for birds, Fr. perche, pole) which gives charm to our arithmetic is a larger one. A furlotig is a furrow- long. For weights com^mon objects were used, e.g., a graifi^ or a scruple, Lat. scrtipidus^ " a little sharpe stone falling sometime into a man's shooe " (Cooper), for very small things, a stone for heavier goods. Gk. SpaxfJ-o., whence our dram, means a handful. Our decimal system is due to our possession of ten digits, or fingers, and calctdation comes from Lat calculus, a pebble. A modern Chancellor of the Exchequer, considering his budget, is not so Jnear the reality of things as his medieval predecessor, who literally sat in his counting- house, counting up his money. For the exchequer, nam.ed from the Old Fr. eschequier{^chiqtciei^),ch.tss-ho3.T:dj was once the board marked out in squares on which the treasurer piled up the king's taxes in hard cash. This Old Fr. escliequier, v\^hich has also given chequer, is a derivative of Old Fr. eschec (echec), check. Thus " check trousers " and a '' chequered career " are both directly related to an eastern potentate (see cJiess, p. ill). The chancellor himself was originally a kind of door-keeper in charge of a chancel, a latticed barrier which we now know in church architecture only. CJiancel is derived, through Fr. chancel or cancel, from Lat. cancellus, a cross bar, occurring more usually in the plural in the sense of lattice, grating. We still cancel a document by drawing such a pattern on it. In German cancellus has given Kanzel, pulpit. The budget, now a document in FINANCIAL WORDS 81 which millions are mere items, was the chancellor's little bag or purse — " If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sow-skin budget^ Then my account I well may give, And in the stocks avouch it." {^Winter's Tale^ iv. 2.) Fr. bougette, from which it is borrowed, is a diminutive of boiige^ a leathern bag, which comes from. Lat biclga^ "a male or boiigct of leather; a purse; a bagge " (Cooper). Modern French has borrowed back our budget^ together with several other words dealing with business and finance. Among the most important servants of the exchequer were the controllers. We now call them officially comptroller, through a mistaken association with Fr. conipte, account. The controller had charge of the counter-rolls (cf coiuiterfoil)^ from Old Fr. contre-rolley " the copy of a role (of accounts, etc.), a paralell of the same quality and content, with the originall " (Cotgrave). In French co7tirole has preserved the sense of supervision or verification which it has lost in ordinary English. A very ancient functionary of the exchequer, the tally-cutter, was abolished in the reign of George III. Tallies (Fr. tailler^ to cut) were sticks " scored " across in such a way that the notches could be compared for purposes of verification. Jack Cade ''preferred those good old ways — "Our fore-fathers had no other books but the score and the tally ; thou hast caused books to be used." (2 Henry V}\, b: 7.V This rudimentary method of calculation was sti^i in use in the Kentish hop-fields within fairly recent, txi-.ies ; and some of us can remember very old gentlemen asking us. 82 SEMANTICS after a cricket match, how many "notches" we had "scored"— " The scorers were prepared to notch the runs." {Pickwick^ Ch. vii.) This use oi score, for a reckoning in general, or for twenty, occurs m Anglo-Saxon. The words score and tally, one native and the other borrowed, were thus originally of identical meaning. They were soon differentiated, a common phenomenon in such cases. For the exchequer tally was substituted an " indented cheque receipt." An indenttcre, chiefly familiar to us in connection with apprenticeship, was a duplicate document of which the " indented " or toothed edges had to correspond like the notches of the score or tally. Cheque, earlier check, is identical with ^/2£:^/^, rebuff. The metaphor is from the game of chess (see p. iii), to check a man's accounts involving a sort of control, or pulling up short, if necessary. The modern spelling cheq^ce is due to popular association with exchequer, which is etymo- logically right, though the words have reached their m.odern functions by very different paths. The develojpment of the meaning of chancellor can be paralleled in the case of many other functionaries, once humble but now important. The titles of two great medieval officers, the constable and the jnarshal, mean the same thing. Constable, Old Fr. conestable {connetable), is Lat. comes stabuli^ stable fellow, and marshal, the first element of which is cognate with mare^ while the second is modern Ger. Schalk, rascal, expresses the sar^e idea in German. Both constable and marshal are now tiser! of very high positions, but Policeman X. and the farrier-marshal, or shoeing-smith, of a troop of cavalry, ^remind them of the base degrees by which they did ascend. The Marshalsea where Little Dorrit lived OFFICIxVL TITLES 83 is for inarshalsy, marshals' office, etc The steward^ ox sty-ivard^ looked after his master's pigs. He rose in importance until, by the marriage of Marjorie Bruce to Walter the Stewart of Scotland, he founded the most picturesque of royal houses. The chamberlain, as his name suggests, attended to the royal comforts long before he became a judge of wholesome literature. All these names now stand for a great number of functions of varying im.portance. Other titles which are equally vague are sergea?:t (see p. 137) and 7isher^ Old Fr. uissier^ {h?nsszer),\\t. door-keeper, 'L.dX.ostiarius, a porter. Another official was the harbinger, who survives only in poetry. He was a forerunner, or vauntcourier, who preceded the great man to secure him " harbourage " for the night, and his name comes from Old Fr. herberger {Jieberger), to shelter. As late as the reign of Charles W. we read that — "On the removal of the court to pass the summer at Win- chester, Bishop Ken's house, which he held in the right of his prebend, was marked by the harbinger for the use of Mrs Eleanor Gwyn ; but he refused to grant her admittance, and she was forced to seek for lodgings in another place." .(Hawkins, Life of Bishop Ken.) One of the most interesting branches of semantics, and the most useful to the etymologist, deals with the study of parallel metaphors in different languages. We have seen (p. 26) how, for instance, the names of flowers show that the same likeness has been observed by various races. The spice called clove and the clove-pink both belong to Lat. claims, a nail. The German for pink is Nelke, a Low German diminutive, nail-kin, of ^ As htissier has given usher, 1 would suggest that the family names Lush and Lusher, which Bardsley (^Dict. of English Surnames') gives up, are for Fr. ruis (cf. Laporte) and tuissier. In modern French Lhuissier h not an uncommon name. 84 SEMANTICS Nagel, nail. The spice, or Gewilrznelke, is called in South Germany Ndgele, little nail. A clove of garlic is quite a separate word ; but, as it has some interesting cognates, it may be mentioned here. It is so called because the bulb cleaves naturally into segments.^ The' German name is K7ioblaucJi^ for Mid. High Ger. klobe- louch^ clove leek, by dissimilation of one /. The Dutch doublet is kloofs a chasm, gully, familiar in South Africa. Ger. Gift^ poison, lit. gift, and '^x, poison^\jdX. potio^ potion-^ a drink, seem to date from treacherous times. On the other hand, Ger. Geschenk, a present, means something poured out (see 7iiL7icheon^ p. 114), while a tip is in French p07iyboire and in German Trinkgeld^ even when accepted by a lifelong abstainer. In English we "ride a hobbyl' i.e.^ a hobby-horse, or wooden horse. German has the same metaphor, "ein Steckenpferd reiten," and French say "enfourcher un dada^^ t.e.^ to bestride a g&Q-g&Q. Hobby ^ for Mid. Eng. hobin^ a nag, was a proper name for a horse. Like Dobbin and Robin^ it belongs to the numerous progeny of Robert. In som.e cases the reason for a metaphor is not quite clear to the modern mind. The bloodthirsty weasel is called in French belettel^ little beauty, in Italian donnola\ and in Portuguese doniriha, little lady, in Spanish - comaclreja^ gossip (Fr. conimere, Scot, czim^ner), in Bavarian Schd?ztzerletn, beautiful little animal, in Danish kjonne^ beautiful, and in older English fairy. From Lat. medius we get 77tediastimis, " a drugge (drudge) or lubber to doe all vile service in the house ; a kitching slave" (Cooper). Why this drudge should have a name ^ The onicni^ Fr. oignon^ Lat. tinio^ uniofi-^ is so named because successive skins form an harmonious one-ness. It is a doublet of zir.icm. - Perhaps a diminutive of Cj'mric be!e^ marten, but felt as from Fr. belle. TWEENY— SCROLL 85 implying a middle position I cannot say ; but to-day in Yorkshire a maid-of-all-work is called a /z£/^^;?y (between maid). A stock semantic parallel occurs in the relation between age and respectability. All of us, as soon as we get to reasonable maturity, lay great stress on the importance of deference to " elders." It follows naturally that many titles of more or less dignity should be evolved from this Idea of seniority. The Eng. alderman is obvious. Priest, Old Fr. prcstre^ {J>retre)y from Gk. irpea-^vrepo?, comparative of Trpecr^ugj old, is not so obvious. In the Romance languages we have a whole group of words, ^.^., Fr. sire^sieur, seigneur ; Ital. signor, Span, sefior, with their compounds jfiojisieur, messery etc., all representing either senior or senioreni. Ger. Eltern, parents, is the plural comparative of alt, old, and the first element of seneschal (see marshal, p. 82) is cognate with Lat. senex. From Fr. sire comes Eng. sir, and from this was formed the adjective sirly^ now spelt stirly, which in Shakespeare still means haughty, arrogant — " See how the surly Warwick mans the wall." (3 Henry VI., v. i.) A list, in the sense of enumeration, is a " strip." The cognate German word is Leiste, border. We have the original meaning in " list slippers." Fr. bordereau, a list, which became very familiar in connection with the Dreyfus case, is a diminutive of bord, edge. Label is the same word as Old Fr. lambel {Jambeaii), rag. Scroll is a diminutive of Old Fr. escroii} rag, of German origin, and cognate with shred and screed. Docket, ^ Cf. Prester John, the fabulous priest monarch of Ethiopia. - Cf. lordly^ princely^ etc., and Ger. herrisch^ imperious, from Herr^ sir. ^ Modern Fr. icroii is used only in the sense of prison register. F 2 86 SEMANTICS earlier dogget, is from an old Italian diminutive oi doga, cask-stave, which meant a bendlet in heraldry. Schedule is a diminutive of Lat. scheda, " a scrowe " (Cooper), properly a strip of papyrus. Ger. Zettel, bill, ticket, is the same word. Thus all these words, more or less kindred in meaning, can be reduced to the primitive notion of strip or scrap. Farce, from French, means stuffing. The verb to farcCy which represents Lat. farch^e, survives in the per- verted force -r^Q^X, A parallel is satire, from Lat. salura {lanx), a full dish, hence a medley. Somewhat similar is the modern meaning of magazine, a "store- house" of amusement or information. The closest form of intimacy is represented by community of board and lodging, or, in older phrase- ology, " bed and board." Covipanion, with its numerous related words, belongs to Vulgar Lat. '^conipanio^ companion-, bread-sharer. The same idea is represented by the pleonastic Eng. messmate, the second part of which, mate, is related to meat. Mess, food. Old Fr. mes {inets^, Lat. missum, is in modern English only military or naval — " Herbs and other country messes Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses." {Allegro, 85.) Another related word is Fr. matelot, earlier matenoty representing Du. maat, meat, and genoot, a companion. The latter word is cognate with Ger. Genosse, a companion, from geniessen, to enjoy or use together. In early Dutch we find also mattegejioet, through popular association with matte, hammock, one hammock serving, by a Box and Cox arrangement, for two sailors. Comrade is from Fr. caniarade, and this from Span. camarada, originally a " room-full," called in the French army U7ie cJiajnbrde. This corresponds to Ger. Geselle, CHUM— CUMMER 87 comrade, from Saal, room. The reduction of the col- lective to the individual is paralleled by Ger. Bursche^ fellow, from Mid. High Ger. burse, college hostel ; cf. FraiLenzivimer^ wench, lit. women's room. It can hardly be doubted that chum is a corrupted clip from cJiamber- felloiv} It is thus explained in a Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1690), within a few years of its earliest recorded occurrence, and the reader will remember Mr Pickwick's introduction to the clnufunage system in the Fleet. English gossipy earlier god-sib, related in God, a sponsor, soon developed the subsidiary meanings of boon companion, crony, tippler, babbler, etc., all of which are represented in Shakespeare. The case of Fr. ccnnpere and co7nmere, godfather and godmother, is similar. Cotgrave explains coyywierage as "gossiping; the acquaintance, affinity, or league that growes betweene women by christning a child together, or one for another." Ger. Gevatter, godfather, has also acquired the sense of Fr. boyiJiom^ne, Eng. daddy. From commere comes Scot, cummer or kz??i7ner — "'Tis merry, 'tis merr)^, Cununers, I trow. To dance thus beneath the nightshade bough." (INGOLDSBY, The Witched Frolic) While christenings led to cheerful garrulity, the wilder fun of weddings has given the Fr. faire la 7ioc€, to go on ^ The vowel is not so great a difficulty as it isight appear. In the London pronunciation the u of such vrords as lui^ cup^ hurry^ etc., represents roughly a continental short a. This fact, familiar to phoneticians but disbelieved by others, is one of the firs: peculiarities noted by foreigners beginning to learn English. It is quiie possible that chum is an accidental spelling for *cham, just as we write bungalciv for hangla (Bengal), pwidit lor pandit, and Punjauh for Punjab, five rivers, whence also probably the liquid called punch, from its five ingredients. Cf. also American to slug^ i.e. to slog, which appears to represent Du. slag, blow — "That was for slugging the guard " (Kipling, An Error in the Fourth Dimension) — and the adjective l/htff, from obsolete Du. ll^f, troad-faced. 88 SEMANTICS the spree. In Ger. Hochzeit, wedding, lit. high time, we have a converse development of meaning. Parallel sense development in different languages sometimes gives us a glimpse of the life of our ancestors. Our verb to cttrry (leather) comes from Old Fr. carreer'^ {courroye-r)^ to make ready, put in order, which represents a theoretical ^con-rcd-are^ the root syllable of which is Germanic and cognate with om ready. Gqt. gerben^^o tan. Old High G&r. garawe7i, to make ready, is a derivative of gary ready, complete, now used only as an adverb meaning "quite," but cognate with our y are — " Our ship — Which, but three glasses since, we gave out split — Is tight, ?indyare^ and bravely rigg'd." {Tempest J v. i.) Both words must have acquired their restricted meaning at a time v/hen there was literally nothing like leather. Even in slang we find the same parallelism exempli- fied. We call an old-fashioned watch a tur^iip. In German it is called Zwiebel^ onion, and in Fr. oig7ton, Eng. greenhorn likens an inexperienced person to an animal whose horns have just begun to sprout. In Ger. Gelbschnabely yellow bill, and Fr. bec-Jaime, we have the metaphor of the fledgling. Ludwig explains GelbscJmabel by '' chitty-face," chit^ cognate with /6//-ten, being a general term in Mid. English for a young animal. From bec-jaime we have Scot, beejani^ freshman at the university. Cotgrave spells the French word bejaune, and gives, as he usually does for such words,^ ^ Array ^ Old Fr. arreer, is related. - This is a characteristic of the old dictionary makers. The gem of my collection is Ludwig's gloss for Liimrnel^ *' a long lubber, a lazy lubber, a slouch, a lordant, a lordane, a looby, a booby, a tony, a fop, a dunce, a simpleton, a wise-acre, a sot, a logger-head, a block-head, a nickampoop, a SLANG 89 a very full gloss, which happens, by exception, to be quotable — "A novice ; a late prentice to, or young beginner in, a trade, or art; also, a simple, ignorant, unexperienced, asse ; a rude, unfashioned, home-bred hoydon ; a sot, ninny, doult, noddy ; one that's blankt, and hath nought to say, when he hath most need to speake." The Englishman intimates that a thing has ceased to please by saying that he is " fed up " with it. The Frenchman says "J'en ai soupe." Both these meta- phors are quite modern, but they express in flippant form the same figure of physical satiety which is as old as language. Padding is a comparatively new word in con- nection with literary composition, but it reproduces, with a slightly different meaning, the figure expressed by bombast^ lit. wadding, a derivative of Greco-Lat. bG7nbyx, originally "silkworm," whence also bovibasi?ie. We may compare also "fzcstian eloquence " — "And he, whose /us /tan's so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad." (Pope, Prologue io the Satires, 1. 187.) And a very similar image is found in the Latin poet Ausonius — " At nos illepidum, rudem libellum, Burros, quisquilias ineptiasque Credemus gremio cui fovendum?" {Drepanin Filio.) Even to " take the cake " is paralleled by the Gk. Xa/3eiu Tov irvpa^xovvTa, to be awarded the cake of roasted wheat and honey which was originally the prize of him who best kept awake during a night-watch. lingerer, a drowsy or dreaming lusk, a pill-garlick, a slowback, a lathback a pitiful sneaking fellow, a lungis, a tall slim fellow, a slim longback, a great he-fellow, a lubberly fellow, a lozel, an awkward fellow." 90 SEMANTICS In the proverbial expressions which contain the con- centrated wisdom of the ages we ■ sometimes find exact correspondences. Thus " to look a gift-horse in the mouth "is literally reproduced in French and German. Sometimes the symbols vary, e.g.^ the risk one is exposed to in acquiring goods without examination is called by us " buying a pig in a poke." ^ French and German substitute the cat. We say that "a cat may look at a king." The French dramatis personce are a dog and a bishop, while German r^scognises no such subversive aphorism. ' Every language has an immense number of metaphors to describe the various stages of intoxication. We, as a seafaring nation, have naturally a set of such metaphors taken from nautical English. In French and German the state of being "half-seas over" or "three sheets in the wind," and the action of "splicing the main brace" are expressed by various land metaphors. But the more obvious nautical figures are common property. W^e speak of being stranded ; French says " ^chotier (to run ashore) dans une entreprise," and German uses scheitern^ to strand, .split on a rock, in the same way. Finally, we observe the same principle in euphemism, or that form of speech which avoids calling things by their names. Euphemism is the result of various human instincts v/hich range from religious reverence down to common decency. There is, however, a' special type of euphemism which may be described as the delicacy of the partially educated. It is a matter of common observation that for educated people a spade is a spade, while the more outspoken class prefers to call it a decorated shovel. Between these ^ Poke^ sack, is still common in dialect, e.g. in the Kentish hop-fields. It is a doublet ol pottc/iy and its diminutive \s pocket. EUPHEMISM AND PRUDISHNESS 91 V two classes come those delicate beings whose work in life is — "le retranchement de ces syllabes sales Qui dans les plus beaux mots produisent des scandales ; Ces jouets etemels des sots de tous les temps ; Ces fades lieux-communs de nos mechants plaisants ; Ces sources d'un amas d'equivoques infames, Dent on vient faire insulte a la pudeur des femmes." (MOLIERE,- Les Femmes savantes^ ill. 2.) ^ In the United States refined society has succeeded in banning as improper the word leg, which must now be replaced by limb, even when the possessor is a boiled 'fowl/ and this refinement is not unknown' in England. This tendency shows itself especially in connection with the more intimate garments and articles intended for personal use. We have the absurd name • pocket handkerchief, i.e., pocket hand cover-head, for a com- paratively modern convenience, the earlier names of which have more of the directness of the Artful Dodger's "wipe." Ben Jonson calls it a muckinder. In 1829 the , use of the word inonchoir in a French adaptation of Othello caused a riot at the Comedie Francaise. History repeats itself, for, in 1907, a play by J. M. Synge was produced in Dublin, but the "audience broke -up in disorder at the o^vord shift" {The Academy, 14th Oct. 191 1). This is all the more ludicrous when we reflect that sliift, i.e. change of "raiment, is itself an early euphemism {ox s7nock ; cf Ital. vmtajide, '' thihne under- breeches" (Florio), from a country and century not usually regarded as prudish. The fact is that, just as the low word, when once accepted, loses. its primitive ^ The coloured ladies of Barbados appear to have been equally sensi- tive. — " Fate had placed me opposite to a fine turkey. I asked my partner if I should have the pleasure of helping her to a piece of the breast. She looked at me indignantly, and said, ' Curse your impudence, sar ; I wonder where you lam manners. Sar, I take a lilly turkey bosom, if you please.' " iPeUr Simple, Ch.li:) 92 SEMANTICS vigour (see p/tick, p. 77), the euphemism is, by inevitable association, doomed from its very birth. I will now give a few examples of the way in which the study of semantics helps the etymologist. The antlers of a deer are properly the lowest branches of the horns, what we now call brow-antlers. The v/ord comes from Old Fr antoillierSy which answers phonetically to a conjectured Lat. ^'ante-oailares, from oculus, eye. This conjecture is confirmed by the Ger. AugensprossCy brow-antler, lit. eye-sprout. Eng. plover^ from Fr. pluvier, could come from a Vulgar Lat. "^phiviarius^ belonging to rain. The German name Regenpfeifer^ lit. rain-piper, shows this to be correct. It does not matter, etymologically, whether the bird really has any connection with rain, for rustic observation, interesting as it is, is essentially unscientific. The //(9;/4>'suckle is useless to the bee. The sloiv-zvorin, a corrupted form for slaywonn^ strike serpent,^ is perfectly harmless, and the toad, though ugly, is not venomous, nor diOes he bear a jewel in his head. Kcsti'el, a kind of hawk, represents Old Fr. qicercerelle {crecerelle), " a kastrell " (Cotgrave). Crecerelle is a diminu- tive of crecelle^ a rattle, used in Old French especially of the leper's rattle or clapper, with which he warned people away from his neighbourhood. It is connected with Lat. crepare^ to resound. The Latin name for the kestrel is linnunaclus, lit. a little ringer, derived from the verb tinnire, to clink, jingle, " tintinnabulate." Cooper tells us that '* they use to set them (kestrels) in pigeon houses, to make doves to love the place, bicause they feare away other haukes with their ringing voyce." This information is obtained from the Latin agriculturist * The meaning oiworm has degenerated since the days of the Lindwurm^ the dragon slain by Siegfried. The Norse form survives in Great Ormc's Heady the dragon's head. AKIMBO— DEMURE 93 Columella. This parallel makes it clear that Fr. crecerelle^ kestrel, is a metaphorical application of the same word, meaning a leper's " clicket." The curious word akmibo occurs first in Mid. English in the form i7t kenebowe. In half a dozen languages we find this attitude expressed by the figure of a jug-handle, or, as it used to be called, a pot-ear. The oldest equivalent is Lat. ayisatics^ used by Plautus, from ayisa^ a jug-handle. Ansatiis hojno is explained by Cooper as " a man with his arms on kenbowT The French for to stand with arms akimbo is " faire le pot a deux ansesl' and the same striking image occurs in German, Dutch, and Spanish. Hence it seems a plausible conjecture that kenebowe means "jug-handle." This is confirmed by the fact that Dryden translates ansce by "kimbo handles," while Thomas' Latin Dictionary (1644) explains ansatus homo as " one that in bragging manner strowteth up and down with his armes a-ca?ine-bowy Eng. bozv, meaning anything bent, is used in many con- nections for handle. The first element may be can^ applied to every description of vessel in earlier English, as it still is in Scottish, or it may be some Scandinavian word. In fact the whole compound may be Scandinavian. Demure has been explained as from Mid. Eng. vmre, ripe, mature, with prefixed de. But demure is the older word of the two, and while the loss of the atonic first syllable is normal in English (pp. 56-60), it would be hard to find a case in which a meaningless prefix has been added. Nor does the meaning of de^nure approximate very closely to that of ripe. It now has a suggestion of slyness, but in Milton's time meant sedate — " Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demurey {Penseroso^ I. 31.) 94 SEMANTICS and its oldest meaning is calm, settled, used of the sea. When we consider that it is nearly equivalent to staid, earlier stayed, and compare the equivalent terms in other languages, e.g., Lat sedatus, Fr. rassis, Ger. geseizt, etc., it seems likely that it is formed from the Old Norman de^nurer {denieurer), to stay, just as stale is formed from estaler {etaler), to display on a stall, or trove, in "treasure trove, ^^ from trover {trouve7'\ The origin of lugger is unknown, but the word is recorded a century later than lugsazl, whence it is probably derived. The explanation of higsail as a sail that is lugged seems to be a piece of folk-etymology. The French for lugsail is voile de fortune, and a still earlier name, which occurs in Tudor English, is bona- venture, i.e., good luck. Hence it is not unreason- able to conjecture that higsail stands for *hick-sail^ just as the name Higson stands for Hickson (see p. 1 60). The pips on cards or dice have nothing to do with apple pips. The oldest spelling is peeps} In the Germanic languages they are called " eyes," and in the Romance languages " points " ; and the Romance derivatives of Lat. punctiis, point, also mean ^^ peep of day." Hence the peeps are connected with the verb to peep. The game called doininos is French, and the name is taken from the phrase faire domino, to win the game. Domino, a hooded cloak worn by priests in winter, is an Italian word, obviously connected with Lat. do?ninus. French also has, in various games, the phrase y^/;-^ capot with a meaning like that oi faire domino. Capot, related to Eng. cap and Fr. chapeau, means properly a hooded cloak. The tv/o metaphors are quite parallel, but it is impossible to say what was the original idea. Perhaps 1 Tdming of the Shrew, i. 2. GLEEK— SENTRY 95 it was that of extinguishing the opponent by putting, as it were, his head in a bag. The card game called gleck is often mentioned in Tudor literature. It is derived from Old Fr. glic, used by Rabelais, and the word is very common in the works of the more disreputable French poets of the 15th century. According to French archaeologists it was also called bonheur^ chance, forttcrie^ and hasard. Hence it represents in all probability Ger. Glilck, luck. The Old Fr. form ghelicqice would correspond to Mid. High Ger. gelilcke. The history of tennis (p. 9) and trump (p. 8) shows that it is not necessary to find the German word recorded in the same sense. The word sentry^ which occurs in English only, has no connection at all with sentinel^ the earliest form of which is Ital. sentinella, of unknown origin. The older lexicographers obscured the etymology of sentry^ which is really quite simple, by always attempting to treat it along with sentinel. It is a common phenomenon in -military language that the abstract name of an action is applied to the building or station in which the action is performed, then to the group of men thus employed, and finally to the individual soldier. Thus Lat. custodia means (i) guardianship, (2) a ward-room, watch-tower, (3) the watch collectively, (4) a watchman. Fr. vigic^ the look-out man on board ship, can be traced back in a similar series of meanings to Lat. vigilia^ watching.^ A sentry^ now a single soldier, was formerly a band of soldiers — "What strength, what art can then Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe Through the strict senterics and stations thick Of angels watching round .'' '' {Paradise Lost^ ii. 410.) ^ This is why so many French raihtary terms are feminine, e.g., recrue^ sentinelle^ ved^its, etc. 96 SEMANTICS and earlier still a watch-tower, e.g., Cotgrave explains Old Fr. eschaugtiette {echangiiette) as " a sentrie, watch- tower, beacon." The purely abstract sense survives in the phrase "to hcQ^ sentry ,' i.e. guarH — " Thou, when nature cannot sleep, O'er my temples sentry keep." (Sir T. Browne.) It is a contracted form of sanctuary. In the 17th century it is a pretty familiar word in this sense.^ The earliest example I have come across is in Nash — " He hath no way now to slyppe out of my hands, but to take sentrie in the Hospital of Warwick." (First Part of Pasquil's Apologie, 1590.) Fr. guerite, a sentry box, can be traced back in the same way to Old Fr. garir {giie'rir), to save. Cotgrave explains it as " a place of refuge, and of safe retyrall," also "a sentrie, or little lodge for a sentinell, built on high." It is to this latter sense that we owe Eng. garret. In medieval French it means refuge, sanctuary,. eg., " Ceste roche est Ihesucrist meismes qui est li refuges et \a garite aus humbles." ^ If French had not borrowed sentinelle from ItaWsir], gue'rite would probably now mean " sentry " ; c/. the history of vigie (p. 95), or of vedette, a cavalry sentry, but originally " a prying or peeping hole " (Florio), from Ital. vedere, to see. ^ Skinner's Etymologicon (1671) has the two entries, centry ^xo sanctuary and centry v. sefitmel. - " This rock is Jesus Christ himself, who is the refuge and sanctuary of the humble." CHAPTER VIII METAPHOR Every expression that we employ, apart from those that are connected with the most rudimentar^V objects and actions, is a metaphor, though the original meaning is dulled by constant use. Thus, in the above sentence, expression means what is " squeezed out," to eyjiploy is to "twine in" like a basket maker, to connect is to "weave together," rudimentary means " in the rough state," and an object is something " thrown in our way." A classifica- 'tion of the metaphors in use in the European languages would show that a large number of the most obvious kind, i.e. of those which "come to meet" one, are common property, while others would reflect the most striking habits and pursuits of the various races. It would probably be found that in the common stock of simple metaphor the most important contribution v/ould come from agriculture, while in English the nautical element would occur to an extent quite unparalleled in other European languages. A curious agricultural metaphor w^hich, though of Old French origin, now appears to be peculiar to English, is to rehearse, lit. to harrow over again (see hearse, p. 68). Some metaphors are easy to track. It does not require much philological knowledge to see that astonish, astound, and stu7i all contain the idea of G 98 METAPHOR **' thunder - striking," Vulgar Lat. ^ex-tojtare. To embarrass is obviously connected with bar, and to interfere is to " strike between/' Old Fr. entreferir. This word was especially used in the i6th century of a horse knocking its legs together in trotting, " to inter- feere, as a horse" (Cotgrave). When we speak of a prentice-hand, sound Jotcrneynian work, and a masterpiece, we revive the medieval classification of artisans into learners, qualified workmen, and those who, by the presentation to their guild of a finished piece of work, v/ere recognised as past (passed) masters. But many of our metaphors are drawn from pursuits with which we are no longer familiar, or with arts and sciences no longer practised. Disaster, ill-starred, and such adjectives as jovial, mercurial, are reminiscent of astrology. To bring a thing to the test is to put it in the alchemist's or metallurgist's test or trying -pot (cf. test-\\sb€), Old Fr. test (Jet), which is related to Old Fr. teste {tete), head, from Lat. testa, tile, pot, etc., used in Roman slang for caput. Shakespeare has the complete metaphor — ** Let there be some more test made of my metal,^ Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamp'd upon it." {Measure for Measure, \. \.^ The old butchers' shops v/hich adjoin Nottingham Market Place are still called the Shambles. The word is similarly used at Carlisle, and probably elsewhere ; but to m.ost people it is familiar only in the metaphorical sense of place of slaughter, generally regarded as a singular. Thus Denys of Burgundy says, " The beasts are in the shambles'' {Cloister and Heart Ji, Ch. 33), really misusing the word, which does not mean slaughter-house, but the bench on which meat is exposed for sale. It is ^ See mettle, p. 135. HUNTING 99 a very early loan from Lat. scauimuHy a bench or form ; also explained by Cooper as " a step or grice (see p. 109) to get up to bedde." The same diminutive form occurs in Fr. escabeau^ an office stool, and Ger. Schemely a. stool. Fusty^ earlier foisty, is no longer used in its proper sense. It comes from Old Fr. fiisU^ ^^ fusty ; tasting of the caske, smelling of the vessell wherein it hath been kept " (Cotgrave), a derivative of Old Yx.fiist {ffLt\ a cask.i The smith's art has given us brayid-neiv^ generally corrupted into bran-new. Shakespeare uses Jire-?iew — "You should then have accosted her ; and with some excellent ]es\.s^Jire-neiu from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumbness." {Tivel/th Nighty iii. 2.) Modern German has ficnkehiagelnetc, spark nail new ; but in older German we find aXso spanneti^ splinter?ieUy chip new, splinter new ; which shows the origin of our spick and span (new), z>., spike and chip new. French has toitt battant neuf beating new, />., fresh from the anvil. Many old hunting terms survive as metaphors. To be at bay, Fr. aux abois, is to be facing the baying hounds. The fundamental meaning of Old Fr. abater {aboyer), of obscure origin, is perhaps to gape at.^ Thus a right or estate which is in abeyance is one regarded with open-mouthed expectancy. The toils are Fr. ioileSy lit. cloths, Lat. tela, the nets put round a thicket to prevent the game from escaping. To "beat about the bush" seems to be a mixture of two metaphors ^ Lat. fusiis, a staff, cudgel, gave also Old Fr. fust^ a kind of boat, whence obsolete Eng. foist in the same sense. Both meanings seem to go back to a time when both casks and boats ^vere "dug out" instead of being built up. ^ Related are bouche hiante, or hee^ mouth agape ; bdilUr, to yawn ; and badaud, ** a gaping hoydon " (Cotgrave, badaidC), 100 METAPHOR which are quite unlike in meaning. To "beat the bush" was the office of the beaters, who started the game for others, hence an old proverb, '* I will not beat the bush that another may have the birds." *' To go about the bush " , would seem to have been used originally of a hesitating hound. The two expressions have coalesced to express the idea for which French says " y aller par quatre chemins." Crestfallen and white feather belong to the old sport of cock-fighting. feopardy is Old Yx.jeii partly a divided game, hence an equal encounter. To run full tilt is a jousting phrase. To pounce upon is to seize in the pounces^ the old word for a hawk's claws. The ultimate source is Lat. piingere^ to prick, pierce. A goldsmith's p2inch was also called a pounce^ hence the verb to pomice^ to make patterns on metal. The northern past participle pouncei^ occurs in pouncet-hox^ a metal perforated globe for scents — " And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held h pouncet-box^ which ever and anon He gave his nose, and took't away again." ,. (i Henry IV., i. 3.) To the language of hawking belongs also haggard. Cotgrave d^^n^s faulco7t {faucon) hagard, as "a faulcon that preyed for her selfe long before she was taken." Hence the sense wild, untameable. The original meaning is hedge-hawk, the first syllable representing Old High Ger. hag, hedge. Hag, a witch, is of cognate origin. The antiquity of dicing appears in the history of Ger. ^^//^7^, to please, originally used of the "fall" of the dice. In Mid. High German it is always used v/ith wohl, well, or iibel, ill ; e.g., es gefdllt mir wohl, it " falls out " well for me. There can be no reasonable 1 Cf. the Stickit Minister. FOWLING 101 doubt that the deuce I is a dicer's exclamation at making the lowest throw, two, Fr. deux. We still use de:ice_ for the two in cards, and German has Dazis in both senses. Tennis has given us bandy, Fr. haiidcr, " to bandie^ at tennis " (Cotgrave). We now only bandy words or reproaches, but Juliet understood the vrord in its literal sense — " Had she affections and \\-arm ycutcful blood, She'd be as swift in motion as a ball ; My words would bandy her to my s-^-eet love. And his to me." {Rormo and Juliet, ii- 5-) Fowling has given us cajole, deojy, and trepaji. Fr. cajoler, which formerly meant to chatter like a jay in a cage, has in modern French assumed the meaning of enjoler, earlier engeoler, " to incage, or ingaole " (Cotgrave), hence to entice. Fr. gedle represents Vulgar Lat "^caveola. Decoy, earlier also coy, is Du. kooi, cage. The later form is perhaps due to duck-coy. Du. kooi, is also of Latin origin. It comes, like Fr. cage, from Vulgar Lat. ^cavea, and has a doublet kevie, whence Scot, cavie, a hen-coop. T7'tpa?i was formerly trapan, and belongs to trap — " Some by the nose with fumes trapan 'em, As Dunstan did the devil's grannam," {Hiidiaras, ii. 3.) It is now equivalent to klduap, />. to Jiab kid^ (children), once a lucrative pursuit. Charles Reade made use of an authentic case in his Wanderi7ig Heir. The surgical trepan is a different word altogether, and belongs to Greco-Lat. trypanon, an auger, piercer. To allure is to bring to the lure, or bait To the same group of metaphors belongs iftveigle, v/hich corresponds, with altered prefix, to Fr. aveugler, to blin^, Vulgar Lat. * ab-oculare. A distant relative of this vv'ord is oo-le probably Low German or Dutch ; c/. Ger. licbdugebi G 2 102 METAPHOR " to ogle, to smicker, to look amorously, to cast sheeps- eyes, to cast amorous looks " (Ludwig). It is possible that ivheedle, the origin of which is quite unknown, belongs here also. Ludwig explains Sc/dmge, properly a noose, as a " gin, snare, trap, train, or ivheedle." The synonymous cozen is a metaphor of quite another kind. Every young noble who did the grand tour in the i6th and 17th centuries spent some time at Naples, "where he may improve his knowledge in horsemanship" (Howell, histructioyis for Forreme Travell, 1642). Now the Italian horse-dealers were so notorious that Dekker, writing about 1600, describes a swindling '' horse-courser " as a " meere jadish Non- politane," a play on Neapolitan. The Italian name is cozzone^ *' a horse-courser, a horse-breaker, a craftie knave " (Florio), whence the verb cozzonare^ " to have perfect skill in all cosenages" (Torriano). The essential idea of to cozen in the Elizabethans is that of selling faulty goods in a bad light, a device said to be practised by some horse-dealers. At any rate the words for horse-dealer in all languages, from the Lat. mango to the Amer. Jiorse-swapper^ mean swindler and worse things. Cozen is a favourite word with the Elizabethan dramatists, because it enables them to bring off one of those stock puns that make one feel " The less Shakespeare he" — " Cousins^ indeed ; and by their uncle cozened Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life." {Richard 111., iv. 4.) In the Merry Wives of Windsor (iv. 5) there is a lot of word play on " cousins-german " and " German cozeners." An, exact parallel to the history of cozen is furnished by the verb to jockey, from jockey, a horse- dealer, cheat, etc. HORTICULTURE 103 Sciofi is a metaphor from the garden. It is Fr. scio7i^ "a scion; a young and tender plant; a shoot, sprig, or twig" (Cotgrave). Ger. Sprosslmg^ sprout- ling, is also used of an " offshoot " from a " stock." We have a similar metaphor in the word hnp. We now graft trees, a misspelling of older graffe, Fr. greffe^ Greco-Lat. g7'aphmvi, a pencil, from the shape of the slip. The art of grafting was learnt from the Romans, who had a post - classical verb iuiputare} to graft, which has given Eng. />;//>, Ger. i)}ipfen, Fr. enter^ and is represented in most other European languages. Imp was used like scioji^ but degenerated in meaning. In Shakespeare it has already the somewhat con- temptuous shade of meaning which we find in Ger. Sprossling, and is only used by comic characters; e.g.^ Pistol calls Prince Plal " most royal iinp of fame " (2 Henry IV., v. 5); but Thomas Cromwell, in his last letter to Henry VIH., speaks of "that most noble zmpy the prince's grace, your most dear son." The special sense of "young devil" appears to be due to the frequent occurrence of such phrases as " Z7;!ps (children) of Satan," " the devil and his imps" etc. Ger. impfen also means to vaccinate. Our earlier term inoculate'^ originally meant to graft, and, in fact, engraft was also used in this sense. The latest develop- ment of the metaphor appears in skin grafting. Zest is quite obsolete in its original meaning of a piece of orange peel used to give piquancy to wine. It is a French word of unknown origin, properly applied to the inner skin of fruit and nuts. Cotgrave explains it as " the thick skinne, or filme whereby the kernell of a wallnut is divided." ^ Of uncertain origin. Lat. putare^ to cut (cf. amputate), or Gk. ?H(f>VTos, implanted ? 2 From oculus, eye, in the sense of bud CHAPTER IX FOLK-ETYMOLOGY The sound, spelling, and even the meaning of a word are often perverted by influences to which the collective name of folk-etymology has been given. I here use the term to include all phenomena which are due to any kind of m.isunderstanding of a word. A word beginning with 71 sometimes loses this sound through its being confused with the 71 of the indefinite article an. Thus an adder and an atiger are for a nadder [cf. Ger. Natto') and a nauger, Mid. Eng. navegor^ properly an instrument for piercing the 7tave of a wheel. Apron was in Mid. English 7iaprim^ from Old Fr. 7zapero7i, a derivative oi7iappa, cloth. The aitch'ho7ie was formerly the 7iache-bo7ie^ from Old Fr. 7iache, buttock, Vulgar Lat. ^7iatica for nates. Nache is still used by French butchers. H2i77ible-pie is a popular perversion of tcnihle-pie^ ?>., a pie made from the iimbles, or inferior parts of the stag. But ttifible is for earlier 7iuinble, Old Fr. 7iomble^ formed, with dissimilation, from Lat. linnbiilus^ diminutive of liiinbtts, loin ; cf 7iivea2t (p- 53)- Thus Jmmble-pie has etymologically no connec- tion with humility. U7npi7'e represents Old Fr. non per {paz7'), not equal, the twipire being a third person called in when two arbitrators could not agree. This appears clearly in the following extract from a letter written in 1431 — 104 MISTAKES WITH THE ARTICLE 105 "And if so be that the said arbitrators may not accord before the said feast of Allhallows, then the said parties by the advice abovesaid are agreed to abide the award and ordin- ance of an 7ioimiper to be chosen by the said arbitrators." For the sense we may compare Span. tercerOy "the third, a breaker, a mediator" (Percyvall). Ati eyas falcon is for a ncyas falcon, Fr. ?iiais^ foolish, lit. nestling, related to 7iid^ nest. Rosenkrantz uses it in the literal sense — " But there is, sir, an aiery of children, little eyases^ that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyranically clapped for't." {Harnleij ii. 2.) Somewhat similar is the loss in French of initial a in la botitiqiie for V aboutiqjic^ Greco-Lat. apotheca, and la Pouille for VApoiiille, Apulia. Ounce^ a kind of tiger-cat, is from Fr. once^ earlier lonce^ " the ou7tce^ a ravenous beast " (Cotgrave), taken as Ponce. It is almost a doublet of lynx. The opposite has happened in the case of a 7iezvt for an ewt and a nick-name for an eke-7zanie. Eke^ also, occurs in the first stanza of John Gilpin. It is cognate with Ger. auch^ also, and Lat. angere^ to increase. Nu7icle, the customary address of a court fool to his superiors — "How now, mtncle ! Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters." {Leaj\ i. 4.) is for 77iine tmcle. We also find 7iaii7it. Nonce occurs properly only in the phrase fo7' the no7ice^ which is for earlier for then ones, where then is the dative of the definite article. Family names like Nash, Nokes are aphetic for atte7i ash, at the ash, atten oakes, at the oaks. The creation of such forms was perhaps helped by our tendency to use initial 7t in Christian names, e.g., Ned for Edward, Noll for Oliver ^ Nell for Ellen. 106 FOLK-ETYMOLOGY Agglutination of the definite article is common in French, e.g., litigot, ingot, lierre^ ivy, for rierre, Lat. Jiedera^ and the dialect Idvier^ sink, for ^vier, Lat. aqiiarmm^ whence Eng. ewer. The derivation of Fr. landier^ andiron is unknov/n, but the iron of the English word is due to folk-etymology. Such agglutina- tion occurs often in family names such as Langlois^ lit. the Englishman, LJmissier^ the usher (see p. 83), and some of these have passed into English, e.g., Levick for revegtie, the bishop. The two words alarm and alert include the Italian definite article. The first is Ital. airanne^ to arms, for a le anne^ and the second is airerta for alia (a la) erta^ the last word representing Lat. erccta. With rolled ^, alarm becomes alamm^ whence the aphetic larwn — "Then we shall hear their /<2r?/;;^, and they ours." {CoriolanuSy i. 4.) Ger. Ldrniy noise, is the same word. In Luther's time we also find A Her in. We have the Arabic definite article in alcalde ^ or alcade, and alguazil^ words of Spanish origin which are common in Elizabethan literature. They are two old friends from the Arabian Nights^ the cadi and the wazir or vizier. The Arabic article also occurs in acton, Old Fr. aiLqueton, now hoqiieton, for al coton, because origin- ally used of a wadded coat — " But Cranstoun's lance, of more avail. Pierced through, like silk, the Borderer's mail ; Through shield, and jack, and acton past, Deep in his bosom broke at last." (ScOTT, Lay, iii. 6.) In alligator. Span, el lagarto, the lizard, from Lat. laccrtus, we have the Spanish definite article. See also lariat, p. 22. FALSE SINGULARS 107 Occasionally we have what is apparently the arbitrary prefixing of a consonant, e.g., spruce for pnice (p. 44). Dapple gray corresponds so exactly to Fr. gris poinviele\ Mid. Eng. poineli gris, Ger. apfelgraic^ and Ital. pomellato^ "spotted, bespeckled, pide, dappk-gj^aie^ or fleabitten, the colour of a horse " (Florio), that it is hard not to believe in an unrecorded *apple-gray^ especially as we have daffodil for earlier affodil^ i.e., asphodel. Cotgrave has asphodile {aspkodele), "the daffadilly affodill, or asphodiil, flower." The playful elaboration daffadowndilly is as old as Spenser. A foreign word ending in a sibilant is sometimes mis- taken for a plural. Thus Old Fr. asset:; {assez), enough, Lat ad satis^ has given Eng. assets, plural, with a barbarous, but useful, singular asset. Cherry is for cheris^ from a dialect form of Fr. cerise, and sherry for sherris, from Xeres in Spain (see p. 46). Falstaff opines that " a good\r//^rr/i--sack ^ hath a twofold operation in it" (2 Henry IV., iv. 3). Pea is a false singular from older pease, Lat. pisuni. Perhaps the frequent occur- rence of pease-soup, not to be distinguished from pea- soup, is partly responsible for this mistake. Marquee, a large tent, is from Fr. marquise. With this we may class the heathen Chinee and the Portugee. Milton wrote correctly of — "The barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive With sails and wind their cany waggons light.'"' {Paradise Lost, iii. 438.) The vulgarism 5^^j' for chaise' is of similar formation. * Sack, earlier also seek, is Fr. sec, dry, which, with spurious /, has also ' given Ger. Sekt, now used for champagne. 2 Fr. chaise, chair, for older chaire, now used only of a pulpit or pro- fessorial chair, Lat. cathedra, is due to an affected pronunciation that prevailed in Paris in the i6th century. 108 FOLK-ETYMOLOGY Corp, for corpse, is also used provincially. KicksJiaws is really a singular from Fr. quelqiie chose — "Art thou good at these kickshawses, knight ?" {Twelfth Night, i. 3.) Cctgrave spells it qtielkchoses (s,\ . fricandemi). Skate has a curious history. It is a false singular from Du. schaats. This is from escache, an Old French dialect form of echasse, stilt, which was used in the Middle Ages for a wooden \^g. It is of Germ.an origin, and is related to shank, Cf., for the sense develop- ment, Kr\g. patten, from Fr. patin, a derivative oi patte, foot, cognate with pai- short knickerbockers of pages were called trousses, and when a page had completed his term of service, he was said to quitter les trousses. Bodice is for bodies^ as pence is for pennies. Cotgrave explains corset by " a paire of bodies for a woman," and even Harrison Ainsworth speaks of " a pair of bodice " {Jack Sheppard, Ch. i.> Trace, of a horse, is the Old Fr. plural trais^ (traits) of trait, " a teame-trace " (Cotgrave). Apprentice is the plural of Fr. apprenti, formerly apprentif, a derivative of apprendre, to learn, hence a disciple. Invoice is the plural of the obsolete invoy, from Fr. envoi, sending. In the Grecian steps, at Lincoln, we have a popular corruption of the common IMid. Eng. and Tudor grece, grese, plural of Old Fr. gre\ step, from Lat. gradus. Shakespeare spells it grize — " Let me speak like yourself ; and lay a sentence, Which, as a grize, or step, may help these lovers Into your favour." {Othello, i. 3.) Scot, brose, or brezuis, was in Mid. Eng. browes, from Old Fr. brouez, plural of brouet, a word cognate with our broth. From this association comes perhaps the use of broth as a plural in some of our dialects. Porridge, not originally limited to oatmeal, seems to be a mixture oi pottage and Mid. Eng. /^rr^/i-, plural of /^rr^/, leek, ^ The fact that in Old French the final consonant of the singular disappeared in the plunil form helped to bring about such misunder- standings. 110 FOLK-ETYMOLOGY a diminutive from \.2X, porrii^n. Porridge is still some- times used as a plural in Scottish, e.g.^ in Stevenson's Kzchzappedy Ch. iv., where David Balfour's uncle says, " fine, halesome food, they're grand food, parrichl^ and in the northern counties people speak of taking " a few porridge, or broth." Baize, now generally green, is for earlier bayes, the plural of the adjective bay, now used only of horses ; cf. Du. baai, baize. The origin of the adjective bay, Fr. bai, forms of which occur in all the Romance languages, is Lat. badius, "of bay colour, bayarde " (Cooper). Hence the name Bayard, applied to Fitzjames' horse in The Lady of the Lake, and earlier to the steed that carried the four sons of Aymon. Qtiince is the plural of qiiin, from the Norman form of Old Fr. coin {coing). Truce is the plural of Mid. Eng. trewe wdth the same meaning. It is related to Eng. inie, but, in this sense, probably comes to us from Old Fr. tritie {treve), truce. Earnest in the sense of " pledge " — " And, for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor." {^Macbeth, i. 3.) has nothing to do with the adjective earnest. It is the ?ylid. Eng. ernes, earlier erles, which survives as arles in some of our dialects. The verb to earl is still used in Cumberland of "enlisting" a servant with a shilling in the open market. The Old French word was arres or erres, now written learnedly arrhes, a plural from Lat. arrha, "an earnest penny, earnest money" (Cooper). The existence of Mid. Eng. erles shows that there must have been also an Old French diminutive form. For the apparently arbitrary change of / to n we may compare banister for bahister (see p. 55). FALSE PLURALS 111 The J esses of a hawk — ■ " If I do prove her haggard/ Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune." {JDthello, iii. 3.) were the thongs by which it was held or " thrown " into the air. Jess is the Old Fr. ^^j-, the plural of _/>/, from jeter^ to throw. In Colman's Elder BrotJier we read of a gentleman who lounged and chatted, " not minding time a sotise" where souse is the plural of Fr. sou, half- penny. From Fr. 7)iuer, to moult, Lat. imctare^ we get Fr. mue^ moulting, later applied to the coop or pen in which moulting falcons were confined, whence the phrase " to 7new (up) " — " More pity, that the eagles should be me-u/d. While kites and buzzards prey at liberty." {Richard III., \. i.) When, in 1534, the royal inezvs, or hawk-houses, near Charing Cross were rebuilt as stables, the word acquired- its present meaning. ChesSf Old Fr. esches (/checs), is the plural of check, Fr. echec, from Persian shah, king. By analogy with the "game of kings," the nameyW^ des dames was given in French to draughts, still called da)ns in Scotland. Draught, from draiv, meant \\\ Mid. English a " move " at chess. The etymology of tuueezers can best be made clear by starting from French etui, a case, of doubtful origin. This became in English etwee, or twee, e.g., Cotgrave explains estui (etui) as "a sheath, case, or box to put things in ; and (more particularly) a case of little instruments, as sizzars, bodkin, penknife, etc., now commonly termed an ettzuee." Such a case generally opens book-fashion, each half being fitted 1 Haggard, see p. 100. 112 FOLK-ETYMOLOGY with instruments. Accordingly we find it called a surgeon's " pair of tweesl' or simply tweese^ and later a "pair of izueeses" The implement was named from the case {cf. Fr. houssole^ p. 117), and became tweezers by association with pincers (Fr. pinces^, scissors^ etc. The form of a word is often affected by association with some other word with which it is instinctively coupled. Thus larboard^ for Mid. Eng. ladeboard, i.e. loading side, is due to starboard^ steering side. Bridal^ for bride-ale, from the liquid consumed at marriage festivities, is due to analogy with betrothal, espousal, etc. Rampart is from Old Fr. rejnpar, a verbal noun from reniparer, to repair ; cf, Ital. riparo, " a ravipire, a fort, a banke " (Florio). By analogy with boulevard, Old Fr. boulevart, of German origin and identical with our bulwark, rempar became rempart. The older form occurs under the forms ranipier, rampire, which survives in the dialect ramper, embankment, causeway. For the spelling rampire we may compare ti7npire (p. 105). The apple called a y*?;-/;?^//:??^, sometimes " explained " as {ov June-eating, vis^s once spelt geniton, no doubt for Fr. jeanneton, a diminutive of /ea^z. It is called in French. pom7ne de Saint- Jean, and in German Joha7inisapfel, because ripe about St John's Day (June 21). The modern form is due to such apple names as golding, sweeting, codlin, pippin. In the records of medieval London we frequently come across the distinction made between people who lived " in the city," Anglo-Fr. deinz (dans) la cit^, and " outside the city," Anglo-Fr. fors (Jiors) la cite. The former were called deinzein, whence our denizen, and the latter /^;rz>/.i The Anglo-Norman form of modern ' An unoriginal g occurs in many English words derived from French, e.g.j foreigfi, sovereign, older sovran, sprightly for spritely, i.e., sprite-like, delight, from Fr. delit, etc. ANALOGY 113 Fr. citoyen was citein, which became citizen by analogy with the synonymous denizen. Even words which have opposite meanings may affect each other by association. Thus Lat. reddere, to give back, became Vulgar Lat. * render e by analogy with prendere (prekendere), to take away ; hence Fr. rendre. Our word grief, from Fr. grief, is derived from a Vulgar Lat. *grevis, heavy (for gravis), which is due to levis, light. The plural of titmouse is novv usually titmice, by analogy with mouse, 7nice, with which it has no connec- tion. The second part of the word is Anglo-Sax. nidse, used of several small birds. It is cognate with Ger. Meise, titmouse, and Fr. mesange, "a titmouse, or tittling " (Cotgrave). Tit, of Norse origin, is applied to various small animals, and occurs also as a prefix in titbit or tidbit. Cf. tomtit (p. 33). The Spanish word salva, "a taste, a salutation" (Percyvall), was used of the pregustation of a great man's food or drink. We have given the name to the tray or dish from which the " assay " was made, but, by analogy with platter, trencher, we spell it salver. In another sense, that of a " salutation " in the forrh of a volley of shot, we have corrupted it into salvo. With the use of Span, salva we may compare that of Ital. credenza, lit. faith, " the taste or assaie of a princes meate and drinke " (Florio) ; whence Fr. credence, side- board, used in English only in the ecclesiastical com- pound credence table, and Ger. credenzen, to pour out. In spoken English the ending -ew, -?/^, of French origin, has been often changed to -ee, -ey. Thus pedigree was formerly pedigrew (see p. 71). The fencing term veney — " I bruised my shin the other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence — three vcneys for a dish of stewed prunes." {Merry Wives, i. i.) H 114 FOLK-ETYMOLOGY also spelt venew^ is from Fr. venue^ " a venny in fencing " (Cotgrave). Carew has become Carey and Beaidieti^ in Hampshire, is called Bewley. Under the influence of these double forms we sometimes get the opposite change,