Old traditions: language fossils
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English is chock-full of fossils. Words and phrases whose original meanings have been left behind as the language moved on. We barely notice them, even though we use them all the time – if usually only in specific contexts. What’s the reck in reckless? The cob in cobweb? A petard that we get hoisted by? This weeks post is a meander through just a few of them. But before I get to that ...
The rise of the em-dash. “Cecelia Watson, the author of Semicolon, said that it has a kind of ‘urgency to it, almost like a little arrow that’s missing its arrowhead. It has that businessy but also breezy look to it. Nobody really gets intimidated by a dash.’ ”
Why writing a good sentence isn’t as easy as you think.
“In a wide-ranging number of languages, major and minor, from all different branches of the language family tree, there is some version of ‘It’s Greek to me.’ ”
Good piece on “like”. Though NZBS didn't come into being until 1936 so it might refer to people born in 1851.
Amusing video of Russian-speaking English guy trying to discover in Russia speakers of the Moksha language – without vodka to grease the linguistic wheels.
Reading and listening to a book are the same, brain-wise.
If you're in a pedantic grump, here are 38 Americanisms the British, or perhaps just Gyles Brandreth, can’t stand.
Fossil words and phrases lurk in English probably in their hundreds. They often hide in handy phrases or ritualised language, such as “till death do us part”. Some language people colourfully call them oxbows, after oxbow lakes, the u-shaped bodies of water left behind when a river changes course (themselves named after the loops around the necks of working oxen).
They often exist in duos, handy rhymes or alliterative words often of very similar meaning. Where’s thither in relation to hither? That place, rather than this place. Yonder is further away. At someone’s beck and call? Beck is just an old abbreviated form of beckon. Fire and brimstone are what you can expect in hell. Brimstone is an old word for sulphur.
Brickbats and bouquets are of course criticisms and plaudits, but a brickbat is a piece of brick used as a missile. In every nook and cranny means in every possible place, and the words are seldom used outside this phrase, a nook being a secluded corner, a cranny a small, narrow place. A hue and cry is a public clamour, mostly literary these days. Historically it was a when a small English district called for the capture of a robber, so that they weren’t liable for the damages. It apparently comes from the Anglo-Norman French legal phrase hu e cri, outcry and cry.
Squibs and petards are both explosive. A squib, other than a short piece of satirical writing or a snappy kick in American football, is a small firework. A damp squib is a disappointment, especially something that promised more. A petard was a small bomb. To be hoist by one’s one petard, a phrase that now sounds thoroughly antique, is to have one's plan to create trouble for someone else come back on you. Petard, by the way, comes from the French, péter, to “break wind”.
My favourites are probably the -less ones for qualities that have disappeared in this form, like reckless (reck = pay attention to), feckless (feck = effect), ruthless (ruth = pity). What’s the awk in awkward? It meant facing the wrong direction.
Cesspit is a great example of folk etymology. A cesspool came from the Old French souspirail, air hole. People thought a cesspool was a pool of cess, hence cesspit.
To run amok? It arrived into English via Portuguese from Malay “rushing in a frenzy”, possibly a homicidal one. What’s the cob in cobweb? Coppe is an old word for spider.
There’s something specially expressive about the word akimbo. Arms or legs akimbo means to have them apart at wild angles, though it originally meant to be with your hands on your hips and elbows turned outwards. (Worth quoting Etymonline here: “c1400, in kenebowe, of unknown origin, perhaps from Middle English phrase in keen bow ‘at a sharp angle’ (with keen in its Middle English sense of ‘sharp’ + bow ‘arch’), or from a Scandinavian word akin to Icelandic kengboginn ‘bow-bent’, but this seems not to have been used in this exact sense. Middle English Compendium compares Old French chane/kane/quenne ‘can, pot, jug’. Many languages use a teapot metaphor for this, such as Modern French faire le pot a deux anses ‘to play the pot with two handles’.”)
Quick in the phrase “the quick and the dead” meant alive, from Old English cwic. To be quick with child meant being pregnant, the first movement of your baby when pregnant being still called the quickening. (Up the duff, by the way, first appeared in Australia, and comes from an alternative pronunciation for dough, as in plum duff, likewise the baking-related phrases in the pudding club, with allusions to male members, and bun in the oven.) To cut someone to the quick, by the way, is of course to hurt someone deeply, particularly emotionally, though it refers to reaching the living tissue, such as below your fingernail.
Let’s stop at ye. As in ye of little faith and ye olde toy shoppe. The two are quite separate. The first – which apparently went from being plural to singular to both – became the equivalent of thou and thee. The second ye was a written “the”, when the “th” sound, originally put down as þ, called thorn, eventually changed to a y. It was never pronounced ye.
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