Ernest Weekley

“ 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 associated 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. ”

“ Men have always been fascinated by word-lore. The Greeks and Romans played with etymology in a somewhat metaphysical fashion, a famous example of which is the derivation of lucus a non lucendo. Medieval writers delight in giving amazing information as to the origin of the words they use. Their method, which may be called learned folk-etymology, consists in attempting to resolve an unfamiliar word into elements which give a possible interpretation of its meaning. ”

“ 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. sæta, bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German (Seide) and Dutch (zijde) . The derivatives of sericum stand for another material, serge. Nor can it be assumed that the r of the Latin word would have become in English always l and never r. There are races which cannot sound the letter r, but we are not one of them. ”

“ In some cases a complimentary adjective loses its true meaning and takes on a contemptuous or ironic sense. None of us care to be called bland, and to describe a man as worthy is to apologise for his existence. ”

“ The population of this country is educationally divided by the letter h into three classes, which we may describe as the confident, the anxious, and the indifferent. The same division existed in imperial Rome, where educated people sounded the aspirate, which completely disappeared from the every-day language of the lower classes, the so-called Vulgar Latin, from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned. ”

“ In modern Dutch it has become accijns, through confusion with cijns, tax (Lat. census; cf. Ger. Zins, interest) . But the Dutch word is from Fr. accise, which appears in medieval Latin as accisia, as though connected with "cutting" (cf. tallage, from Fr. tailler, to cut) , or with the "incidence" of the tax. It is perhaps a perversion of Ital. assisa, "an imposition, or taxe, or assesment" (Torriano) ; but there is also an Old Fr. aceis which must be related to Latin census.
When folk-etymology and contamination work together, the result is sometimes bewildering. ”

“ There is no Italian verb celare, to engrave, but there is a very common verb celare, to conceal. A steel cap was also called in Italian secreta, "a thinne steele cap, or close skull, worne under a hat" (Florio) , and in Old French segrette, "an yron skull, or cap of fence" (Cotgrave) . Both words are confirmed by Duez, who, in his Italian-French Dictionary (1660) , has secreta, "une secrette, ou segrette, un morion, une bourguignotte, armure de teste pour les picquiers." Ergo, the salet belongs to Lat. celare, to hide, secrete. ”

“ 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 romanz became felt as a noun, it developed a "singular" roman or romant, the latter of which gave the archaic Eng. romaunt. The most famous of Old French romances are the epic poems called Chansons de geste, songs of exploits, geste coming from the Lat. gesta, deeds. Eng. gest or jest is common in the 16th and 17th centuries in the sense of act, deed, and jest-book meant a story-book. ”

“ In considering the Old French element in English, one has to bear in mind a few elementary philological facts. Nearly all French nouns and adjectives are derived from the accusative. I give, for simplicity, the nominative, adding the stem in the case of imparisyllabic words. The foundation of French is Vulgar Latin, which differs considerably from that we study at school. I only give Vulgar Latin forms where it cannot be avoided. ”

“ When we turn from fiction to fact, we find that the oldest French name was pétrinal, explained by Cotgrave as "a petronell, or horse-man's peece." It was occasionally corrupted, perhaps owing to the way in which the weapon was slung, into poitrinal. This corruption would be facilitated by the 16th-century pronunciation of oi (peitrine) . The French word is borrowed either from Ital. petronello, pietronello, "a petronell" (Florio) , or from Span. pedreñal, "a [198] petronall, a horse-man's peece, ita dict. quod silice petra incenditur" (Minsheu, Spanish Dictionary, 1623) . ”

“ What livery is, we by common use in England know well enough, namely, that it is allowance of horse-meat, as they commonly use the word in stabling; as, to keep horses at livery; the which word, I guess, is derived of livering or delivering 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 ”

“ The term folk-etymology is often applied in a narrower sense to the corruption of words through a mistaken idea of their etymology or origin. The tendency of the uneducated is to distort an unfamiliar or unintelligible word into some form which suggests a meaning. ”

“ But many of our metaphors are drawn from pursuits with which we are no longer familiar, or from 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-tube) , Old Fr. test (têt) . This is related to Old Fr. teste (tête) head, from Lat. testa, tile, pot, etc., used in Roman slang for caput. Shakespeare has the complete metaphor ”

“ Modern English contains some six or seven hundred pairs or sets of homonyms, i.e., of words identical in sound and spelling but differing in meaning and origin. The New English Dictionary recognises provisionally nine separate nouns rack. The subject is a difficult one to deal with, because one word sometimes develops such apparently different meanings that the original identity becomes obscured, and even, as we have seen in the case of flour and mettle (p. 144) , a difference of spelling may result. ”

“ To its composite character English owes its unequalled richness in expression. For most ideas we have three separate terms, or groups of terms, which, often starting from the same metaphor, serve to express different shades of meaning. Thus a deed done with malice prepense (an Old French compound from Lat. pensare, to weigh) , is deliberate or pondered, both Latin words which mean literally [2] "weighed"; but the four words convey four distinct shades of meaning. The Gk. sympathy is Lat. compassion, rendered in English by fellow-feeling. ”

“ For when there was a dangerous rebellion against King William Rufus, and Rochester Castle, then the most important and strongest fort of this realm, was stoutly kept against him, after that he had but proclaimed that his subjects should repair thither to his camp, upon no other penalty, but that whosoever should refuse to come should be reputed a niding, they swarmed to him immediately from all sides in such numbers that he had in a few days an infinite army, and the rebels therewith were so terrified that they forthwith yielded. ”

“ Crécerelle is a diminutive of crécelle, 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 tinnunculus, 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 Columella. ”

“ The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye be called fenell giant. Also a rodde, sticke, or paulmer, wherewith children are striken and corrected in schooles; a cane, a reede, a walking staffe" (Cooper) . Ferrule is a perversion of earlier virrel, virrol, Fr. virole, "an iron ring put about the end of a staffe, etc., to strengthen it, and keep it from riving" (Cotgrave) .
The modern meaning of pester is due to a wrong association with pest. ”

“ The history of a word has to be studied from the double point of view of sound and sense, or, to use more technical terms, phonetics and semantics. In the logical order of things it seems natural to deal first with the less interesting aspect, phonetics, the physical processes by which sounds are gradually transformed. ”

“ Unkempt, uncombed, and uncouth, unknown, are fossil remains of obsolete verb forms.
In addition to these main constituents of our language, we have borrowed words, sometimes in [3] considerable numbers, sometimes singly and accidentally, from almost every tongue known to mankind, and every year sees new words added to our vocabulary. The following chapters deal especially with words borrowed from Old French and from the other Romance languages, their origins and journeyings, and the various accidents that have befallen them in English. ”

“ The largest class of doublets is formed by those words of Latin origin which have been introduced into the language in two forms, the popular form through Anglo-Saxon or Old French, and the learned through modern French or directly from Latin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In these remarks on surnames I have only tried to show in general terms how they come into existence, "hoping to incur no offence herein with any person, when I protest in all sincerity, that I purpose nothing less than to wrong any whosoever" (Camden) . Many names are susceptible of alternative explanations, and it requires a genealogist, and generally some imagination, to decide to which particular source a given family can be traced. The two arguments sometimes drawn from armorial bearings and medieval Latin forms are worthless. ”

“ A menial is a member of such a body. An Italian cognate is masnadiere, "a ruffler, a swashbuckler, a swaggerer, a high way theefe, a hackster" (Florio) . Those inclined to moralise may see in these words a proof that the arrogance of the great man's flunkey was curbed in England earlier than in Italy. Old Fr. maisniee is now replaced by ménage, Vulgar Lat. *mansionaticum. A derivative of this word is ménagerie, first applied to the collection of household animals, but now to a "wild beast show." ”

“ Henri Estienne, whose fiery patriotism entered even into philological questions, reproaches his countrymen 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, poltron! Assassin is really a plural, from the hachaschin, eaters of the drug haschish, who executed the decrees of the Old Man of the Mountains. ”

“ The converse process of people being nicknamed 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-mouse, Anglo-Sax. scrēawa. Cooper describes mus araneus 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. ”