Stories That Words Tell Us Part 12

On the other hand, words which belong to quite good and ordinary speech in their own languages often become slang when adopted into another. A slang word much used in America and sometimes in England (for American expressions are constantly finding their way into the English language) is _vamoose_, which means "depart." _Vamoose_ comes from a quite ordinary Mexican word, _vamos_, which is Spanish for "let us go."

It is very interesting to find that many of our most respectable words borrowed from Latin have a slang origin. Sometimes these words were slang in Latin itself; sometimes they were used as slang only after they pa.s.sed into English. The French word _tete_, which means "head,"

comes from the Latin _testa_, "a pot." (We have seen that this is the word from which we get our word _test_.) Some Romans, instead of using _caput_, the real Latin word for "head," would sometimes in slang fashion speak of some one's _testa_, or "pot," and from this slang word the French got their regular word for head.

The word _insult_ comes from the Latin _insultarc_, which meant at first "to spring or leap at," and afterwards came to have the same meaning as it has with us. The persons who first used this expression in the second sense were really using slang, picturing a person who said something unpleasant to them as "jumping at them."

We have the same kind of slang in the expression "to jump down one's throat," when we mean "to complain violently of some one's behaviour."

The word _effrontery_, which comes to us from the French _effronterie_, is really the same expression as the vulgar terms _face_ and _cheek_, meaning "impudence." For the word comes from the Latin _frons_, "the forehead."

An example of a word which was quite good English, and then came to be used as slang in a special sense, and then in this same special sense became good English again, is _grit_. The word used to mean in English merely "sand" or "gravel," and it came to mean especially the texture or grain of stones used for grinding. Then in American slang it came to be used to mean all that we mean now when we say a person has "grit"--namely, courage, and strength, and firmness. This use of the word seemed so good that it rapidly became good English; but the American slang-makers soon found another word to replace it, and now talk of people having "sand," which is not by any means so expressive, and will probably never pa.s.s out of the realm of slang.

An example of a word which was at first used as slang not many years ago, and is now, if not the most elegant English, at least a quite respectable word for newspaper use, is _maffick_. This word means to make a noisy show of joy over news of a victory. It dates from the relief of Mafeking by the British in 1900. When news of its relief came people at home seemed to go mad with joy. They rushed into the streets shouting and cheering, and there was a great deal of noise and confusion. It was noticed over and over again that there was no "mafficking" over successes in the Great War. People felt it too seriously to make a great noise about it.

A slang word which has become common in England during the Great War is _strafe_. This is the German word for "punish," and became quite familiar to English people through the hope and prayer to which the Germans were always giving expression that G.o.d would "strafe" England.

The soldiers caught hold of the word, and it was very much used in a humorous way both at home and abroad. But it is not at all likely to become a regular English word, and perhaps will not even remain as slang after the war.

Besides the fact that slang often becomes good English, we have to notice that good English often becomes slang. One of the most common forms of slang is to use words, and especially adjectives, which mean a great deal in themselves to describe quite small and ordinary things. To speak of a "splendid" or "magnificent" breakfast, for instance, is to use words out of proportion to the subject, though of course they are excellent words in themselves; but this is a mild form of slang.

There are many people now who fill their conversation with superlatives, although they speak of the most commonplace things. A theatrical performance will be "perfectly heavenly," an actress "perfectly divine." Apart from the fact that nothing and no one merely human can be "divine," divinity itself is perfection, and it is therefore not only unnecessary but actually incorrect to add "perfectly." A scene or landscape may very properly be described as "enchanting," but when the adjective is applied too easily it is a case of good English becoming slang.

Then, besides the use of superlative adjectives to describe things which do not deserve such descriptions, there is a crowd of rarer words used in a special sense to praise things.

Every one knows what a "stunning blow" is, but few people can ever have been stunned by the beauty of another's clothes. Yet the expression "stunning hat" or "stunning tie" is quite common.

Expressions like a "ripping time" are even more objectionable, because they are even more meaningless.

Then, besides the slang use of terms of praise, there are also many superlatives expressing disgust which the slangmongers use instead of ordinary mild expressions of displeasure. To such people it is not simply "annoying" to have to wait for a lift on the underground railways; for them it is "perfectly sickening."

_Horrid_, a word which means so much if used properly, is applied to all sorts of slightly unpleasant things and people. When one thinks of the literal Latin meaning of this word ("so dreadful as to cause us to shudder"), the foolishness of using it so lightly is plain. People frequently now declare that they have a "shocking cold"--a description which, again, is too violent for the subject.

Another form of slang is to combine a word which generally expresses unpleasant with one which expresses pleasant ideas. So we get such expressions as "awfully nice" and "frightfully pleased," which are actually contradictions in terms.

This kind of slang is the worst kind of all. It soon loses any spice of novelty. It is not really expressive, like some of the quaint terms of school or university slang, and it does a great deal of harm by tending to spoil the full force of some of our best and finest words.

It is very difficult to avoid the use of slang if one is constantly hearing it, but, at any rate, any one who feels the beauty of language must soon be disgusted by this particular kind of slang.

CHAPTER XVI.

WORDS WHICH HAVE CHANGED THEIR MEANING.

We have seen in the chapter on "slang" how people are continually using old words in new ways, and how, through this, slang often becomes good English and good English becomes slang. The same thing has been going on all through the history of language. Other words besides those used as slang have been constantly getting new uses.

Many English words to-day have quite different meanings from those which they had in the Middle Ages; some even have exactly opposite meanings to their original sense. Sometimes words keep both the old meaning and the new.

In this matter the English language is very different from the German.

The English language has many words which the Germans have too, but their meanings are different. The Germans have kept the original meanings which these words had hundreds of years ago; but the thousands of words which have come down to us from the English language of a thousand years ago have nearly all changed their meanings.

We have two of these old words which have now each two exactly opposite meanings. The word _fast_ means sometimes "immovable," and sometimes it means the exact opposite--"moving rapidly." We say a key is "fast" in a lock when we cannot get it out, and we say a person runs "fast" when we mean that he runs quickly. The first meaning of steadiness is the original meaning; then the word came to be used to mean "moving steadily." A person who ran on, keeping up a steady movement, was said to run fast, and then it was easy to use the word for rapidity as well as steadiness in motion or position. This is how the word _fast_ came to have two opposite meanings.

Another word, _fine_, has the same sort of history. We speak of a "fine needle" when we mean that it is thin, and a "fine baby" when we mean that it is fat. The first meaning is nearer to the original, which was "well finished off." Often a thing which had a great deal of "fine" workmanship spent on it would be delicate and "fine" in the first sense, and so the word came to have this meaning. On the other hand, the thing finished off in this way would generally be beautiful.

People came to think of "fine" things as things to be admired, and as they like their babies to be fat, a fat baby will generally be considered a fine baby. It was in this kind of way that "fine" came to have its second meaning of "large."

The common adjectives _glad_ and _sad_ had quite different meanings in Old English from those they have now. In Old English glad meant "shining," or "bright," but in a very short time it came to mean "cheerful." Now it means something rather different from this, for though we may speak of a "glad heart" or "glad spirit," such expressions are chiefly used in poetry. Generally in ordinary speech when we say that we are "glad" we mean that we are pleased about some special thing, as "glad that you have come."

_Sad_ in Old English meant to have as much as one wanted of anything.

Then it came to mean "calm" and "serious," perhaps from the idea that people who have all they want are in a mood to settle down and attend to things seriously. Already in Shakespeare's writings we find the word with its present meaning of "sorrowful." It has quite lost its earlier meaning, but has several special new meanings besides the general one of "sorrowful." A "sad tint," or colour, is one which is dull. "Sad bread" in the north of England is "heavy" bread which has not risen properly. Again, we describe as "sad" some people who are not at all sorrowful. We say a person is a "sad" liar when we mean that he is a hopeless liar.

The word _tide_, which we now apply to the regular rise and fall of the sea, used to mean in Old English "time;" and it still keeps this meaning in the words _Christmastide_, _Whitsuntide_, etc.

One common way in which words change is in going from a general to a more special meaning. Thus in Old English the word _chest_ meant "box"

in general, but has come now to be used as the name of a special kind of box only, and also as the name of a part of the body. The first person who used the word in this sense must have thought of the "chest" as a box containing the lungs and the heart.

_Gla.s.s_ is, of course, the name of the substance out of which we make our windows and some of our drinking vessels, etc., and this was at one time its only use; but we now use the name _gla.s.s_ for several special articles--for example, a drinking-vessel, a telescope, a barometer, a mirror (or "looking-gla.s.s"), and so on. _Copper_ is another word the meaning of which has become specialized in this way as time has gone on. From being merely the name of a metal it has come to be used for a copper coin and for a large cauldron especially used in laundry work. Another example of a rather different kind of this "specialization" which changes the meaning of words is the word _congregation_. _Congregation_ used to mean "any gathering together of people in one place," and we still use the word _congregate_ in this sense. Thus we might say "the people congregated in Trafalgar Square,"

but we should never think of speaking of a crowd listening to a lecturer there as a "congregation." The word has now come to mean an a.s.sembly for religious worship in a chapel or church.

Some words have changed their meaning in just the opposite way. From having one special meaning they have come by degrees to have a much more general sense. The word _bureau_, which came into English from the French, meant at first merely a "desk" in both languages. It still has this meaning in both languages, but a wider meaning as well. It can now be used to describe an office (a place a.s.sociated with the idea of desks). Thus we have "employment bureau," and can get English money for foreign at a "bureau de change." From this use of the word we have the word _bureaucracy_, by which we describe a government which is carried on by a great number of officials.

A better example of how a word containing one special idea can extend its meaning is the word _bend_. This word originally meant to pull the string of a bow in order to let fly an arrow. The expression "bend a bow" was used, and as the result of pulling the string was to curve the wooden part of the arrow, people came in time to think that "bending the bow" was this making the wood to curve. From this came our general use of "bend" to mean forcing a thing which is straight into a curve or angle. We have, of course, also the metaphorical use of the word, as when we speak of bending our will to another's.

Another word which has had a similar history is _carry_. When this word was first borrowed from Old French it meant to move something from place to place in a cart or other wheeled vehicle. The general word for our modern _carry_ was _bear_, which we still use, but chiefly in poetry. In time _carry_ came to have its modern general sense of lifting a thing from one place and removing it to another. A well-known writer on the history of the English language has suggested that this came about first through people using the word in this sense half in fun, just as the word _cart_ is now sometimes used. A person may say (a little vulgarly), "Do you expect me to cart all these things to another room?" instead of using the ordinary word carry. If history were to repeat itself in this case, _cart_ might in time become the generally used word, and _carry_ in its turn be relegated to the realm of poetry.

Words often come to have several meanings through being used to describe things which are connected in some way with the things for which they were originally used. The word _house_ originally had one meaning, which it still keeps, but to which several others have been added. It was a building merely, but came in time to be used to mean the building and the people living in it. Thus we say one person "disturbs the whole house." From this sense it got the meaning of a royal family, and we speak of the House of York, Lancaster, Tudor, or Stuart. We also use the word in a large sense when we speak of the "House of Lords" and the "House of Commons," by which we hardly ever mean the actual buildings known generally as the "Houses of Parliament," but the members of the two Houses. The word _world_ has had almost the opposite history to the word _house_. World originally applied only to persons and not to any place. It meant a "generation of men," and then came to mean men and the earth they live on, and then the earth itself; until it has a quite general sense, as when we speak of "other worlds than ours."

Many words which are used at present to describe bad or disagreeable things were used quite differently originally. The word _villain_ is, perhaps, the most expressive we can use to show our opinion of the depths of a person's wickedness. Yet in the Middle Ages a villain, or "villein," was merely a serf or labourer bound to work on the land of a particular lord. The word in Saxon times would have been _churl_. As time went on both these words became terms of contempt. The lords in the Middle Ages were certainly often more wicked than the serfs, as we see in the stories of the days of Robin Hood; but by degrees the people of the higher cla.s.ses began to use the word _villain_ more and more contemptuously. Many of them imagined that only people of their own cla.s.s were capable of high thoughts and n.o.ble conduct. Gradually "villainy" came to mean all that was low and vulgar, and by degrees it came to have the meaning it has now of "sheer wickedness." At the end of the Middle Ages there were practically no longer any serfs in England; but the word _villain_ has remained in this new sense, and gives us a complete story of the misunderstanding and dislike which must have existed between "n.o.ble" and "simple" to cause such a change in the meaning of the word.

The word _churl_ has a somewhat similar history. We say now that a sulky, ungracious person is a "mere churl," or behaves in a "churlish"

manner, never thinking of the original meaning of the word. Here, again, is a little story of injustice. The present use of the word comes from the supposition that only the mere labourer could behave in a sulky or bad-tempered way.

_Knave_ is another of those words which originally described persons of poor condition and have now come to mean a wicked or deceitful person. A knave, as we now understand the word, means a person who cheats in a particularly mean way, but formerly the word meant merely "boy." It then came to mean "servant," just as the word _garcon_ ("boy") is used for all waiters in French restaurants. Another word which now means, as a rule, some one unutterably wicked, is _wretch_, though it is also used rather contemptuously to describe some one who is not wicked but unutterably miserable. Yet in Old English this word merely meant an "exile." An exile was a person to be pitied, and also sometimes a person who had done something wrong, and we get both these ideas in the modern uses of the word. The word _blackguard_, which now means a "scoundrel," was also once a word for "scullion;" but it does not go back as far as "knave" and "villain," being found chiefly in writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Another word in which the "villeins" and "knaves" and "churls" seem to have their revenge on the "upper cla.s.ses" is _surly_. This word used to be spelt _sirly_, and meant behaving as a "sire," or gentleman, behaves. Originally this meant "haughty" or "arrogant," but by degrees came to have the idea of sulkiness and ungraciousness, much like _churlish_.

Several adjectives which are now used as terms of blame were not only harmless descriptions originally, but were actually terms of praise.

No one likes to be called "cunning," "sly," or "crafty" to-day; but these were all complimentary adjectives once. A _cunning_ man was one who knew his work well, a _sly_ person was wise and skilful, and a _crafty_ person was one who could work well at his trade or "craft."

Two words which we use to-day with a better sense than any of these, and yet which have a slightly uncomplimentary sense, are _knowing_ and _artful_. It is surely good to "know" things, and to be full of art; but both words have already an idea of slyness, and may in time come to have quite as unpleasant a meaning as these three which have the same literal meaning.

_Fellow_, a word which has now nearly always a slightly contemptuous sense, had originally the quite good sense of _partner_. It came from an Old English word which meant the man who marked out his land next to yours. The word still has this good sense in _fellowship_, _fellow-feeling_, etc., and as used to describe a "fellow" of a college or society. But the more general use is as a less respectful word for man. One man may say of another that he is a "nice fellow"

without any disrespect; but the word has no dignity, and people, even though they use it of an equal, would not think of using it to describe a superior, and the more general use is that of blame or contempt, as in the expressions, "a disagreeable fellow" or "a stupid fellow." The word _bully_ was at one time a word which showed affection, and meant even "lover." In English now, of course, a bully is a person, especially a boy, who tyrannizes over people weaker than himself; but the Americans still use the word in a good sense when they say "bully for you," meaning "bravo."

We have seen many words whose meanings have become less dignified than their original meaning; but sometimes the opposite happens. Every one now speaks with respect of a "pioneer," whether we mean by that people who are the first to venture into strange lands, or, in a more figurative sense, people who make some new discovery in science or introduce some new way of thinking or acting. Yet "pioneers" were originally merely the soldiers who did the hard work of clearing the way for an advancing army. They were looked upon as belonging to a lower cla.s.s than the ordinary soldiers. But this new and at first figurative use of the word, applied first to geographical and then to scientific and moral explorers, has given the word a new dignity.

A group of words which had originally very humble meanings, and have been elevated in an even more accidental way, are the names of the officials of royal courts. The word _steward_ originally meant, as it still means, a person who manages property for some one else. The steward on a ship is a servant; but the steward of the king's household was no mean person, and was dignified with the t.i.tle of the "Lord High Steward of England." The royal house of Stuart took its name from the fact that the heads of the family were in earlier times hereditary stewards of the Scottish kings. So _marshal_, the name of another high official at court, means "horse boy;" _seneschal_, "old servant;" _constable_, "an attendant to horses' stalls," and so on.

Some of these words have kept both a dignified and a commoner meaning.

_Constable_, besides being the name of a court official, is also another term for "policeman."

The word _silly_ meant in Old English "blessed" or "happy," but of course has wandered far from this meaning. On the other hand, several words which once meant "foolish" have now quite different meanings.

_Giddy_ and _dizzy_ both had this sense in Old English, and so had the word _nice_. But later the French word _fol_, from which we get _foolish_, was introduced into English, and these words soon ceased to be used in this sense. Before this the two words _dizzy_ and _giddy_ had occasionally been used in the sense in which they are used now, to describe the condition of a person whose head "swims;" this now became their general meaning, though _giddy_ has gone back again to something of its old meaning in its later use to describe a person's conduct. A _giddy_ person is another description for one of frivolous character.