The Romance of Words Part 2

A linguistic invasion such as that of English by Old French is almost unparalleled. We have instances of the expulsion of one tongue by another, _e.g._, of the Celtic dialects of Gaul by Latin and of those of Britain by Anglo-Saxon. But a real blending of two languages can only occur when a large section of the population is bilingual for centuries.

This, as we know, was the case in England. The Norman dialect, already familiar through inevitable intercourse, was transplanted to England in 1066. It developed further on its own lines into Anglo-Norman, and then, mixed with other French dialects, for not all the invaders were Normans, and political events brought various French provinces into relation with England, it produced Anglo-French, a somewhat barbarous tongue which was the official language till 1362, and with which our legal jargon is saturated. We find in Anglo-French many words which are unrecorded in continental Old French, among them one which we like to think of as essentially English, viz., _duete_, duty, an abstract formed from the past participle of Fr. _devoir_. This verb has also given us _endeavour_, due to the phrase _se mettre en devoir_--

"Je me suis _en debvoir_ mis pour moderer sa cholere tyrannicque."[11]

(_Rabelais_, i. 29.)

[Page Heading: NEOLOGISMS]

No dictionary can keep up with the growth of a language. The _New English Dictionary_ had done the letter _C_ before the _cinematograph_ arrived, but got it in under _K_. Words of this kind are manufactured in such numbers that the lexicographer is inclined to wait and see whether they will catch on. In such cases it is hard to prophesy. The population of this country may be divided into those people who have been operated for _appendicitis_ and those who are going to be. Yet this word was considered too rare and obscure for insertion in the first volume of the _New English Dictionary_ (1888), the greatest word-book that has ever been projected. _Sabotage_ looks, unfortunately, as if it had come to stay. It is a derivative of _saboter_, to scamp work, from _sabot_, a wooden shoe, used contemptuously of an inferior article. The great French dictionaries do not know it in its latest sense of malicious damage done by strikers, and the _New English Dictionary_, which finished _Sa-_ in the year 1912, just missed it. _Hooligan_ is not recorded by the _New English Dictionary_. The original _Hooligans_ were a spirited Irish family of that name whose proceedings enlivened the drab monotony of life in Southwark towards the end of the 19th century.

The word is younger than the Australian _larrikin_, of doubtful origin (see p. 190), but older than Fr. _apache_. The adoption of the Red Indian name _Apache_ for a modern Parisian bravo is a curious parallel to the 18th-century use of _Mohock_ (Mohawk) for an aristocratic London ruffler.

_Heckle_ is first recorded in its political sense for 1880. The _New English Dictionary_ quotes it from _Punch_ in connection with the Fourth Party. In Scottish, however, it is old in this sense, so that it is an example of a dialect word that has risen late in life. Its southern form _hatch.e.l.l_ is common in Mid. English in its proper sense of "teasing"

hemp or flax, and the metaphor is exactly the same. _Tease_, earlier _toose_, means to pluck or pull to pieces, hence the name _teasel_ for the thistle used by wool-carders. The older form is seen in the derivative _tousle_, the family name _Tozer_, and the dog's name _Towser_. _f.e.c.kless_, a common Scottish word, was hardly literary English before Carlyle. It is now quite familiar--

"Thriftless, shiftless, _f.e.c.kless_."

(Mr LLOYD GEORGE, 1st Nov. 1911.)

There is a certain appropriateness in the fact that almost the first writer to use it was James I. It is for _effectless_. I never heard of a _week-end_ till I paid a visit to Lancashire in 1883. It has long since invaded the whole island. An old _geezer_ has a modern sound, but it is the medieval _guiser_, _guisard_, mummer, which has persisted in dialect and re-entered the language.

[Page Heading: WORDS DUE TO ACCIDENT]

The fortunes of a word are sometimes determined by accident. _Glamour_ (see p. 145) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. _Grail_, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. _Mascot_, from a Provencal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta _La Mascotte_ (1880). _Jingo_ first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque _jinko_, G.o.d, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is probably the only pure Basque word in English.

The Ingoldsby derivation from St Gengulphus--

"Sometimes styled 'The Living _Jingo_,' from the great tenaciousness of vitality exhibited by his severed members,"

is of course a joke. In 1878, when war with Russia seemed imminent, a music-hall singer, the Great Macdermott, delighted large audiences with--

"We don't want to fight, but, by _Jingo_, if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too."

Hence the name _jingo_ applied to that ultra-patriotic section of the population which, in war-time, attends to the shouting.[12] Fr.

_chauvin_, a jingo, is the name of a real Napoleonic veteran introduced into Scribe's play _Le Soldat Laboureur_. _Barracking_ is known to us only through the visits of English cricket teams to Australia. It is said to come from a native Australian word meaning derision. The American _caucus_ was first applied (1878) by Lord Beaconsfield to the Birmingham Six Hundred. In 18th-century American it means meeting or discussion. It is probably connected with a North American Indian (Algonkin) word meaning counsellor, an etymology supported by that of _pow-wow_, a palaver or confab, which is the Algonkin for a medicine-man. With these words may be mentioned _Tammany_, now used of a famous political body, but, in the 18th century, of a society named after the "tutelar saint" of Pennsylvania. The original Tammany was an Indian chief with whom William Penn negotiated for grants of land about the end of the 17th century. _Littoral_ first became familiar in connection with Italy's ill-starred Abyssinian adventure, and _hinterland_ marked the appearance of Germany as a colonial power--

"'Let us glance a moment,' said Mr Queed, 'at Man, as we see him first emerging from the dark _hinterlands_ of history.'"

(H. S. HARRISON, _Queed_, Ch. 17.)

[Page Heading: BLUNDERS]

Sometimes the blunder of a great writer has enriched the language.

Scott's _bartisan_--

"Its varying circle did combine Bulwark, and _bartisan_, and line And bastion, tower ..."

(_Marmion_, vi. 2.)

is a mistake for _bratticing_, timber-work, a word of obscure origin of which several corruptions are found in early Scottish. It is rather a favourite with writers of "sword and feather" novels. Other sham antiques are _slug-horn_, Chatterton's absurd perversion of the Gaelic _slogan_, war-cry, copied by Browning--

"Dauntless the _slug-horn_ to my lips I set, And blew 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'"

and Scott's extraordinary misuse of _warison_, security, a doublet of _garrison_, as though it meant "war sound"--

"Or straight they sound their _warison_, And storm and spoil thy garrison."

(_Lay_, iv. 21.)

Scott also gave currency to _niddering_, a coward--

"Faithless, mansworn,[13] and _niddering_."

(_Ivanhoe_, Ch. 42.)

which has been copied by Lytton and Kingsley, and elaborated into _nidderling_ by Mr Crockett. It is a misprint in an early edition of William of Malmesbury for _niding_ or _nithing_, cognate with Ger.

_Neid_, envy. This word, says Camden, is mightier than _Abracadabra_,[14]

since--

"It hath levied armies and subdued rebellious enemies. 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."

(_Remains concerning Britain._)

_Derring-do_ is used several times by Spenser, who explains it as "manhood and chevalrie." It is due to his misunderstanding of a pa.s.sage in Lidgate, in which it is an imitation of Chaucer, complicated by a misprint. Scott took it from Spenser--

"'Singular,' he again muttered to himself, 'if there be two who can do a deed of such _derring-do_.'"

(_Ivanhoe_, Ch. 29.)

and from him it pa.s.sed to Bulwer Lytton and later writers.

Such words as these, the illegitimate offspring of genius, are to be distinguished from the "ghost-words" which dimly haunt the dictionaries without ever having lived (see p. 201). Speaking generally, we may say that no word is ever created _de novo_. The names invented for commercial purposes are not exceptions to this law. _Bovril_ is compounded of Lat. _bos_, ox, and _vril_,[15] the mysterious power which plays so important a part in Lytton's _Coming Race_, while _Tono-Bungay_ suggests _tonic_. The only exception to this is _gas_, the arbitrary coinage of the Belgian chemist Van Helmont in the 17th century. But even this is hardly a new creation, because we have Van Helmont's own statement that the word _chaos_ was vaguely present to his mind.

_Chortle_ has, however, secured a limited currency, and is admitted by the _New English Dictionary_--

"O frabjous day! Callooh! callay!

He _chortled_ in his joy."

(_Through the Looking-Gla.s.s._)

and, though an accurate account of the _boojum_ is lacking, most people know it to be a dangerous variety of _snark_.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] _Abominable_ is regularly spelt _abhominable_ in late Old French and Mid. English, as though meaning "inhuman," Lat. _h.o.m.o_, _homin-_, a man.

[7] This etymology is doubted by some authorities.

[8] But the word comes to us from French. In the 16th century such puzzles were called _rebus de Picardie_, because of their popularity in that province.

[9] For simplicity the term Old French is used here to include all words not in modern use. Where a modern form exists it is given in parentheses.

[10] The name was thus applied to a sail before it was given to a mast.

Although the Italian word means "middle," it is perhaps, in this particular sense, a popular corruption of an Arabic word of quite different meaning. The discussion of so difficult a problem is rather out of place in a book intended for the general reader, but I cannot refrain from giving a most interesting note which I owe to Mr W. B.

Whall, Master Mariner, the author of _Shakespeare's Sea Terms Explained_--"The sail was (until c. 1780) lateen, _i.e._, triangular, like the sail of a galley. The Saracens, or Moors, were the great galley sailors of the Mediterranean, and _mizen_ comes from Arab., _miezen_, balance. The _mizen_ is, even now, a sail that 'balances,' and the reef in a mizen is still called the 'balance' reef."

[11] "I have _endeavoured_ to moderate his tyrannical choler"

(Urquhart's Translation, 1653).