The Romance of Words Part 4

This is still an every-day word in Canada and the United States. It is a metaphorical use of _felon_, a fell villain. A whitlow was called in Latin _furunculus_, "a little theefe; a sore in the bodie called a _fellon_" (Cooper), whence Fr. _furoncle_, or _froncle_, "the hot and hard b.u.mpe, or swelling, tearmed, a _fellon_" (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was _tagax_, "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 formerly called a "step-mother" in Yorkshire. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology (see pp. 99-104).

[Page Heading: PORTUGUESE WORDS]

Some of the above instances show how near to home we can often track a word which at first sight appears 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 _a.s.segai_ occurs in Chaucer, though in a form not easily recognisable. It is a Berber word which pa.s.sed 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 hors.e.m.e.n." In Mid. English _l'archegaie_ was corrupted by folk-etymology (see p. 115) into _lancegay_, _launcegay_, the form used by Chaucer--

"He worth upon his stede gray, And in his hond a _launcegay_, A long swerd by his syde."

(_Sir Thopas_, l. 40.)

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 long way is _kraal_. This is a contracted Dutch form from Port. _curral_, a sheepfold (_cf._ Span.

_corral_, a pen, enclosure). Both _a.s.segai_ and _kraal_ were taken to South East Africa by the Portuguese and then adopted by the Boers and Kafirs.[22] _Sjambok_ occurs in 17th-century accounts of India in the form _chawbuck_. It is a Persian word, spelt _chabouk_ by Moore, in _Lalla Rookh_. It was adopted by the Portuguese as _chabuco_, "in the Portuguese India, a whip or scourge"[23] (Vieyra, _Port. Dict._, 1794).

_Fetish_, an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Hakluyt and Purchas. It is the Port. _feitico_, Lat. _fact.i.tius_, artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers to the graven images of the heathen. The corresponding Old Fr.

_faitis_ is rather a complimentary adjective, and everyone remembers the lady in Chaucer who spoke French fairly and _fetousli_. _Palaver_, also a travellers' word from the African coast, is Port. _palavra_, word, speech, Greco-Lat. _parabola_. It is thus a doublet of _parole_ and _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. _tanque_, a pool or cistern, Lat.

_stagnum_, whence Old Fr. _estang_ (_etang_) and provincial Eng.

_stank_, a dam, or a pond banked round. _Cobra_ is the Portuguese for snake, cognate with Fr. _couleuvre_, 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. _chapeau_ and cognate with _cape_, _chapel_ (p. 152), _chaplet_, a garland, and _chaperon_, a "protecting"

hood. From still further afield than India comes _joss_, a Chinese G.o.d, a corruption of Port. _deos_, Lat. _deus_. Even _mandarin_ comes from Portuguese, and not Chinese, but it is an Eastern word, ultimately of Sanskrit origin.

[Page Heading: GORILLA--SILK]

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 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 been described by explorers.

The origin of the word _silk_ is a curious problem. It is usually explained as from Greco-Lat. _seric.u.m_, 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 pa.s.sage. But all the Romance languages use for silk a name derived from Lat. _saeta_, bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German (_Seide_) and Dutch (_zijde_). The derivatives of _seric.u.m_ stand for another material, _serge_. Nor can it be a.s.sumed 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. 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 _seric.u.m_, it must, in the course of its travels, have pa.s.sed through a dialect which had no _r_.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] This includes Flemish, spoken in a large part of Belgium and in the North East of France.

[17] _Haversack_, oat-sack, comes through French from German.

[18] This applies also to some of the clan names, e.g., _Macpherson_, son of the parson, _Macnab_, son of the abbot.

[19] My own conviction is that it is identical with Dan. _dirik_, _dirk_, a pick-lock. See _Dietrich_ (p. 42). An implement used for opening an enemy may well have been named in this way. _Cf._ Du.

_opsteeker_ (up sticker), "a pick-lock, a great knife, or a dagger"

(Sewel, 1727).

[20] "It was a wholly _garbled_ version of what never took place" (Mr Birrell, in the House, 26th Oct. 1911). The bull appears to be a laudable concession to Irish national feeling.

[21] Formerly _ferdekin_, a derivative of Du. _vierde_, fourth; cf.

_farthing_, a little fourth.

[22] _Kafir_ (Arab.) means infidel.

[23] Eng. _chawbuck_ is used in connection with the punishment we call the _bastinado_. This is a corruption of Span. _bastonada_, "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.

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 a.s.sociated. To take a simple instance, how many people realise that the _daisy_ is the "day's eye"?--

"Wele by reson men it calle may The _dayeseye_ or ellis the 'eye of day.'"

(CHAUCER, _Legend of Good Women_, Prol., l. 184.)

In studying that part of our vocabulary which especially ill.u.s.trates the tendencies shown in popular name-giving, one is struck by the keen observation and imaginative 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_, _monkshood_, _snapdragon_, are in German _Hahnenfuss_ (c.o.c.k's foot), _Storchschnabel_ (stork's bill), _Rittersp.o.r.n_ (knight's spur), _Eisenhut_ (iron hat), _Lowenmaul_ (lion's mouth). I have purposely chosen instances in which the correspondence is not absolute, because examples like _Lowenzahn_ (lion's tooth), _dandelion_ (Fr. _dent de lion_) may be suspected 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 _chelidonium_, whence our _celandine_ or _swallow-wort_, 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 _cowslop_, cow-dung, and many old names of unquotable coa.r.s.eness, the quaintness of _Sweet William_, _lords and ladies_, _bachelors' b.u.t.tons_, _dead men's fingers_, and the exquisite poetry of _forget-me-not_, _heart's ease_, _love in a mist_, _traveller's joy_. There is also a special group named from medicinal properties, such as _feverfew_, a doublet of _febrifuge_, and _tansy_, Fr. _tanaisie_, from Greco-Lat.

_athanasia_, immortality. We may compare the learned _saxifrage_, stone-breaker, of which the Spanish doublet is _sa.s.safras_. 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. Among 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.[24] Occasionally a race which is accidentally brought into closer contact with nature may have a happy inspiration, such as the _Drakensberg_ (dragon's mountain) or _Weenen_[25] (weeping) of the old _voortrekkers_. 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.[26]

The botanist who describes a new flower hastens to join the company of Messrs _Dahl_, _Fuchs_, _Lobel_, _Magnol_ and _Wistar_, while fresh varieties are used to immortalise a florist and his family.

[Page Heading: NAMES OF FRUITS]

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 the _berry_. New fruits either retained their foreign names (_cherry_, _peach_, _pear_, _quince_) 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. _pomo_, apple, _arancia_, orange. Fr. _orange_ is folk-etymology (_or_, gold) for _*arange_, from Arab. _narandj_, whence Span. _naranja_. _Melon_ is simply the Greek for "apple," and has also given us _marmalade_, which comes, through French, from Port. _marmelada_, quince jam, a derivative of Greco-Lat.

_melimelum_, quince, lit. honey-apple. _Pine-apple_ meant "fir-cone" as late as the 17th century, as Fr. _pomme de pin_ still does.[27] The fruit was named from its shape, which closely resembles that of a fir-cone. _Pomegranate_ means "apple with seeds." We also find the apricot, lemon (_pomcitron_), peach, and quince all described as apples.

At least one fruit, the _greengage_, is named from a person, Sir William Gage, a gentleman of Suffolk, who popularised its cultivation early in the 18th century. It happens that the French name of the fruit, _reine-claude_ (p.r.o.nounced _glaude_), is also personal, from the wife of Francis I.

Animal nomenclature shows some strange vagaries. The resemblance of the _hippopotamus_, lit. river-horse, to the horse, hardly extends beyond their common possession of four legs.[28] The lion would hardly recognise himself in the _ant-lion_ or the _sea-lion_, 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. 51). _Porcupine_ means "spiny pig." It has an extraordinary number of early variants, and Shakespeare wrote it _porpentine_. One Mid. English form was _porkpoint_. The French name has hesitated between _spine_ and _spike_. The modern form is _porc-epic_, but Palsgrave has "_porkepyn_ a beest, _porc espin_." _Porpoise_ is from Old Fr. _porpeis_, for _porc peis_ (Lat. _porcus piscis_), pig-fish. The modern French name is _marsouin_, from Ger. _Meerschwein_, sea-pig; _cf._ the name _sea-hog_, formerly used in English. Old Fr. _peis_ survives also in _grampus_, Anglo-Fr. _grampais_ 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 French verb _peler_, "to _pill_, pare, barke, unrinde, unskin" (Cotgrave). The modern French name for the caterpillar is _chenille_, a derivative of _chien_, dog. It has also been applied to a fabric of a woolly nature; _cf._ the botanical _catkin_, which is in French _chaton_, kitten.

[Page Heading: NICKNAMES OF ANIMALS]

Some animals bear nicknames. _Dotterel_ means "dotard," and _dodo_ is from the Port. _doudo_, mad. _Ferret_ is from Fr. _furet_, a diminutive from Lat. _fur_, 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 _tiburon_, whence Cape Tiburon, in Haiti. The origin of _shark_ is unknown, but it appears to be identical with _shirk_, for which we find earlier _sherk_. We find Ital. _scrocco_ (whence Fr. _escroc_), Ger.

_Schurke_, Du. _schurk_, rascal, all rendered "shark" in early dictionaries, but the relationship of these words is not clear. The _palmer_, _i.e._ pilgrim, worm is so called from his wandering habits.

_Ortolan_, the name given by Tudor cooks to the garden bunting, 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. _moineau_, sparrow, is a diminutive of _moine_, monk. The wagtail is called in French _lavandiere_, laundress, from the up and down motion of its tail suggesting the washerwoman's beetle, and _bergeronnette_, little shepherdess, from its habit of following 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 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. _screawa_. 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 superst.i.tion is found in Greek. The epithet was, up to Shakespeare's time, applied indifferently to both s.e.xes. From _shrew_ is derived _shrewd_, earlier _shrewed_,[29] the meaning of which has become much milder than when Henry VIII. 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 VIII._, v. 2.)

The t.i.tle _Dauphin_, lit. dolphin, commemorates the absorption into the French monarchy, in 1349, of the lordship of Dauphine, the cognisance of which was three dolphins.