Challenges for English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. James Edgar Taylor, ‘The Red Sea Jalabah: Local Phenomenon or Regional Prototye?’, in Natural Resources and Cultural Connections of the Red Sea, Janet Starkey, Paul Starkey, and Tony Wilkinson (eds.) (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007), 111–120. 2. Oxford English Dictionary [henceforth OED], third edition online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2002), web, s.v. girl. 3. St. Thomas Becket, in The Early South-English Legendary, Carl Horstmann (ed.) (repr. Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint, 1987), 108. 4. Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Elof Hellquist (ed.) (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1922), s.vv. Hellquist is cited for exemplary purposes only, and all words listed above will have been further scrutinized since the first edition of his work. Interestingly, tjej has been reclaimed by the Roma community in southern Sweden and figures in the name of a social assistance agency. 5. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, Xavier Delamarre (ed.), 2nd ed (Paris: Errance, 2003), s.vv. gabros, iaros; Lexique étymologique de l'irlandais ancien, Joseph Vendryes et al. (eds.) (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1959–), s.vv. én, gabor. 6. See Peter Schrijver, Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995); the few loans from British to English make it difficult to establish regular patterns of phonological adaptation. The Celtic Roots of English, Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Pitkänen (eds.) (Joensuu, Finland: University of Joensuu, 2002) marks a welcome new departure in substratum studies. 7. See William Sayers, ‘Problems with the Etymology of English bird’, Indo-European Studies Bulletin 14, 1–2 (2009), 42–45, and, for comparative purposes, Sayers, ‘The Etymologies of dog and cur’, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 36 (2008), 401–410. 8. Attention is called to the productive debate stimulated by John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon, 1988). 9. Giles Foden, Turbulence (New York: Knopf, 2010), 33. 10. OED, s.v. spatchcock, n. 11. Francis Grose, A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: Hooper and Wigstead, 1785). 12. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, C. T. Onions (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 850, s.v. spatchcock. 13. ‘Spatchcock’, at Languagehat, http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003406.php (posted 14 February 2009); see Alan Davidson, The Penguin Companion to Food (Oxford: Penguin, 1999). 14. James Joyce, Ulysses: The Corrected Text, Hans Walter Gabler (ed.) (London: Penguin, 1986), 9.174, ll. 990–992. 15. Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla – An Irish-English Dictionary, Patrick S. Dinneen (ed.) (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1927), s. vv. In spot > spate we note the further raising of the high Irish -o- to English -a-, relevant to the development of spatchcock. Although English spate ‘torrent’ is not relevant to present concerns, it should be noted that, while the OED calls the usage Scottish and northern, and the origin obscure, the word is found in Scots Gaelic as speid and is more marginally represented in Irish as spid. 16. The morphology of verbal forms in Irish has led to the convention of citing first personal singular present tense forms in reference works. 17. Nathan Bailey, ‘To spitchcock eels’, in Dictionarium domesticum (London: C. Hitch, 1736), s.v. Eel. 18. OED, s.v. twig, n.1–3, v.1–4. 19. Lexicon balatronicum: a dictionary of buckish slang, university wit, and pickpocket eloquence, Francis Grose and Hewson Clarke (eds.) (London: C. Chappel, 1811), s.v. twig. 20. A new and comprehensive vocabulary of the flash language, James Hardy Vaux (ed.) (Newcastle: s.n., 1812), s.v. twig. 21. See, for example, William Sayers, Notes and Queries 57 (2010), ‘Some “Alsatian” Etymologies from Eighteenth-Century London’, 79–83, and ‘Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting, and slang’, 172–179. 22. Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, s.v. tuighean. 23. In ‘The cove is togged in twig’ we then have a word from Anglo-Romani (cove), a Latinism (togged), and a Hibernicism (twig), representative of a linguistic situation as complex as underworld London demographics. 24. Joseph G. Holman, Abroad and at home; a comic opera (London: George Cawthorn, 1796), III. ii; Harriet Granville, Letters of Harriet countess Granville 1810–45 (London: Longmans. Green, 1894), letter of 30 January 1825, I. 339. 25. Granville, 1825, I. 208. A sense of the oddness of the verb to twig is recognized in speech of a London showgirl from 1915 who frenchifies the word to twiggez? ‘Do you get me?’, while also occasionally asking Twig?; Richard Dehan (Clothilde Inez Mary Graves), ‘Under the Electrics: A Show-Lady is Eloquent’, in Off Sandy Hook (London: Frederick A. Stokes, 1915), 59–66. 26. Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, s.v. tuigim. 27. ‘Brainiac’, Boston Globe (3 September 2010), web. Available at: http://www.boston.com.bostonglobe 28. OED, s.v. spunk. 29. OED, s.v. funk, n.3. 30. OED, s.v. funk, n.1. 31. Dictionary of Old English: A to G online [henceforth DOE], Antonette diPaolo Healey (ed.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007–). 32. Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., Gerhard Köbler (ed.) (1993), web, s.v. funko. Available at: http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/∼c30310/ahdwbhin.html 33. Similar loose associations could link punk as ‘prostitute, homosexual, hoodlum’ with funk as ‘coward’, punk as ‘smouldering matter’ with funk as ‘stink’. Further, Scots funk ‘kick’ might derive from Scots Gaelic sonn (Irish sonnc) ‘push, shove, thrust’ since s- and f- are occasionally confused, both being becoming a weak h- under the effects of initial mutation. 34. OED; William H. Smyth, The Sailor's Word-Book (London: Blackie and Son, 1867), s.v. lanyard. 35. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (London: Cassell, 1883), II, x. 36. Reconstructed forms are supported by Walloon nale ‘band, ribbon’ and the derivative nalière leather thong’; Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch [henceforth FEW], Walther von Wartburg (ed.) (Bonn: F. Klopp, 1925–), 16, 598b, s.v. nast; T. Atkinson Jenkins, ‘French Etymologies’, Modern Philology, 10 (1913), 440; summary in Trésor de la langue française, Paul Imbs (ed.) (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1971–94), s.v. lanière. 37. Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, s.vv. nasteid, nastila; Indogermanisches Wörterbuch [henceforth IEW], Julius Pokorny (ed.) (Bern: Francke, 1949–69), II, 748, s.v. ned- (1), ‘to braid, knot’. 38. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight's Tale, in The Canterbury Tales, from The Riverside Chaucer, Larry Benson (gen. ed.) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), vv. 2496–2504; The Romance of Beues of Hamtoun, Eugen Kölbing (ed.) (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1885–94), v. 2753; citation from Middle English Dictionary [henceforth MED], Hans Kurath et al. (eds.) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001), s.v., lainer(e), as For. Acc. (PRO) 3 Hen. VII [OD col.]. 39. MED, s.v. -ard. 40. MED, s.v. yerd, 2; see section 3 for several nautical applications. 41. OED, s.v. dollop. 42. Thomas Tusser, Five hundreth pointes of good husbandrie (London: M. Cooper, 1573, repr. 1878), 121, 131. 43. John Worlidge, Systema Agriculturæ; the mystery of husbandry discovered (London: Tho. Dring, 1669), 316; Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1830), s.v. dallop. 44. Consideration of the jackdaw's messy nest prompts one to reflect on the expression mare's nest as ‘an untidy or confused mess; a muddle; a misconception’. In a revised draft entry from March 2009 the OED also states ‘originally in to have found (also spied) a mare's nest: to imagine that one has discovered something wonderful, which in fact does not exist. Hence: an illusory discovery, esp. one that is much vaunted and betrays foolish credulity’. As for etymology, the dictionary judges the phrase to have originated with mare in its usual sense of female horse. Although early attestations provide support neither for nor against another derivation, it is surely worth considering, in light of the semantics, mare as ‘a spirit believed to produce a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal’ (OED; cf. nightmare). Mare's nest would then be not a surreal retreat for a horse but the lair of a malevolent supernatural being. 45. Isaiah W. N. Keys, ‘Devonianisms’, Notes and Queries, 1st Ser., 8 (1853), 65. 46. On the demon dog, see Jennifer Westwood, ‘Friend or Foe? Norfolk Traditions of Shuck’, in Supernatural Enemies, Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri (eds.) (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001), 101–116. 47. OED, s.vv. shuck, n.1–2, v.1–2. 48. John Ray, A collection of English words not generally used, … in two alphabetical catalogues, the one of such as are proper to the northern, the other to the southern counties (London: Burrell, 1674), s.v. shuck. 49. OED, s.v. husk, n.1. The entry continues: ‘Conjectures have been offered of its relationship to Ger. hülse, Du. hulze, huls, which (notwithstanding the identity of sense) appear to be historically and phonetically untenable, and of its ultimate derivation from hús “house”, which is perhaps possible: cf. for the form, chink, dalk, halk, holk, polk, stalk (and see Kluge, Stammbildung. §61); for the sense, LG. hûske = Ger. häuschen, “little house”, in E. Fris. also “core (of an apple)”, “case” (e.g. spectacle-case), “paper bag”; also MDu. huuskijn, huusken, Du. huisken, “little house”, core (of an apple); Ger. gehäuse, “case, capsule”, etc. The connexion of Norwegian husk “piece of leather used to enlarge a shoe-last”, is quite uncertain’. 50. Anglo-Norman Dictionary [henceforth AND], 2nd ed., William Rothwell et al. (eds.) (Aberystwyth: Anglo-Norman Texts Society, 2001), web, s.v. huce. 51. Cf. modern French housse. At greater historical depth, a Germanic *hulisaz is posited, from an Indo-European root reconstructed as *kel- ‘hide, cover’; IEW, II. 553. Thus, the relationship with German Hülse, to which the OED alluded, can be affirmed but the lines of transmission are quite different than those imagined by the dictionary. 52. John of Trevisa's translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum (London, 1495), XVII. cliv: ‘Codde and an huske hyght Siliqua’, quoted from the OED. For additional examples and some slight revision of the dates of early instances, see MED, web, s.v. huske. Available at: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med 53. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed. (2001), web. Available at: http://buscon.rae.es/draeI; Diccionario critico etimológico castellano y hispánico, Joan Corominas and José A. Pascual (eds.) (Madrid: Gredos, 1981–91), II.385, s.v. choco. 54. Hoja < Latin folium ‘leaf’; in Mexico, totomoxtle is used of dried corn husks. 55. With an intermediary form *shuckel? The loss of -l- may signify the creation of an apparent simplex from what appeared a diminutive (or collective) in -el/-le. 56. Dialect Notes 3 (1905), 86: ‘Light a shuck, to go in a hurry, to move on, to keep away from danger’. 57. OED, s.v. citizen. The term Anglo-French has been returned to favor, as a consequence of the last two decades’ intensive work on the languages of multilingual medieval Britain; see William Rothwell's ‘Anglo-French and the AND’ in ‘Introduction to the On-Line AND’; The Anglo-Norman On-Line Hub, web. Available at: http://www.anglo-norman.net. The authoritative Anglo-Norman Dictionary will, however, continue under its present name. 58. The Romance of Guy of Warwick, Julius Zupitza (ed.), 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1883–91), II, vv. 5503–5504. 59. The dictionary continues: ‘The suggestion that z was a mistaken reading of Ȝ, meaning y, on the part of a 13th or 14th c. scribe or scribes, is in every respect untenable’. 60. AND, s.vv. citein, citizein. 61. The Deeds of the Normans in Ireland: La geste des Angleis en Yrlande: a new edition of the chronicle former known as The song of Dermot and the Earl, Evelyn Mullally (ed. and trans.) (Dublin and Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 2002), vv. 1377, 1380. 62. Benoît de Sainte-Maure, La Chronique des ducs de Normandie, Carin Fahlin (ed.), 2 vols. (Uppsala,: Almqvist och Wiksell, 1951), I.7528–7530. See additional French examples in Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, Adolf Tobler and Erhard Lommatzsch (eds.) (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1925–2002), 2, col. 449, s.v. citëain. 63. Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, R. E. Latham (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), C, 350. 64. See also AND, s.v. denzein; the form denisein is already found during the medieval period. 65. Bertil Sandahl, Middle English Sea Terms (Uppsala: Lundequistska bokhandeln and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951–82). 66. The present note is intended as a complement to the author's ‘Flax and Linen in Walter of Bibbesworth's 13 c. French Treatise for English Housewives’, Medieval Clothing and Textiles, 6 (2010): 111–126. 67. Walter de Bibbesworth, Le Tretiz, William Rothwell (ed.), 2nd ed. (Aberystwyth: Anglo-Norman Online Hub, 2009). 68. OED, s.v. weasel. 69. The English Dialect Dictionary, Joseph Wright (ed.) (London and New York: H. Frowde, 1898–1905), s.v. weasel. 70. Woordenboek der nederlandsche Taal, ed. M. de Vries and L. A. te Winkel (’s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1882–1998), s. v.v. hasp, haspel. 71. Complicating the picture is the fact that shuttles or bobbins were also called weasands or weasels by some. Weasand was also an Anglo-Norman term for ‘gullet’; one could imagine a bobbin seen as a gullet turned inside-out but the true picture is doubtless more complex. 72. OED, s.v. bob n. and v. 73. Punch (25 September 1918), 193. 74. J. Fowler, Journal of a tour in the state of New York, in the year 1830 with remarks on agriculture in those parts most eligible for settlers (London: Whittaker, Teacher and Arnot, 1831), 112. 75. OED, s.v. bob, n.1, sense 5. 76. Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla, 104. 77. AND, s.v. beaublet. 78. MED, s.vv. babyll, babulle, bable. The term glosses Latin librilla ‘scale-beam’. 79. OED, s.v. gird, n.2; on squib, see William Sayers, ‘Three Paired Etymologies’, Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 50–56. 80. LaȜamon's Brut, G. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie (eds.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1963, 1978), l. 800; William of Palerne: An Alliterative Romance, G. H. V. Bunt (ed.) (Groningen: Bouma, 1985), l. 1240. 81. An early example is found in The Wars of Alexander, Hoyt N. Duggan and Thorlac Turville-Petre (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), l. 2474: ‘Settis all þe gailis on gledis & girdis doun þe wallis’. 82. MED, s.v. gīrden, v.2. 83. Irish greadaim ‘burn, scald, strike, ship, incite, quicken’, gread ‘stroke, blow’ are unrelated. 84. As evidenced by the authoritative AND. 85. An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Richard Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and William A. Craigie (eds.), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), s.vv. grjýta, grjýting. 86. On the first of these proposed modifications, common in Middle English, compare English gear < Anglo-French greie < Old Norse greiði ‘equipment’. 87. The Wars of Alexander, l. 2227. 88. The late seventeenth-century New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew has an entry for gird that seems to reflect the assumption that the two girds are related: ‘Girds, Taunts, Quips, Gibes or Jeers… . If you are angry you may turn the Buckle of your Girdle be hind you to one Angry for a small matter, and whose Anger is as little valued’. Yet the anonymous author B. E. may be playing on the homonymity; see The First English Dictionary of Slang 1699, John Simpson (ed.) (London: Bodleian Library, 2010), ‘Introduction’. 89. Andrew Marvell, Mr. Smirke, in A short historical essay touching general councils, creeds, and impositions in matters of religion (London: R. Baldwin, 1676), sig. C2v. The idea of words hurled like stones is evident from the fifteenth century: ‘If he faine will foly for a fyn wit, And gyrt on no grete wordis to greue vs no more’; The Destruction of Troy, in Middle English Metrical Romances, W. H. French and C. B. Hale (eds.) (New York: Russell and Russell, 1930), l. 5118. 90. OED, 2nd ed., s.v. grit, n.1. 91. J. Neal, Brother Jonathan or the New Englanders (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood, 1825), III.386. 92. Edward Dwelly, An Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary (Glasgow: Birlinn, 1971), 526. 93. OED, s.v. grit, n.2. 94. OED, s.v. shoat2. 95. AND. 96. OED, s.v. shed1; MED, s.vv. shed(e), sheden. 97. OED, 2nd ed, s.v. shot1 (IV.23.a). 98. Songs and Carols now first printed from a manuscript of the fifteenth century (London: Richards, 1855), 94, from about 1475. 99. The Tricks of the Town: or, ways and means for getting money (London: J. Roberts, 1732), 3. 100. Dictionary of Old English, Old English Corpus, Antonette di Paolo Healey (ed.) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), computer file, s.vv. sceot, sceotan. 101. Trésor de la langue française, s.v. écot. 102. An Icelandic-English Dictionary, s.v. skot. 103. AND, s.v. escot1. 104. MED, s.v. scot; we find the idioms paien scot, yeven scot. 105. The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, W. A. Wright (ed.) (London: H.M.S.O., 1887), 6001. 106. Cited in MED as John de Trevisa, transl. Bartholomew de Glanville's De Proprietatibus Rerum, photostat of MS Add 27944; in poss. of MED. 107. Twelve Profits of Tribulation, in Yorkshire Writers, C. Horstmann (ed.), (London: S. Sonnenschein and Son, 1896), 2.58. 108. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (London: John Beale, 1617), III. 84. 109. Scot and lot: ‘originally “a tax levied by a municipal corporation in proportionate shares upon its members for the defraying of municipal expenses” now, in the phrase to pay off lot and scot, “to pay out thoroughly, to settle with”’ (OED). 110. OED, s.v. shut. 111. G. B. Johnson, in Benjamin A. Botkin, Folk-Say, a regional miscellany (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1930), VII.357. 112. An ambitious new project, among whose objectives are of the is An Dictionary of English An with the assistance of J. University of Press, The of the work will doubtless to its and an of words with

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