The Romance of Words Part 20

[Page Heading: ARBOUR--FRET]

In some cases it is impossible to estimate the different elements in a word. _Arbour_ certainly owes its modern spelling to Lat. _arbor_, a tree, but it represents also Mid. Eng. _herbere_, _erbere_, which comes, through French, from Lat. _*herbarium_. But this can only mean herb-garden, so that the sense development of the word must have been affected by _harbour_, properly "army-shelter," ultimately identical with Fr. _auberge_ (p. 164). When Dryden wrote--

"Tardy of aid, _unseal_ thy heavy eyes, Awake, and with the dawning day arise."

(_The c.o.c.k and the Fox_, 247.)

he was expressing a composite idea made up from the verb _seal_, Old Fr.

_seeler_ (_sceller_), Lat. _sigillare_, and _seel_, Old Fr. _ciller_, Vulgar Lat. _*ciliare_, from _cilium_, eye-brow. The latter verb, meaning to sew together the eyelids of a young falcon, was once a common word--

"Come, _seeling_ night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day."

(_Macbeth_, iii. 2.)

The verb _fret_ is Anglo-Sax. _fretan_, to eat away (_cf._ Ger.

_fressen_). _Fret_ is also used of interlaced bars in heraldry, in which sense it corresponds to Fr. _frette_ with the same meaning; for this word, which also means ferrule, a Vulgar Lat. _*ferritta_ (_ferrum_, iron) has been suggested. When Hamlet speaks of--

"This majestical roof _fretted_ with golden fire,"

(_Hamlet_, ii. 3.)

is he thinking of _frets_ in heraldry, or of _fretwork_, or are these two of one origin? Why should _fret_, in this sense, not come from _fret_, to eat away, since _fretwork_ may be described as the "eating away" of part of the material? Cf. _etch_, which comes, through Dutch, from Ger. _atzen_, the fact.i.tive of _essen_, to eat. But the German for _fretwork_ is _durchbrochene Arbeit_, "broken-through" work, and Old Fr. _fret_ or _frait_, Lat. _fractus_, means "broken." Who shall decide how much our _fretwork_ owes to each of these possible etymons?

That form of taxation called excise, which dates from the time of Charles I., has always been unpopular. Andrew Marvell says that _Excise_--

"With hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds, And on all trades like ca.s.sowar she feeds."

Dr Johnson defines it as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid," an outburst which Lord Mansfield considered "actionable." The name, like the tax, came from the Netherlands, where it was called _accijs_--

"'Twere cheap living here, were it not for the monstrous _excises_ which are impos'd upon all sorts of commodities, both for belly and back."

(HOWELL, _Letter from Amsterdam_, 1619.)

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. _a.s.sisa_, "an imposition, or taxe, or a.s.sesment" (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. Thus _equerry_ represents an older _querry_ or _quirry_, still usual in the 18th century. Among my books is--

"The Compleat Horseman, or Perfect Farrier, written in French by the Sieur de Solleysell, _Querry_ to the Present King of France" (1702).

The modern spelling is due to popular a.s.sociation with Lat. _equus_.

But this _querry_ is identical with French _ecurie_, stable, just as in Scottish the _post_ often means the _postman_. And _ecurie_, older _escurie_, is from Old High Ger. _scura_[100] (_Scheuer_, barn). The word used in modern French in the sense of our _equerry_ is _ecuyer_, older _escuier_, Lat. _scutarius_, s.h.i.+eld-bearer, whence our word _esquire_. This _ecuyer_ is in French naturally confused with _ecurie_, so that Cotgrave defines _escuyrie_ as "the stable of a prince, or n.o.bleman; also, a _querry_-s.h.i.+p; or the duties, or offices belonging thereto; also (in old authors) a _squire's_ place; or, the dignity, t.i.tle, estate of an esquire."

[Page Heading: PLEONASM]

Ignorance of the true meaning of a word often leads to pleonasm. Thus _greyhound_ means _hound-hound_, the first syllable representing Icel.

_grey_, a dog. _Peajacket_ is explanatory of Du. _pij_, earlier _pye_, "py-gown, or rough gown, as souldiers and seamen wear" (Hexham). _On Greenhow Hill_ means "on green hill hill," and _Buckhurst Holt Wood_ means "beech wood wood wood," an explanatory word being added as its predecessor became obsolete. The second part of _salt-cellar_ is not the same word as in _wine-cellar_. It comes from Fr. _saliere_, "a salt-_seller_" (Cotgrave), so that the _salt_ is unnecessary. We speak pleonastically of "_dishevelled_ hair," while Old Fr. _deschevele_, lit.

dis-haired, now replaced by _echevele_, can only be applied to a person, e.g., _une femme toute deschevelee_, "discheveled, with all her haire disorderly falling about her eares" (Cotgrave). The word _cheer_ meant in Mid. English "face." Its French original _chere_ scarcely survives except in the phrase _faire bonne chere_, lit. "make a good face," a meaning preserved in "to be of good _cheer_." In both languages the meaning has been transferred to the more substantial blessings which the pleasant countenance seems to promise, and also to the felicity resulting from good treatment. The true meaning of the word is so lost that we can speak of a "_cheerful_ face," _i.e._, a face full of face.

[Page Heading: UNEXPLAINED DISTORTIONS]

But there are many words whose changes of form cannot be altogether explained by any of the influences that have been discussed in this and the preceding chapters. Why should _cervelas_, "a large kind of sausage, well season'd, and eaten cold in slices" (Kersey's _Eng. Dict._, 1720), now be _saveloy_? We might invoke the initial letters of _sausage_ to account for part of the change, but the _oy_ remains a mystery.

_Cervelas_, earlier _cervelat_, comes through French from Ital.

_cervellato_, "a kinde of dry sausage" (Florio), said to have been originally made from pig's brains. For _hatchment_ we find in the 16th century _achement_, and even _achievement_. It is archaic Fr.

_hachement_, the ornamental crest of a helmet, etc., probably derived from Old Fr. _achemer_, variant of _acesmer_, to adorn. Hence both the French and English forms have an unexplained _h-_, the earlier _achement_ being nearer the original. French _omelette_ has a bewildering history, but we can trace it almost to its present form. To begin with, an _omelet_, in spite of proverbs, is not necessarily a.s.sociated with eggs. The origin is to be found in Lat. _lamella_, a thin plate,[101] which gave Old Fr. _lamelle_. Then _la lamelle_ was taken as _l'alamelle_, and the new _alamelle_ or _alemelle_ became, with change of suffix, _alemette_. By metathesis (see p. 59) this gave _amelette_, still in dialect use, for which modern French has subst.i.tuted _omelette_. The _o_ then remains unexplained, unless we admit the influence of the old form _uf-mollet_, a product of folk-etymology.

_Counterpane_ represents Old Fr. _coute-pointe_, now corruptly _courte-pointe_, from Lat. _culcita puncta_, lit. "st.i.tched quilt"; _cf._ Ger. _Steppdecke_, counterpane, from _steppen_, to st.i.tch. In Old French we also find the corrupt form _contrepointe_ which gave Eng.

_counterpoint_--

"In ivory coffers I have stuff'd my crowns; In cypress chests my arras, _counterpoints_, Costly apparel, tents and canopies."

(_Taming of the Shrew_, ii. 1.)

in modern English replaced by _counterpane_. Mid. English has also the more correct form _quilt-point_, from the Old Norman _cuilte (pur)pointe_, which occurs in a 12th-century poem on St Thomas of Canterbury. The hooped petticoat called a _farthingale_ was spelt by Shakespeare _fardingale_ and by Cotgrave _vardingall_. This is Old Fr.

_verdugalle_, of Spanish origin and derived from Span. _verdugo_, a (green) wand, because the circ.u.mference was stiffened with flexible switches before the application of whalebone or steel to this purpose.

The _crinoline_, as its name implies, was originally strengthened with horse-hair, Lat. _crinis_, hair. To return to the _farthingale_, the insertion of an _n_ before _g_ is common in English (see p. 84, _n._ 2), but the change of the initial consonant is baffling. The modern Fr.

_vertugadin_ is also a corrupt form. _Isingla.s.s_ seems to be an arbitrary perversion of obsolete Du. _huyzenblas_ (_huisblad_), sturgeon bladder; _cf._ the cognate Ger. _Hausenblase_.

Few words have suffered so many distortions as _liquorice_. The original is Greco-Lat. _glycyrrhiza_, lit. "sweet root," corrupted into late Lat. _liquiritia_, whence Fr. _reglisse_, Ital. _legorizia_, _regolizia_, and Ger. _Lakritze_. The Mid. English form _licoris_ would appear to have been influenced by _orris_, a plant which also has a sweet root, while the modern spelling is perhaps due to _liquor_.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] _Sack_, earlier also _seck_, is Fr. _sec_, dry, which, with spurious _t_, has also given Ger. _Sekt_, now used for champagne.

[90] Fr. _chaise_, chair, for older _chaire_, now used only of a pulpit or professorial chair, Lat. _cathedra_, is due to an affected p.r.o.nunciation that prevailed in Paris in the 16th century.

[91] The fact that in Old French the final consonant of the singular disappeared in the plural form helped to bring about such misunderstandings.

[92] For _haggard_ see p. 108.

[93] In Old French confusion sometimes arose with regard to final consonants, because of their disappearance in the plural (see p. 118, _n._). In _gerfaut_, gerfalcon, for Old Fr. _gerfauc_, the less familiar final _-c_ was, as in _boulevart_, replaced by the more usual _-t_.

[94] An unoriginal _g_ occurs in many English words derived from French, e.g., _foreign_, _sovereign_, older _sovran_, _sprightly_ for _spritely_, i.e., _sprite-like_, _delight_, from Old Fr. _delit_, which belongs to Lat. _delectare_.

[95] "Also, that no 'denizen' poulterer shall stand at the 'Carfax' of Leadenhall in a house or without, with rabbits, fowls, or other poultry to sell ... and that the 'foreign' poulterers, with their poultry, shall stand by themselves, and sell their poultry at the corner of Leadenhall, without any 'denizen' poulterer coming or meddling in sale or purchase with them, or among them."

The word _carfax_, once the usual name for a "cross-way," survives at Oxford and Exeter. It is a plural, from Fr. _carrefour_, Vulgar Lat.

_*quadrifurc.u.m_ (for _furca_), four-fork.

[96] This word is getting overworked, _e.g._, "The Derbys.h.i.+re Golf Club links were yesterday the _venue_ of a 72-hole match" (_Nottingham Guardian_, 21st Nov. 1911).

[97] _Cf._ Ger. _schenken_, to pour, and the Tudor word _skinker_, a drawer, waiter (1 _Henry IV._, ii. 4).

[98] Perhaps it is the mere instinct to make an unfamiliar word "look like something." Thus Fr. _beaupre_, from Eng. _bowsprit_, cannot conceivably have been a.s.sociated with a fair meadow; and _accomplice_, for _complice_, Lat. _complex_, _complic-_, can hardly have been confused with _accomplish_.

[99] Lat. _praeposterus_, from _prae_, before, and _posterus_, behind.

[100] This etymology is, however, now regarded as doubtful, and it seems likely that Old Fr. _escurie_ is really derived from _escuyer_. If so, there is no question of contamination.

[101] We have a parallel in Fr. _flan_, Eng. _flawn_, Ger. _Fladen_, etc., a kind of omelet, ultimately related to Eng. _flat_--

"The feast was over, the board was clear'd, The _flawns_ and the custards had all disappear'd."

(INGOLDSBY, _Jackdaw of Rheims_.)