The virtual linguist

The verb 'to welch'

Education Secretary Michael Gove apologised to MPs in Parliament for saying he had "welshed on the deal" (or he might have said "welched" - both spellings are acceptable). As the OED makes clear, "the word is sometimes considered offensive in view of the conjectured connection with Welsh people". These days 'welsh' is often followed by 'on a deal', but originally (1850s) it referred to dishonest bookmakers who didn't pay people their winnings. Welsh people were considered dishonest (some readers will have heard the old nursery rhyme"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief' - it appears in an OED citation, too), hence the coining of the verb.

 

The word Welsh, referring to the people of Wales, has its origin in an Old English word for 'foreigner' and is cognate with a similar Old German word meaning 'speaker of a Romance language'. This is why French-speaking Belgians are called Walloons.

 

As for the old spelling Welch, the Royal Welsh regiment (with an s) was known until only 2006 (or part of it was) as the Royal Welch Fusiliers (with a c).

 

Here's a piece on the Michael Gove gaffe.

Harvard

The last name I expected to crop up when I went on a Tudor London guided walk earlier this evening was Harvard University, but it did come up when we stopped at Southwark Cathedral near London Bridge. John Harvard, the first benefactor of the famous university and after whom it is named, was born in Southwark in 1607. He had eight brothers and sisters but most died in a plague epidemic of 1625. His father was from Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace, so it is possible that Harvard and Shakespeare knew each other. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is just a short distance from Southwark Cathedral (although Harvard probably disapproved of it, since he was a strict Puritan by all accounts). John Harvard emigrated to America, but he died young (in 1638 at the age of 30). He bequeathed his money and his extensive library of books to what had been called New College, but which was soon renamed Harvard College. There is a Harvard chapel in Southwark Cathedral now, its modern reconstruction having been paid for by staff and graduates of Harvard University.

Compra-

There is just one word in the OED that begins Compra-, even though it sounds a very plausible cluster of letters, and there is no problem in pronouncing it. The word is comprador, which has its origins in the Portuguese word for 'to buy'. It is, as the OED says, 'one of the Portuguese words adopted in the East' and is defined as both "Formerly, the name of a native servant employed by Europeans, in India and the East, to purchase necessaries and keep the household accounts" and "in China, the name of the principal native servant, employed in European establishments, and especially in houses of business, both as head of the staff of native employés, and as intermediary between the house and its native customers".

 

The reason I discovered that word was because I was looking up comprachico, which I came across earlier (and which is not in the OED). This word was coined by Victor Hugo in one of his lesser-known novels, The Man Who Laughs. It is based on Spanish and means 'child-buyers'. The comprachicos were supposedly people who deliberately mutilated children and then had them earn money in fairgrounds. This is from the book:

The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and sold them. They did not steal them. The kidnapping of children is another branch of industry. And what did they make of these children?

Monsters.

Why monsters?

To laugh at.

The populace must needs laugh, and kings too.

In The Man Who Laughs the mutilated boy has had a permanent grin cut into his face.

 

Ayn Rand wrote an article entitled The Comprachicos. She uses the word to describe educators, believing that children are actually stunted and degraded by the pedagogical methods used in schools (read more on page 325 of this book). That was the sense I came across earlier, when I was reading an article and its comments about school teaching methods (and which I now can't find, I'm sorry).

English or Mandarin

My daughter is learning Mandarin, and so are lots of other people in the West, believing it will help them find a better job. China's neighbours, however, don't necessarily feel the same way about the Chinese language. This BBC piece looked at how some Malaysian families drive their children miles to expensive private schools over the border in Singapore, because they feel that their children are not getting enough exposure to English in Malaysian schools. In Vietnam, too, there is great interest in learning English, partly because of ongoing political tension with China. What attracts people as much as anything else to English is pop music and Hollywood films.

 

Here's the BBC article.

Seminar

The word seminar is relatively new in the language. The modern business sense ie a conference for specialists, or course of instruction for businesspeople dates back only to the 1940s. The university-related sense dates back to 1880s, when it originally referred to the method of tuition in German universities. The first definition at the OED entry is: "In German universities (hence in certain British and American universities), a select group of advanced students associated for special study and original research under the guidance of a professor".

 

Seminar developed from the earlier word seminary, which nowadays usually refers to a college for Roman Catholic priests. The origin of the word seminary (and hence seminar) is the Latin seminarium or seed-plot, and the earliest definition in the OED is: "A piece of ground in which plants are sown (or raised from cuttings, etc.) to be afterwards transplanted". The meaning then broadened to include "a place where animals are bred", then "A place of origin and early development; a place or thing in which something (e.g. an art or science, a virtue or vice) is developed or cultivated, or from which it is propagated abundantly" (OED) and then "a place of learning", or "an institution of training for those destined for a particular profession." The OED tells us that in the first half of the 19th century private girls' schools were often called "seminary for young ladies" or "ladies' seminary".

 

It's interesting that the word seminary was used with reference to girls' schools. No-one seems to have any problems with seminar or seminary these days, but the same cannot be said about the similar-sounding words with a related etymon seminal and disseminate. These words both derive from the Latin semen, seed. For this reason, some people and organisations feel that the words seminal and disseminate are sexist. The British Sociological Association, for instance, recommends that they be replaced with classical or formative (seminal) and broadcast, inform or publicise (disseminate). You can read the BSA's document entitled Language and the BSA: Sex and Gender by clicking on the link on this page.

Shrove

Today is Shrove Tuesday and I am repeating a post I wrote a couple of years ago.

 

Shrove comes from the very old, now archaic, verb 'to shrive' which means 'to impose penance' or 'to hear confession'. Traditionally Christians were shriven in preparation for Lent (which begins tomorrow).

 

Other, obsolete, names for the day that are in the OED include the Scottish Fastens-eve (or Fastens-een), Fastens-Tuesday, Fastgong and Fastingong.

 

Today is more popularly known as Pancake Day (the equivalent of Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday). Pancakes were traditionally eaten on Pancake Day to use up all the butter and milk before Lent when such rich foods were forbidden. There are many English towns and villages which continue old traditions associated with the day. The town of Olney in Buckinghamshire holds a pancake race on Shrove Tuesday every year (you can see a video of today's race here).

Tucker

I was making up a puzzle recently based on surnames that come from occupations. I could think of several, but looked on the internet for any I'd missed. I discovered that Tucker was once an occupation. A tucker was the same as a fuller (also a surname nowadays), namely the person who dresses cloth that has been woven. Tuck is from an old verb meaning 'pull sharply'.

 

The phrase "best bib and tucker" meaning 'best clothes' is still sometimes heard. A tucker was, as well as being a person, also a piece of lace or a frilly ruffle worn by women over the bodice of their dress and often tucked inside a low neckline. It was a popular fashion in the 18th century. By the late 19th century the phrase "best bib and tucker" was also applied to men's clothes.

 

A bib is a piece of material tied around the neck. Babies wear bibs to protect their clothes, and this was the original sense of the word 'bib', although it could also be on an adult garment, being the upper part of a dress or pinafore. A pinafore is so called because it was originally 'pinned' on 'afore' or on the front of a dress.

 

Goats have accents

Goats' "accents" are not solely genetic, and change according to their surroundings and as they mingle with other goats, say scientists. Animal researchers are very excited about the study, apparently, because before now it was assumed that just a very small number of mammals, such as dolphins and elephants, were able to 'pick up' an accent.

 

Here's the story.

Vauxhall

Students of Russian (in Britain) usually find it easy to remember the Russian word for '(railway) station', which is вокзал (vokzal), as they are told to think of Vauxhall. These days Vauxhall (pronounced Vox-hall) is a busy overground and Underground station a few minutes from Waterloo, and many Russian teachers (me included) tell their students that the Russian word came about because Russian engineers were visiting London in the mid-19th century and, when they were shown Vauxhall station, they mixed up the name Vauxhall with the generic name for the building.

 

The name Vauxhall comes the French surname Falkes (and means 'hall or manor of a nobleman named Falkes). Before the association of the name Vauxhall with the busy station, Vauxhall was best known for its pleasure gardens, which were very popular in the 18th century -- anybody who was anybody promenaded there. It was not a public park -- you had to pay to enter. Here's the Wikipedia page with an interesting painting by Rowlandson showing just what a lively place it was.

 

The word vokzal apparently existed in Russian well before the building of Vauxhall station (it appears in a line of a Pushkin poem on the Wikipedia Vauxhall page) and was adopted in honour of Vauxhall pleasure gardens. The original meaning of vokzal was 'amusement park' or 'pleasure park'. The first public railway in Russia was the line between St Petersburg and the nearby tsar's palace at Pavlovsk. The town of Pavlovsk had a pleasure gardens, which were the destination of most of the train travellers, so it looks as if the pleasure gardens became heavily associated with the railway next door.

 

The language of childbirth

I went to a talk on the subject of the churching of women today at an authors' lunch club I often go to. The speaker was Margaret Houlbrooke, author of a book on the subject. She had evidence of the churching of women happening in the Church of England well into the 1950s.

 

Although the churching ceremony is usually described as a service of thanksgiving, certainly in the old days - and, indeed, well into the 20th century - there were still undertones to the practice of a woman giving birth being seen as unclean or impure (after all, she must have had sex).

 

Margaret referred to "women and their gossips". I knew that a gossip was originally a sponsor at a baptism, but now I also know, because I've looked up 'gossip' in the OED, that another old definition of gossips is "female friends, invited to be present at a birth'. Gossip is an Old English word and comes from 'God + sib', sib meaning 'related by blood' (cf sibling).

 

Giving birth is a very powerful experience, yet the language of childbirth is often disempowering. Think of 'confinement' (original meaning is 'imprisonment'). Confinement in the childbirth context was first used only in the 18th century. The Middle English equivalent was Our Lady's bands (or bends, or bonds - all words related to the word 'bound' - again there is a sense of 'imprisonment' within the word).

 

The word 'delivery' is commonly used with relation to childbirth (the original meaning of 'deliver' was 'release from imprisonment or confinement'). The OED's definition of 'deliver' in the birthing sense is very negative and old-fashioned: "To disburden (a woman) of the fœtus, to bring to childbirth; in pass., to give birth to a child or offspring. Rarely said of beasts". There is a much more positive verb - "to birth" - defined as "to give birth to, to give rise to" but this is not in common use, particularly among doctors, although some midwives use it.