The virtual linguist

Skimmington

I occasionally go to a pub called the Skimmington Castle, and by coincidence Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Day today was skimmington. The word skimmington has several different spellings, depending on region, including skimelton, skimitin, skiverton and others, according to Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary. The basic definition in this dictionary is "a ceremony practised on unpopular persons", and then the dictionary goes on to give several examples. A skimmington usually takes the form of a procession through the village, where effigies of the people being censured or ridiculed are carried. The procession is accompanied by much banging of pans and kettles and other loud, discordant noise. The ceremony ends in the burning of the effigies.

 

As for why these people were 'unpopular', usually it related to unfaithful spouses or, as one of the citations in the OED puts it, "henpecked husbands and shrewish wives". The origins of the word skimmington are unclear, but the word is believed to be related to a skimming ladle, which the aforementioned 'shrewish wives' used to beat their husbands.

Stalking horse

The term 'stalking horse' is in the news this week with reference to a possible leadership challenge to prime minister David Cameron. The last time I remember 'stalking horse' being in all the papers was in the late 1980s when it referred to the Conservative backbencher Sir Anthony Meyer, who challenged Margaret Thatcher.

 

The original meaning (16th century) of stalking horse was an actual horse used on hunting expeditions. Hunters would hide from wild birds behind the horse. Later, a piece of canvas or material was given the name 'stalking horse'. The figurative meaning of stalking horse in the OED is: "A person whose agency or participation in a proceeding is made use of to prevent its real design from being suspected".

 

In politics, a stalking horse is someone who challenges the leader, but he or she is merely a front or figurehead. Usually there is someone much more powerful waiting in the wings who really wants the leader's job, but wants to keep his or her identity secret. Having a stalking horse allows the ultimate intended challenger to test the waters and see if there is a likelihood that party members will vote against the leader.

 

Stalking horses are usually obscure. I had never heard of Adam Afriyie before this week. In 1989 no-one had ever heard of Sir Anthony Meyer. In fact, he was so obscure that he was nicknamed a 'stalking donkey'. However, despite this, Meyer did get enough votes to convince Conservative MPs that there was a good possibility that Margaret Thatcher could be ousted, and Sir Anthony Meyer's action precipitated her downfall.

The suffix -en

The suffix -en indicates a number of things in English. It appears at the end of past participles of many strong verbs (eaten, written etc); it ends many verbs formed from adjectives with the sense 'to make ... or to become ...' (deepen, brighten etc); it can indicate a diminutive, eg chicken, kitten (maiden is also in this group); and it can form an adjective from a noun, particularly a noun denoting a material (woollen, wooden etc).

 

In Old English -en also denoted the feminine form of some masculine nouns. So, gyden was the Old English goddess, mynecen was nun (from munuc, monk) and wylfen was a she-wolf (from wulf). The only surviving word in modern English of this type is vixen; the Old English was fyxen.

 

In Middle English -en replaced the -an of some Old English plurals. The only surviving member of this group is oxen, the plural of ox; in Old English oxa was one ox, and oxan the plural. A thousand years ago there were others: name, naman; tunge, tungan, eg. Children and brethren do not belong in this group, although these are plurals ending in -en. Childer was once a variant form of child, and brether was a variant form of brother, and an -en was later added to these words to form the plural.

 

Pope tweets in Latin

The Pope has made his first tweet in Latin - he already tweets in eight modern languages. He wrote "Orare semper, iustitiam factitare, amare probitatem, humiles Secum ambulare", which translates ""pray constantly, do justice, love goodness and walk humbly with Him".

 

There were an interesting few minutes on this morning's Today programme on Radio 4 (here) where commentators discussed the merits, or otherwise, of Latin on Twitter. Although Latin is said to be a concise language, the Pope refers to Twitter in Latin as pagina publica breviloquentis (concise, public page), which itself is not a particularly concise phrase.

 

Peter Jones from the Friends of Classics said an alternative translation would have been to use the Latin for chirrup or twitter in the avian sense, which is pipiare. He said a translation of Twitterati would be pipiantes, the present participle. When asked for his advice about a tweet in Latin, he suggested Juvenal's phrase Tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes (loosely translated as 'Many suffer from the incurable disease of tweeting').

 

Listen to the BBC piece here, and read the story here.

If Houses, Why Not Mouses?

I was contacted recently by Damian O'Brien, the author of the recent book on word origins If Houses, Why Not Mouses? Amazon let me read the first few pages online (see here), and I must say I was intrigued, not least because of Damian's own background - he studied Sanskrit and Ancient Iranian at Oxford University, with studies of Gothic thrown in, and he was writing to me from Iraq - and also because of his statement in the introduction that one of his favourite sentences is dōmidēdum smakkabagm glaggwuba, which is Gothic for 'we judged the fig tree exactly'.

 

The book is very erudite, and looks at ancient languages but it is peppered with chatty snippets of more down-to-earth information and does not assume a knowledge of the phonetic alphabet or ancient languages. Points covered in the book include 'Why do we rear children?', 'How exam is related to synagogue', How vodka and otter are related' and 'Where did the l in could come from?'

 

I bought the book, but haven't read it yet. I expect I'll find plenty of ideas in it to cover on my own blog in the future.

 

Here's the Amazon (UK) page, and here's an interview with Damien from another site.

Puns

You may groan when someone makes a pun, but it's unlikely that that will stop the perpetrator from punning in the future. Punning has a long history, and is a technique that has been used by the most illustrious of historical figures. The ancient Roman orators Cicero and Quintilian believed that the use of puns indicated an intellectually supple mind, and was a sign of rhetorical skill. Shakespeare frequently uses puns, too, for instance in Hamlet, in the scene between the grave-digger and Hamlet, where the grave-digger makes puns on the different meaning of the word 'lie', and in As You Like It, where Shakespeare plays on the words hour and whore, which were pronounced identically at the time (see this old post). Jesus Christ used puns in his native Aramaic, for example in his statement 'upon this rock I will build my church', a pun on the name Peter and the ancient Greek word for 'rock', petra.

 

Most of the above comes from an interesting piece on the BBC website this week about the history of paronomasia, or wordplay based on punning. Commentators have always argued about the hidden meaning and purpose of puns, and have disagreed as to whether they are good things or not. Freud felt they were a sign of weakness, used instead of uttering unpleasant truths.

 

One clever pun I came across recently - while touring Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam - was this one, sent by Frederick the Great of Prussia, to Voltaire:

The top picture is an invitation, which, if you spell out the mathematical sum reads:

à sous p à cent sous si (sous means 'under', and cent is 100)

which is a pun on à souper à Sanssouci (to supper in Sanssouci).

Voltaire's response, Ja! is not the German word for 'yes' but is another pun:

J grand, a petit (large J, small a), pronounced in French j'ai grand appetit (I've got a large appetite).

 

Here's the BBC article.

 

 

Scrabble letter scores

A software creator has suggested revising the scores for the individual letters in the Scrabble game. The original scores were based on the occurrence of letters on the front page of an American newspaper in the 1930s, but the language has changed since then.

 

Q and Z are the only two letters in Scrabble currently worth ten points. Joshua Lewis, the software developer concerned, considered raising the score of a Q to 12, but downgrading a Z to 6 points, thus maintaining a discrepancy between very hard letters to place and more versatile ones. U is currently worth one point, as are all the vowels, but Lewis suggests raising this to two points. He has a point, I think, as, although U is fairly common, that is mainly because it appears as the first letter of so many words beginning Un-. If you haven't got an N among your seven letters you'll struggle more to place your U.

 

Lewis suggests raising the value of a G from two to three points. This is another interesting letter. G is very common in English words but mainly because of the number of words ending -ing.

 

I like Scrabble, but I must say that I am not usually overjoyed if I pick up a J, X, Q or Z, despite their being the highest-scoring letters. The humble S, which scores just one point, is a much more valuable tile, and can win you a score of far more than the 10 of a Z or Q. Having an S makes it a bit easier to find a 7-letter word, using all your tiles (especially if you have an E, A, R and T along with it) and makes it far easier to find a slot on the board to put your 7-letter word. If I had seven tiles forming the word STRANGE, although it only scores 8 points at face value, if I put the S at the end of a word already on the board, say ZEBRA, I would also gain the 16 points represented by those letters, plus gain a bonus of 50 points for putting down all my tiles at once.

 

The manufacturers of Scrabble, Mattel, say they have no plans to make any changes to the current scoring system.

 

Read the story here.

Silbo Gomero

Silbo Gomero is an old whistling language used on the Canary island of Gomera. It is based on a regional variety of spoken Spanish with a small number of vowels and consonants. But the language existed before the Spanish arrived - it has been adapted to Spanish since.

 

The island of Gomera contains mountains, valleys and ravines, making it an arduous process to go from one place to another, and the whistling language came about to help inhabitants communicate with one another. It can be heard up to two miles away.

 

Locals say that the whistling language was in widespread use in the 1940s and 50s. Like slang and secret languages it was often used by locals to ensure that outsiders couldn't understand them. It later declined as economic difficulties caused some locals to emigrate, and as the road network improved, and these days mobile phones enable long-distance communication.

 

There was a revival of interest in Silbo Gomero in the 1990s, and it is now a compulsory subject in primary schools on the island.

 

The BBC website has an article on Silbo Gomero, with a video from a school classroom and a radio clip. See it here.

Hashtag is the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year

Hashtag, the word used ubiquitously on Twitter, has been voted the Word of 2012 by the American Dialect Society. The criteria the Society uses when deciding on a winner is that the word (or phrase) needs to have been 'newly prominent or notable' in the past year.

 

Runners-up included another internet-related item, YOLO, an acronym for 'you only live once', and words which were on other organisations' Words of the Year lists, such as fiscal cliff and Gangnam style.

 

There are various categories in the American Dialect Society's annual competition. Beardruff (dandruff on one's beard) appears on the 'Most Useful' list, mansplaining (a man's condescending explanation to a female audience) is on the 'Most Creative' list, Dunlop effect (when the stomach protrudes over ill-fitting pants) is among the 'Most Outrageous' words, and one of the words voted 'Least Likely to Succeed' is phablet (a device of the size between a smartphone and a tablet).

 

Here is the page on the American Dialect Society's website.

The ampersand

From the 12th to the 15th century it was hardly used, but enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after printing became established. Then it fell out of fashion again in the 1960s/70s but again had a resurgence; it is now an integral part of many business names, and has an important role in html writing. The ampersand (&), a mixture of the letters E and T, was initially conceived as a shorthand way of writing the Latin et, and. In its history it has often been less popular than the Tironian note for et, which is older than the ampersand, having been created in the 1st century BC by Tiro, a freed slave of Cicero.

 

Radio 4 had an interesting programme devoted to the ampersand yesterday (listen here for another week). The reporter Alastair Sooke visited a punchcutter in Paris, who made punches for traditional printing machines. It was the Parisian printer Garamond who was partly responsible for the popularity of the ampersand, because he designed a particularly elegant and beautiful one (see examples here). The 18th-century English designer of typefaces, William Caslon, also designed an influential ampersand (see here).

 

The word ampersand only came into being in the 19th century. At the time the ampersand was included on alphabet charts. When people recited the alphabet they would say X, Y, Z "and per se and", per se meaning 'by itself' and this became shortened to ampersand.