The virtual linguist

Gimcrack

I've heard or seen the word 'gimcrack' a few times lately (it's in this article - "the gimcrack glamour of the London Olympics", and I think I heard writer Will Self use it on the radio), so perhaps it's getting a new lease of life.

 

It was originally, in Middle English, spelled with a b instead of an m, and the OED thinks that it may have a link to the Old French giber to shake. The m may have crept in because of an association with the obsolete word gim, meaning smart or spruce. Nowadays a gimcrack is a knick-knack or a useless ornament, something showy but unsubstantial; the OED thinks that the original meaning may have been 'slight or flimsy ornament'. In the 17th century it began to be used to refer to people, and meant a fop (who would certainly have been 'gim'). In the 18th century it was then applied to women, when it became more insulting and contemptuous.

 

Winter's Tale

I went to see Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale yesterday as part of the Globe's international season (it was performed in Yoruba, a West African language - and it was a great performance). I've always wondered why that play is called The Winter's Tale, since winter doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it, but it seems that Shakespeare's audiences of the early 1600s would have understood the 'winter' of a winter's tale (or winter tale - both forms are in the OED) to refer to 'an idle tale' (OED definition) in the sense a light-hearted folk tale, and not necessarily true. In this interesting and erudite article, Germaine Greer says "an old wives' tale is the same thing as a winter's tale". In the 1590s the playwright George Peele wrote a popular play called The Old Wives' Tale and in it one of the characters says "a merry winter's tale would drive away the time trimly".

Phrases coined by Juvenal

Not that much is known about the Roman poet Juvenal, who lived in the late-1st/ early-2nd century AD, but he coined a number of phrases which are still common today, and some of which are still said often in Latin. These expressions come from his Satires, five books of poems.

bread and circuses: Juvenal used the term contemptuously to refer to the concerns of his fellow Romans, who had no interest in heroism or any higher qualities, but only in trivialities and diversions (as provided by the government as a way of appeasing the masses).

a sound mind in a sound body, often said in Latin, mens sana in corpore sano: It is one of a list of things that the poet considers people should desire in life.

rare bird, often said in Latin, rara avis: the translation of Juvenal's line is "a bird rare upon the earth and very like a black swan". 'Black swan' is in the OED, as is rara avis, and, in fact, is defined as a 'rara avis'.

who will watch the watch-men? (or who will guard the guardians?): this phrase is often used these days with reference to corrupt governments, but in Juvenal's Satires the context was marital infidelity, namely that employing guards to keep an eye on or even lock up an immoral wife was pointless (as she would seduce those too, presumably).

Less common is another Latin phrase attributed to Juvenal, which has its own entry in the OED - res angusta domi, or 'narrowed circumstances at home', as in Juvenal's line "It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by narrowed circumstances at home". James Boswell used the phrase about Samuel Johnson in his biography: "The res angusta domi prevented him from having the advantage of a complete academical education".

 

Juvenal is also mentioned in the OED as having used the word 'acersecomic', which means 'a person whose hair has never been cut'.

Government advocates re-moding

The Transport Secretary has advised London residents to 're-route, re-mode and retime' during the Olympics (see the Secretary 're-moding' in the short video on this BBC page). According to the Department of Transport 'remode' means 'to change the mode of transport that you use'. In particular they want people to avoid the Tube and buses during the Olympics, when London is expected to be packed with visitors.

 

Moding is in the OED with two citations from the 17th century; it meant 'fashionable' at the time, from the verb to mode. There is no entry for re-mode. Anyway, the sense of 'mode' as used by the government is based on the noun 'mode', which means 'method'.

 

There are plenty more examples of baffling government jargon on this BBC page.

Tea

I came across a fascinating website earlier, Tsiosophy, devoted to the history of tea and other tea-related things. The modern word in English, tea, has gone through many variants in its history. Seemingly, the word for tea in most 16th-century Chinese dialects was cha, and the OED does have early citations with this spelling, but the dialect of the locals who Dutch traders would have dealt with when importing tea to Europe pronounced the Chinese character for tea as te, and this was the form adopted into English (so says OED).

The words cha, chah, char, chai and tsia are all in the OED as either early forms of ‘tea’, or slang words (cha or char is still very common in Britain now). Those are the headwords – there are many more variant spellings listed that are not headwords eg tcha, chau, chaw, tay, tey, thea and others.

Tsiology is also listed as a nonce-word (ie used once for a specific book or reason). In this instance Tsiology was the title of an 1827 scholarly dissertation .

There is far more about tea and the different words for tea – and it’s far more erudite than this post – on this Tsiosophy page (a word meaning ‘the wisdom of tea’, according to the author).

Cynic

The words cynic, cynical and cynicism are all related to the Greek word for ‘dog’. Indeed, a number of the words beginning cyn- in the dictionary are to do with dogs, eg cynophobia, aversion to and fear of dogs, cynoclept, dog-stealer, and cynanthropy, a species of madness in which a man imagines himself to be a dog (OED definitions).

The meaning of cynic in current usage is someone who does not believe in the sincerity or goodness of human motives, but Cynics were originally a school of philosophers in ancient Greece, whose aim was to live a life of virtue and who shunned fame, wealth and the comforts of life. The most famous among them was Diogenes, who begged for food and whatever he needed and lived in a barrel. He was often referred as Diogenes the Dog. He didn’t seem to mind this epithet and referred to himself as dog-like, in the sense that he had no shame, couldn’t care less what others thought of him, and was not concerned with his food or surroundings.

The reason why the school of philosophers was named after the dog may be because Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates considered the founder of Cynic philosophy, taught in a gymnasium called Cynosarges, meaning white, or swift, dog. People related the name to dogs, and began calling the Cynic scholars dog-like.

Diogenes is credited with being one of the first users, if not the first, of the term cosmopolitan ie citizen of the world, which is how he described himself when asked where he was from. His name is also immortalised in the medical condition known as Diogenes’ syndrome (which I blogged on here), which is to do with excessive hoarding – something Diogenes most definitely did not do.

Garden leave

Ken Livingstone, the defeated candidate for the London mayor election, said he was now going to 'catch up on gardening' (see here). I'm not sure if that is the literal truth, or just a euphemism, as 'gardening' often is.

 

Executives are often given 'garden leave' or 'gardening leave', defined in the OED as "suspension from work on full pay for the duration of a notice period, typically to prevent an employee from having any further influence on the organization or from acting to benefit a competitor before leaving".

China

I was watching a programme on BBC iPlayer about the history of collectables and antiques (watch here), and china, or porcelain, was featured.

 

Fine china or porcelain was imported to Europe by the Portuguese in the 16th century. China is a short version of the original term china-ware, meaning 'ware from China'. The word China itself is not a Chinese word. The OED says the origin is still a matter of debate, but it seems to come from an Indian language or Persian. There were various spellings in the 17th century, including chiney, cheney, cheny and chenea, and yet more spellings in the 18th and 19th centuries - George Eliot has the line "There's none of 'em got better chany" in The Mill on the Floss of 1860. The OED says that the pronunciation chay-nee was fashionable in the 18th century, and some regional dialects still pronounce it as chee-nee.

Nonage and dotage

We still talk quite frequently of someone being in their dotage, albeit often humorously, but the word nonage has fallen out of fashion. I came across it when I was reading Shakespeare's Richard III - when Edward dies and the citizens worry who will become king, one of them refers to the king's son, still a minor:

In him there is a hope of government:
That in his nonage council under him,
And in his full and ripened years himself,
No doubt shall then, and till then, govern well.

 

Nonage is made up of the negative word non (= lack of) + age and meant 'the state of being under full legal age'. Dotage is from dote + age, dote meaning folly or weakness of mind.

 

Now obsolete, the words boyage, child-age, adultage, infantage and barnage (from bairn, a Scottish or northern English word for 'child') are in the OED. As for what comes between nonage and dotage, well it's the also now-obsolete man-age, defined in the OED as "the age at which a boy becomes a man; the adult period of a man's life". (Needless to say, women don't get a look in in the dictionary.)

Shamefaced

I'm just off out to the Globe Theatre in London to see Richard III performed in Mandarin, part of the Globe's international season (here's a short BBC news video about it).

 

I don't know Mandarin, so I have been swotting up on the play and reading an annotated edition. I discovered that the word shamefaced, first recorded in the mid-16th century, was actually an etymological misinterpretation of the much older (it goes back to the earliest days of Old English) shamefast, last used, according to the OED, in the 19th century. The definition is 'bashful or modest', and was originally intended to be a positive word. Unshamefast is also in the Dictionary, meaning 'immodest'. The original meaning of fast was 'restrained', but the OED says it was a common adjectival suffix in Old English (e.g. the word handfast once meant 'espoused or betrothed', soothfast meant 'truthful' and the word steadfast dates back to OE times).