Monthly Gleanings

by Anatoly Liberman

Martin Chuzzlewit spent some time in America and, following the lead of his creator, Charles Dickens, formed a most unfavorable
impression of the country. Soon after his arrival, he met the editors of the Watertoast
Gazette, who were sure that Queen Victoria “[would] shake in her royal
shoes” when she opened the fresh issue of their newspaper. Martin expressed
some doubts about the queen’s familiarity with the Watertoast Gazette,
but was reassured: “It is sent to her. It is sent to her. Per Mail,” addressed
to the Tower of London (Chapter 21). Unlike Mr. La Fayette Kettle and General
Choke, Martin’s new acquaintances, I am not certain that my blog is read in the
Tower and experience great satisfaction when I receive questions and comments
(Per Mail or otherwise). So first of all, as last month, I wish to thank those
who praised my efforts and those who trusted me with their queries. Below I
will answer them as best I can. The flourish as best I can should not
be taken for an expression of mock humility. Most things in etymology are
shaky, and one is often obliged to offer surmises and conjectures rather than
definitive answers. I would also like to make it clear that, given the
limitations of space and the genre of the blog, I dispense with references to
the publications I use while writing my posts. The style of a columnist is of
necessity apodictic.

Gaudy and Hideous. The first of these adjectives
surfaced in English texts in the 16^th century, the second in the 13^th.
Dictionaries distinguish between gaudy “rejoicing, festivity,” which is
from Latin gaudium “joy” (many people probably know the opening line of
the student song Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus “Let us rejoice
while we are young”), and gaudy “showy” (in Middle English, its meaning
was “brilliant” rather than “garish”). If both are traceable to the same
etymon (source), the problem is solved, but the reconstruction of the meaning
from “festivity” or even “merry” to “brilliant” does not inspire confidence.
There was a Middle English phrase gaudy green “yellowish green”
(properly “green dyed with weld”). Weld, which is the name of a plant
yielding yellow dye and of the dye itself, made its way into 13^th-century
French and continued into Modern French as gaude (the correspondence
Germanic w ~ French g is regular: consider the doublets Wilhelm
~ Guillaume, guard ~ ward, and so forth). It is easier to imagine the
development to “brilliant” from “bright-colored” than from “merry,” but some
uncertainty remains.

Middle English hidous goes back to Old French hidos,
earlier hisdos, and is related to Old French hide ~ hisde
“fear.” Perhaps the etymon of hisdos is some Medieval Latin word like hispidosus,
a “reinforced” (emotional, slangy) variant of Latin hispidus “rough,
shaggy, bristly.” A parallel case would be horrid, which appeared in
English with the same meaning (“rough, shaggy, bristling”) and which is derived
from Latin horrere “stand on end (said about hair); tremble, shudder.” “Having
one’s hair on end” meant “frightened.” If this etymology deserves credence, hideous
(from hispidus) and horrid are related to each other and to hirsute
“hairy” (from Latin hirsutus). However, French scholars contend that
the source of the French adjective must be looked for not in Latin but in Old
Germanic (many words traveled from Old Franconian or Gothic to the neighboring
Romance dialects and later returned “home”). Unfortunately, so far none has
been found. Regardless of the true history of hideous, we should concur
with Rudyard Kipling, who told a story about how a crocodile pulled a baby
elephant’s nose, “and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the
elephant’s child’s nose grew longer and longer—and it hurt him hijjus!”

Pharynx. Once again, we must tread gingerly. The
root of pharynx, ultimately from Classical Greek, is believed to be
related to many words in the Indo-European languages having the root bher-
“to cut, pierce.” Among them we find Engl. bore (verb), burin
(from French, but ultimately from a Germanic word for “auger”), and barrow
“castrated pig.” Pharynx should then be understood as “cutting, cleft,
passage.” Its connection with cutting, therefore, will not be through the
activities of cutthroats, and its connection with “plow” will not be through
“depth” (as suggested in the question). The origin of pharynx is, to a
certain extent, debatable, but it saddens me to report that the origin of larynx
is considerably more obscure.

Can askew and asquint be related to sky?
No. Such convergences, or poetic etymologies, play an important role in the
development of words’ meaning, but they do not help explain word origins.

Copycat. The earliest attestation of this word in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1896, but the content of the
passage is significant: “I ain’t heard of a copy-cat this great many years… ‘twas
a favorite word of my grandmother’s.” It follows that copycat had
sufficient currency in some parts of the United States as early as the
beginning of the 19^th century. Dictionaries say nothing about the
formation of the word, except that it is copy + cat, which is
indubitable but unrevealing. In my etymological database, which features about
12,000 words, including many regional and exotic ones, copycat did not
show up, and I conclude that it has either never or very seldom been discussed
in special publications. Therefore, I will risk offering a suggestion
unsupported by any research, a mere guess. In addition to the self-explanatory
figurative uses of the noun cat (“prostitute; spiteful woman,” “a man on
the prowl for women,” and “hobo”), there are senses that cannot be derived from
the animal’s nature, for example, “expert; jazz musician; prison informer” and
in Black English “fellow, man, boy, dude.” In copycat, cat seems
to have the generalized meaning “person,” for cats are not known to be great
imitators of one another.

The female name Bertye. I assume that Bertye
is a spelling variant of the more common Bertie. If so, it is short for
Bertha or any name ending in –berta (Roberta, Alberta, etc.).

Do the origins of the word wheel give us any clue to
when/where the wheel was invented? No. There are two main words for “wheel”
in Germanic (it should be reminded that Germanic is the name of a language
group within the Indo-European family to which German, English, Dutch, Yiddish,
the Scandinavian languages, and several dead languages, such as Gothic, belong;
it is thus not a synonym of German). One is Engl. wheel with its
cognates, the other is German Rad with its cognates. It is common to
have the same ancient word for “wheel” and “wagon.” For instance, Sanskrit ratham
means “battle chariot,” while Latin rota, a related noun, means
“wheel.” Rad is thus a revolving object (compare Old English rador ~
rodor “heaven”; its Old Icelandic cognate meant “sun,” that is, “a rotating
body”). So is wheel, from Old English hweowol ~ hweogol, which
is related to cycle (from Greek kuklos “circle,” via Latin and
French). Thus, etymology tells us why (or how), but not where, the wheel got
its several names. At this juncture, we come full circle and return to the
main business of this blog. Next Wednesday more will be said on some of the
oddest English spellings.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday. He enjoys answering reader questions, even if the solution is sometimes “origin unknown.” Email your question to him at [email protected].