A reader asked me to explain how I choose words for my essays. It is a long story, but I will try to make it short. When more than thirty years ago I began working on a new etymological dictionary of English, I compiled a list of words about which dictionaries say “origin unknown” and came up with about a thousand items. My other list contains “words of uncertain origin.” It is those outcasts of English etymology that interested and still interest me most of all. The blog was launched on March 1, 2006, and during all those years, I tried to discuss just such problematic words if, of course, I had something of interest to say about them.
My main resource was the huge bibliography of English etymology (published in book form by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010) I amassed with the help of numerous assistants. In stray articles and notes, written in a dozen languages, I found many worthwhile suggestions that dictionary makers had missed. Clever comparisons and non-trivial facts often surfaced in sources one can discover only by opening every page in those runaway volumes, that is, by chance. Also, entries in English etymological dictionaries are short, while I could discuss various hypotheses at length. Some of my posts have been inspired by questions from readers.
There is no system in my choice of subjects, but from time to time, I develop a certain theme. For instance, I once devoted a series of posts to all kinds of refuse: rubbish, garbage, dregs, and trash. Deplorable waste, but interesting words. Animal names and body parts have figured prominently in the blog. Initially, I hoped that I would be inundated with questions and suggestions from the readership. Though queries and objections reach me from time to time, the flood did not materialize, and I am more or less on my own when it comes to the subjects for inclusion. A richer exchange would have been of great use, but the number of “interesting” words is inexhaustible, and I am never short of riddles.
A question from a student made me aware of how many words designate “lip” in the languages of the world, and I decided to devote today’s post to it. The puzzling thing is that in the Old Germanic languages, two dissimilar words designated “lips.” Who, we may wonder, needs synonyms for “lip”? One of the Old English names for “lip” was, apparently, werula. It came down to us in the plural form weleras and weoleras, with l and r playing leapfrog (the technical term for this common change is metathesis). The word was known widely. Its cognate occurs in the fourth-century Gothic translation of the New Testament. In Mark VII: 6 (as it appears in the Revised Version), we read: “This people honoureth me with their lips [that is, pays only lip service to me], but their heart is far from me” (the same form, but in a slightly different context, in IC XIV: 21).
The Gothic noun showed up only in the dative plural. The singular must have been wairilo or wairila (Gothic ai has here the value of e in English wen). Also, Old Icelandic had vörr (Modern Icelandic vör), and in Old Frisian (a West Germanic language, like Old English), were “lip” occurred. We notice that warilo ~ warila contains the diminutive suffix il (thus, little lips, “lipkins, liplets” as it were; the same diminutive suffix is extant in English girl, whatever gir– may have meant). Those English speakers who said weleras no longer recognized the ancient suffix, just as we no longer realize that –kin is a suffix in names like Watkins (= “little Wat or Walter”).
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The origin of the Gothic word and its cognates is obscure and will therefore throw no light on lip. Greek kheîlos “lip” is from an etymological point of view isolated, but it seems to have meant “mouth” before it came to designate “lip.” The same, apparently, holds for the Slavic noun guba (the place of stress varies from language to language). Neither throws any sidelight on lip. The English word has hardly changed over the centuries: Old English lippa has only lost its ending. We do not know how more than a thousand years ago speakers differentiated between werula and lippa. When one tries to discover the origin of any word, especially of a concrete noun, the first and most natural question is about the function of the thing it designates. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing, and so forth. Surprisingly, this way of discovery rarely helps in finding the etymology of the names of body parts. Eye and see ~ look are not related. Neither are probably ear and hear, despite the almost total coincidence of the forms. And what is the function of the lips? One can think of quite a few. They are the borders of the mouth, and they are essential in producing some sounds.
Lip has cognates in Dutch and Frisian. German Lippe is a loan from Dutch, but Old High German had lefs(e) and lefs, recognizable today as Lefze “an animal’s lip.” The interaction between those forms sheds no light on the origin of lip. The only obvious non-Germanic cognate of lip is Latin labia, still another word without a recognized etymology. Yet something can be said about it and about its Old English cognate. Above, I asked: “Who needs synonyms for the word lips?” Well, in the past, someone did. Apparently, once upon a time, people had a fixation on lips, reminiscent of our fixation on sex.
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Was the Gothic form a coy diminutive? Did Goths constantly purse or twist their lips to challenge opponents? Speakers of Old English no longer recognized the suffix but had two words for “lips.” One neutral and one slangy? Or both “playful”? Old English lippe had double p (a long consonant, a geminate). Pronounce it in an Italian way, and you will know how it sounded. Long consonants were all but non-existent in Old English, so that this geminate reveals the word’s expressive coloring. The German scholar Notker (c. 950-1027) was known as Notker Labeo. Everybody had nicknames in those days, but what was so conspicuous about Notker? Was he thick-lipped? If he was, so what?
Labeo reminds us of Latin labia, the only cognate of lip outside Germanic. Yet labia was also a so-called popular word, an illegitimate relative of Latin labra “lip.” The root vowel in both (!) labia ~ labra is “wrong,” because Germanic e (the source of i in lippe) alternated with o, rather than a. I suspect that we cannot discover the origin of lip, because it was probably part of ancient Italo-Germanic slang. Even yesterday’s slang is often impenetrable to an etymologist.
Lip has often been compared with lap and slap, and this comparison is still mentioned in some good dictionaries. Both lap and slap are sound-imitative. So is perhaps lip (lip-lip-lip), but as The Century Dictionary says with a touch of irritation: “The phonetic conditions do not agree, and it is not the lip but the tongue, that ‘laps.’” Very true. However, the way from “mouth” and “tongue” to “lips” is short.
Most of my essays are like this one. We travel along a winding path, pick up a few bright pebbles, but the sought-for treasure usually remains out of reach.
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The Persian word for “lip” is “lab”, and it also means “edge.” Some say it is related to English “lip.”
L. labi (lapsus) = En. to slip (slip, e.g., slip of tongue, slip of lip). So the traditional view still holds, but can be interpreted in another way.