Slow and fast worms, herring, and their linguistic kin

I received several questions in connection with my post for January 29, 2025, on the origin of the word eel and decided to answer them right away and in doing will revive the format of “gleanings.”

Slowworm

The main question in need of elucidation concerns English slowworm. Why should slowworm be classified with tautological compounds, that is, with compounds consisting of two very close synonyms (like pathway, for example)? Obviously, the adjective slow is not a synonym of the noun worm! I wrote about slowworm in An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology (2008), but this dictionary is not “popular,” and anyway, my explanation does not seem to have been accepted by those few who have dealt with the word since 2008. Therefore, I will restate my conjecture, without going deep into the history of the question, and with as few technicalities as possible.

Slowworm will probably remain obscure regardless of my explanation. Though the word existed in Old English and had a few cognates elsewhere, the etymologist is left with several equally doubtful solutions and has to choose the one that looks the least troublesome, rather than the one that clinches the argument once and for all. As noted, slowworm is not an isolated formation in Germanic. For example, in some Scandinavian languages, words like ormslo correspond to slowworm. We can see at once that the elements of this compound can be reversed: orm + slo = slow + worm. It follows that both are or once were close synonyms. Otherwise, the puzzling variation slowworm ~ ormslo will remain unexplained. For instance, steam engine cannot mean the same as engine steam, but courtyard makes as much sense as yardcourt, even though yardcourt does not exist. It is my contention that a satisfactory etymology of slowworm should demonstrate that slow– in it once designated some kind of “worm.” If it is true, we’ll end up with worm-worm of some kind.

To begin with, in the past, worm used to mean “snake” and not only “worm.” In all the oldest Germanic languages, “worm” referred not only to a serpent but even to a dragon. (See the header with an image of Fafnir, the dragon of Scandinavian mythology.) Anyway, the slowworm is neither a dragon nor a worm but a lizard, though Old English slāwyrm glossed various Latin names of serpents and lizards, as the first edition of the OED already indicated. Numerous older sources explain slowworm as “slay worm” or “worm striker.” But the slowworm does not feed on worms. Reference to slow makes no sense either, because sloth does not characterize the movements of this animal. Though some regional Norwegian and English words for “slime” have also been cited in this connection, none of them explains anything about the slowworm’s nature. And of course, this lizard is not a slow eater or a slow creature (a sluggard), or a slimy animal.

Among the rather many suggestions about the origin of slow– in slowworm, the one that compares slow– in this word with German Schlange (from the older form slango-) “snake” may be preferable to all the others. This etymology was offered as early as 1891, accepted by some, and ignored by other researchers. In Old English slang-o, n was lost after the vowel (this part of the reconstruction and the other phonetic details are secure), and what remained of the word was later changed to slow– and occasionally to slay– under the influence of folk etymology. Thus, “snake-snake.”

Greek aióllo and Germanic ǣlaz “eel”

This comparison, offered in a comment on the previous post, looks tempting. The Greek verb meant “to turn over the fire; to change color (to become variegated),” but the basic sense was “to change,” as is obvious from the related adjective aiólos “nimble; many-colored; changeable.” The word is known to many from the name of the god of the wind, Latinized as Aeolus. Rather probably, the name did mean “changeable.” Odysseus met this god and received a bag with all the winds in it. Think also of the Aeolian harp. It is up to Classical philologists to explore this parallel in detail.

Conversely, I can say nothing new about the origin of the idiom slippery as an eel. Eels do have a smooth skin, and their ability to writhe and “slip away” is famous. No doubt, the phrase was coined by those who knew eels’ habits well. As indicated quite correctly in the letter, the English simile goes back to the fifteenth century. Perhaps something is known about the consumption of eels in Britain at that time. I found no references to this simile or its lookalikes elsewhere in my database.

The fish name carp and some Germanic words for “basket”

Carp (in English, it is a French loanword) goes back to Latin carpa. All its Germanic cognates have the same source. In the sixth century, the carp was known as a fish of the Danube, and its name may be Germanic, but nothing is known about its origin, though similar-sounding fish names in Sanskrit,, Lithuanian, and Greek exist. A migratory substrate word? The question was whether carp has anything to do with words like German Korb, Dutch korf, and Swedish/Norwegian korg “basket.” The answer is “no.” Incidentally, most words for “basket” are of obscure origin. The immediate source of the Germanic words is Latin corbis. Its etymology also remains a matter of speculation.

Herrings and sieves in Scandinavia

The oldest recorded Scandinavian name for “herring” is Old Icelandic síl-d. Also, síl “sand eel” is known (we seem to be unable to part with eels today!). No doubt, the two words are related, but the literature I have read on the origin of síl resolves itself into rather uninspiring guesswork. The word was and is widely known outside Scandinavia, and this is all I can say about it.

For “sieve” we have Danish sold, Norwegian såld, and Old Icelandic sáld. The final consonant (d) in sáld and síld looks like a relic of an ancient suffix, but there is no way of demonstrating that the roots sál– and síl– are related. Besides, síl is a fish name of undiscovered origin and thus cannot throw light on an equally opaque word. Fish names are often hard to etymologize. They tend to travel from one speaking community to another, and what looks like a Germanic word my be of Latin origin and vice versa, or the source may be a third (unknown) language.

Cleaners

A reader asked me why the French use the word nettoyeur for “cleaner” and the Spanish prefer limpiador. I don’t think there is an answer to this question. Both words are transparent and were coined independent of each other. Incidentally, English cleaner is not based on German klein “small” (as implied in the letter). Its root is English clean.

_{Featured image: “Sigurd and Fafnir” by Hermann Hendrich. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.}