Cringing with dignity, or the crux of the matter

I have “sauntered,” I have paid some respect to “lust” (see the previous two posts), and now I am ready “to cringe.” The most interesting part of today’s story is not even the origin of the verb cringe but the multitude of words, possibly related to it and explaining nothing. Hence the reference to sham dignity in the title.

In the form in which it has come down to us, cringe was recorded rather late, only in Middle English texts (the first known example goes back to the thirteenth century). The form cringe and its old doublet crenche correspond to Old English cringan ~ crincan “to fall in battle.” Historical semantics knows two processes: the deterioration of meaning and the amelioration of meaning. For instance, the adjective nice, also first recorded in the thirteenth century, was borrowed from French with the sense “silly, simple” and did first mean “foolish; wanton; difficult to manage” but ended up as a “pleasant, delightful.” By contrast, fond meant “foolish” and gradually merged with the sense “having a strong liking (for).” Cringe has obviously “deteriorated.”

The English verb has cognates in most languages of the Germanic-speaking world. Dutch krengen “to heel over” and Old Norse kranga “to creep along” (there also was krangr “weak”) seem to belong here. This list of related forms does not provide a clue to why a sound combination like kr-nk suggested to speakers the idea of bending or shrinking. We may not be able to find the golden key, but etymologists are beggars and should not pretend to be choosers. Knowing this, we may go back to the environment of cringe.

Next to Old English cringan ~ crincan “to fall in battle,” crincan “to yield” (originally, “to weaken”) existed. As the OED online suggests, the two verbs coexisted: one meant “to bend” and the other “to make bend.” Today, the verb crinkle “to bend; wrinkle, etc.” (from Old English crincan) exists. Its oldest history is obscure, but there is hardly any doubt that cringe and crinkle are in some way related, and that is all we need to know. In older German, the verb krenken “to weaken” existed, which interests us mainly because Modern German krank “sick, ill” is related to it.

With krank, we find ourselves in a rather inhospitable snake pit. The cousins of krank are plentiful in English. Crank “liable to capsize; crabbed; awkward; infirm, shaky” is not a borrowing from Dutch or German but a true cognate. The noun crank “portion of an axis bent at right angles” also seems to be related, even if a bit obscurely, to Old English crincan and cringan (“yield” and “bend”). Crank “bend, crook” is, for all intents and purposes, the same word. Cranky “tortuous, eccentric, cross-tempered; silly” emerged in books only in the sixteenth century but obviously, belongs to our story. Hence the Americanism crank “an eccentric person” now well-known also outside the United States. No doubt, cringle “a ring of a rope”, borrowed from Low German, is another part of the family. As a curiosity, I may mention that German Kringel ~ Krengel “a kind of pretzel,” deservedly popular in its country of origin, made its way into Russian and became krendel.

There is no doubt that all the words discussed above have a common feature, namely “round or crooked.” It comes as a surprise that they have no established etymology: in the best dictionaries, we find only long lists of cognates, sometimes also outside the Germanic family. Occasionally, a special helpful note alerts us to the fact that the oldest history of the entire group is unknown. But already in 1902 (such is the earliest reference in my database), Joseph Schrijnen, an excellent Dutch philologist, observed that the Germanic words for “ring” (hear, hear!) resemble and may be related to those meaning kring-. The resemblance is unmistakable.

At one time, ring had initial h: the oldest form was hring-. We also notice the similar-sounding word wring. Of those, hring holds out more promise to etymologists, because it has a good Slavic cognate, Russian krug “round, circle,” among others. It is related to Engish rung (from hrung), defined as “stick of rounded form [“stick of rounded form”!!] used as a rail; a spoke of a wheel,” etc., though most of us probably associate rung with “a step of hierarchy.” Rung had related forms in fourth-century Gothic, namely, hrugga (pronounced as hrunga) “staff.” Though staffs and poles are not round, roundness seems to be the implied goal: in order to twist or bend something, one should first have a straight object. (It seems that with this kind of reasoning one can prove almost anything.)

The previous statement looks like trying to save a hopeless etymology, but long ago, the initial meaning of rung was reconstructed as “a round pole.” This odd gloss was, naturally, contested by other specialists. Squaring the circle and making a straight object round are hard tasks. Rung, in its figurative sense, means “step,” and steps are neither round nor bent. To show how shaky our ground in this case is, I may mention a few more cognates of rung. One of them is Latin crux “cross.” Still another noun, related to rung (from hrung), is ridge (from hrycg; Germs Rücken, noun, means “back”). About every word, mentioned above, solid dictionaries say with rare consistency: “Origin unclear, doubtful, unknown.” Isn’t it amazing? Reliable cognates in Slavic, Latin, and Sanskrit, all having more or less the same sense, and yet the origin is still “unclear.” A squirrel is busy running in its cage and not getting anywhere! What is it that will make the sought-for etymology clear? How can our squirrel leave its cage and reach a tree?

Perhaps English wiggle ~ waggle will provide some help? Alas, no. The English verb is a borrowing from Dutch, where its traces are lost. I am finally coming to the point: no more meandering. It seems that once upon a time Germanic had the sound groups hring- ~ kring- ~ wrink-, all of which, for the reasons that are beyond reconstruction, suggested bending, twisting, and coiling (with the initial point being, naturally, something straight). Those groups mut have been sound-symbolic, and that is perhaps why we failed to find their origin. Sound symbolism is in the eyes (ears) of the beholder. Its existence cannot be proved. Only sound imitation (croak, gaggle, twitter, and the rest) is obvious. Yet the existence of three rhyming synonyms, whose etymology remains undiscovered (and for aught I understand, will remain such) perhaps makes my idea, inspired by Schrijnen’s observation, not entirely groundless. A blog is a genre that allows its author to risk a hypothesis, without being laughed out of court or fearing retribution. If it is promising, fine. If it is unacceptable, too bad.

At the end of this month, the merry month of May, I will be at the conference of the Dictionary Society in Buffalo, NY. Therefore, the next installment of this blog will appear in two weeks.

_{Featured image: A squirrel in a wheel. CC0 via Picryl.}