Hogs, hedges, hedgehogs, and BA’s

About a year ago (to be exact, on February 19, 2025), I discussed the origin of some obscure idioms, the hardest of which was to go the whole hog, though a hog on ice also makes one wonder. It is frustrating that the origin of hog is unknown. The word surfaced in Middle English, and it would seem that a relatively recent monosyllabic animal name (and hog always had only one syllable) need not give language historians too much trouble. But this is not the case, as the history of dog (Old English) and hog (Middle English) shows. All we can know for certain is that twelve and six, and three centuries ago, people coined words, motivated by the same impulses as today. They have always produced monosyllables like big, dig, gig, bog, gag, smug, and lug, and most of them were “emotional,” that is, sound-imitative or sound symbolic. Hogs grunt. Is the word hog onomatopoeic? Do swine “say” hog-hog or pig-pig? Perhaps. In any case, their Dutch siblings “say” big-big!

Why then is the hedgehog called hedgehog? The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966) explains: “So named from frequenting hedgerows and its pig-like snout.” I assume that the corresponding page in the OED online has not yet been edited, because the same formulation appears there. Or perhaps there is nothing to edit in this statement. Perhaps. Hedgehogs may be attached to hedges, but it is amazing that such an inconspicuous feature was chosen for naming the familiar rodent. Isn’t our solution too good to be true?

Hedgehogs don’t live in America, and every time I discuss the Grimms’ tale “The Hare and the Hedgehog” with my students (I often teach German folklore), I have to describe the protagonist’s way of life. I also very much admire the end of the tale, the storyteller’s advice: “If you are a hedgehog, always marry a hedgehog.” I have seen many young people who disregarded this advice and paid dearly for it.

What are the most conspicuous features of the hedgehog? A hedgehog, if attacked, rolls itself into a prickly ball (what a wonderful way of hedging against enemies!), but other than that, it is easily domesticated and is great fun to have at home in summer except that you cannot pet a hedgehog. Also, like mongooses, hedgehogs attack and devour snakes.

In my opinion, the name hedgehog does not do justice to the creature’s behavior and shape. It is also unclear why English replaced the ancient word for “hedgehog” with a new (dialectal?) one. German, Dutch, and Scandinavian have retained the Indo-European name (such is German Igel; the Slavic name is also related to it). Be that as it may, since the hedgehog’s projecting mouth and nose do resemble a snout, prickly hog (this is what the creature is called in numerous Dutch dialects) would be a more accurate name than hedgehog.

Let us now leave hogs to their devices and look at the noun hedge. This word has a dramatic history. The Old English for hedge was hegg. I will not go into phonetic niceties and will only say that hegg is related to haga “enclosure, yard.” Hegge yielded hedge, and haga became haw, as in hawthorn, which is also familiar from the last name Hawthorn. Yet haga is also recognizable, because we know the place name The Hague, Den Haag (see is image in the header). The name of the capital of the Netherlands has retained its ancient form and even its definite article. Last week, we looked at burg and its likes, and I noted that town is akin to Icelandic tún “enclosure.” This is what town meant (consider Modern German Zaun “fence”), exactly like Den Haag.

The most dramatic part in the history of the root we now see in hedge and haw concerns the Old English word hagosteald “bachelor; warrior.” Its counterparts elsewhere in Germanic displayed several meanings: “king,” “retainer,” “servant,” “peasant,” “widower”—a partly incompatible medley of senses. But only at first sight. Among other things, the original “enclosure” was the feudal lord’s residence. In those days and much later, the eldest son inherited his father’s property. His brothers, those who aspired to a career, had little choice and usually became soldiers, or, to use the feudal term, retainers (the same situation with the younger brothers continued into the nineteenth century). Those retainers were, of course, bachelors, and as far as language is concerned, the step from “bachelor,” to “widower” (a male without a wife) must have been short. In Modern German, Hagestolz (now obsolete or facetious) still means “bachelor”; stolz “proud” is a product of folk etymology.

It is amazing how words change their meanings and attain secondary senses, which oust the original sense. From “king’s retainer” to “bachelor”! But incompatible senses also coexist in modern languages and give us no trouble. This, for example, happened to English bachelor. Its Old French source meant “young man aspiring to knighthood,” while Medieval Latin baccalārius referred to a laborer on an estate (baccalāria “area of ploughland”). Though our BA’s don’t aspire to knighthood, getting a college degree is an important step to the proverbial room at the top. And we, the readers of this blog—well, we have made a long way from a piece of enclosed land to the heights of historical semantics. In our journey, we passed by hogs and hedgehogs, visited The Hague, and almost attained a BA. (Yet I keep wondering whether hedgehogs have anything to do with hedges.)

To Our Readers

My sincere thanks to the two readers who have researched some obscure words and asked me about their origin. My resources are good but limited. I have an excellent etymological database and a huge collection of books on word origins. If they provide me with no answers, I give up. This is especially true with regards to the non-Indo-European languages. Alas, all etymologists are in the same position. They know only what little they know.

From My Collection of Useless and Evil Proverbs

It is amazing how many proverbial phrases people have invented to demean women! Here is an Early English gem in its original spelling: “…by the common prouerbe, a woman will wepe for pitie to see a gosling goe barefoote.” John Heywood, a sixteenth-century playwright, is mainly remembered today for his collection of proverbs. He knew the saying quoted above, and it was familiar to English readers of Notes and Queries as late as 1891. Walter Scott seems to have made one of his characters use this saying in Rob Roy (so I have read but did not check). As usual, we have no information about the date and the author of this saying, but the ugly “sentiment” is familiar. The Russian saying “A woman’s tears are water” is still current. What a shame!

_{Featured image: Charlemagne at Court, illuminated manuscript. Public domain via Picryl.}