Boots (or rather, shoes) on the ground

Few words are harder to trace to their sources than the names of clothing articles. Those names travel with the things to which they belong, and the sources are easily lost sight of. As regards such travels, consider the global success of the word jeans. Today, my object is the etymology of the word shoe, but the origins of boot, stocking, and sock are also worthy of note. They provide a useful background for the main story, and as regards boots on the ground, see the header.

Let me begin with boot. The most detailed entry on this word will be found in Henry Cecil Wyld’s The Universal English Dictionary. He admits that the history and the origin of the word, which seems to have originated in Germanic, are obscure. Late Latin, we are told, probably borrowed it from German, and from Latin it passed into most of the Romance languages. The early senses were “barrel, tun, leather bag” and later “leather flask; bottle.” We are of course interested in boot “covering for the feet and legs.” Here German Bottich “tub, barrel” (from bottaha) and (!) English body turn up in the entry, along with Old English byden “tub, barrel” and byte “leather bottle, wine-skin.” Thus, boot refers us to body and bottle.

Are all those words related? Perhaps. But surprisingly, at body, the same excellent dictionary makes no mention of the words listed above. The etymology of body is said to be very uncertain. “Its usage and origin may be exclusively English.” Some authorities connect body and Greek, apotēkē “storehouse” (think of Engl. apothecary). Most other sources state bluntly that the origin of the word is unknown.

Unfortunately, the entry on bottle sheds no additional light on boots. It is a pity that some dictionary makers do not check their cross references. Be that as it may, the entry on boot gives us food for thought. According to the chronology available to us, Engl. boot was borrowed from Old Norse. Perhaps so, but this fact tells us nothing about the distant origin of the word. So much for boot (a meager harvest). Apparently, it referred to a receptacle, rather than a covering.

Stocking is outwardly clear: stock + ing, but what is –ing? Our revered authority Walter W. Skeat says: “Stocking is a diminutive form of stock, used as short of nether-stock. … stock means a piece or stump, a piece cut off.” Stock is clear, but a diminutive suffix –ing does not and did not exist! Stockling would have been perfect, but stocking? What then does “a diminutive form of stock” mean? The word has been in use since the sixteenth century, and we could expect its structure to be more transparent. Great expectations: it is hard to disagree with the verdict “of obscure formation.”

Sock is both less and more problematic that the words briefly discussed above. The word and its cognates have existed all over Germanic since the oldest period. The word emerged with the sense “light shoe” and only much later developed into “half-hose.” The source is undoubtedly Latin soccus, from Greek. Dictionaries say: “of Oriental origin” or more precisely, “from Asia Minor.” Somebody somewhere in (?) Asia Minor invented this foot covering, gave it an easily remembered name, and it spread all over half of Europe.

By this time, it won’t come as a surprise that the origin of shoe remains partly undiscovered. Shoe is a Common Germanic word. It occurred even in the fourth-century Gothic text of the New Testament, where it meant “sandal.” Incidentally, sandal, like sock, is, most probably, a word of Asiatic origin!

The oldest form of shoe must have been skōh-, and numerous attempts have been made to detect its ancient root. An old verb meaning “to go” sounds somewhat like the root of skōh-, but it is most unlikely that a name designating a covering for the foot should have been derived from the idea of moving or going. Then there was a word meaning “cover, surround,” whose sense fits the idea of “shoe” much better, and some authorities cite this word (though without much enthusiasm) as the source of shoe. The reference is not specific enough: a shoe is not a kerchief or an overcoat, and this etymology does not sound like an ideal solution to our problem.

What was meant by that ancient skōh? What kind of “footwear” (to use the commercial term that Henry Cecil Wyld detested) did it designate? “Sandal” is fine for the biblical text, but the speakers of Gothic, Old Norse, or Old English certainly did not wear sandals. We can notice some similarity between soccus, the afore mentioned etymon (source) of sock, and skōh-. If shoe and sock are indeed related, we are back in Asia but not an inch closer to the origin of the words that interest us. We may, if we wish, reconstruct the ancient root of both, but only historical linguists will be happy with this result. As always, we want to know the human impulse behind word formation. For instance, sweater owes its form to sweat, hood is related to hat, and shirt is a cognate of short, but shoe seems to be a migratory word, a loan from afar, whose etymology is now beyond reach.

Such is the situation with most articles of clothing. Look up jacket, coat, cloak, and so forth! It is also amazing that nearly all such words in English are loans from foreign languages. And this is true not only of such exotic words as chemise and kimono. Cap (of somewhat unclear origin) is from Latin, dress is from French, breeches from Irish, pants ultimately from Italian, sandals from Greek (and there, most probably, from Asia), and so it goes. The word is either foreign or of undiscovered origin, and when it is foreign, its derivation in the lending language is often also obscure. Such is the linguistic price for globalization.

A curious detail. An inherited name for “shoe” existed: Old English hrifeling, Old Norse hriflingr, Latin crepisculum, and Greek krēpís, with broad connections elsewhere, but, surprisingly, just this ancient word has not stayed even in the conservative Modern Icelandic. The ways of language are hard to predict, and a historical linguist’s shoe is too often on the other foot.

_{Photo by Lance Cpl. Michael Nerl via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.}