Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
First of all, let me apologize for the egregious typo I made in the previous post in Ernest Weekley’s name. This is what comes of being too devoted to every line of Oscar Wilde and his comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.
This is the second and last post on Ernest Weekley, an excellent scholar and engaging writer. The “installment” a week ago dealt with the history of Standard English through the eyes of the inimitable Mrs. Gamp.
Many people who are interested in word origins know Ernest Weekley’s English etymological dictionary. I am sorry that we cannot post his photo: for some mysterious reason, all his portraits on the Internet are copyrighted. He wrote many excellent books on English words.
An instructive essay on etymology need not always be devoted to a word going back to the hoariest antiquity. It can also deal with an “exotic” borrowing like coffee, for example.
An instructive essay on etymology need not always be devoted to a word going back to the hoariest antiquity. It can also deal with an “exotic” borrowing like coffee, for example.
Have you ever seen a quern? If you have not, Wikipedia has an informative page about this apparatus. Yet there is a hitch about the definition of quern. For instance, Wikipedia discusses various quern-stones, and indeed, pictures of all kinds of stones appear in the article. But stones don’t do anything without being set in motion.
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.”
Rump and runt are not twins, but they sound somewhat alike, and they may be “distantly related,” to use a phrase sometimes occurring in dictionaries, though this phrase is too vague to be useful. Rump surfaced in texts only in the fifteenth century, and but for the Rump Parliament (1648-1653), famous in British History, the word would probably have been relegated mainly to talks about animals and bird.
The title of this post embodies everything I despise about cheap journalism, but the temptation was too strong, because today’s topic is indeed the origin of the word whale. I was planning the story for quite some time, and then suddenly the media informed the world that a spade-toothed whale had been washed up on South Island beach (Australia).
First of all, many thanks to our two readers who sent me letters on sw-words and the linguistic environment of the adjective tiny.
First of all, many thanks to our two readers who sent me letters on sw-words and the linguistic environment of the adjective tiny.
Now that we know how untrivial the origin of small, little ~ leetle, and wee is (see the post for June 20, 2024), we are fully prepared to examine the puzzling history of tiny. Little pitchers have long ears, and inconspicuous words may have a nearly impenetrable etymology. It is hard to believe how much trouble the adjective tiny has given researchers.
Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137).
Before I come to the point, a short remark is due. Some of our readers may have noticed that two weeks ago, they did not receive Wednesday’s post. This happened because of a technical problem, but the post “Some Gleanings and the Shortest History of Bummers,” is available.
Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137).
Every English dictionary with even minimal information on word origins, will tell us that lord and lady are so-called disguised compounds. Unlike skyline or doomsday (to give two random examples), lord and lady do not seem to consist of two parts. Yet a look at their oldest forms—namely, hlāf-weard and hlæf-dīge—dispels all doubts about their original status (the hyphens above are given only for convenience).