Laudator Temporis Acti

Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 36:

'Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.'

Dichten = condensare.

I begin with poetry because it is the most concentrated form of verbal expression. Basil Bunting, fumbling about with a German-Italian dictionary, found that this idea of poetry as concentration is as old almost as the German language. 'Dichten' is the German verb corresponding to the noun 'Dichtung' meaning poetry, and the lexicographer has rendered it by the Italian verb meaning 'to condense'.

There are two different verbs spelled dichten in German. One means "dicht machen" (dicht = thick, dense, compact), and the other means "ein sprachliches Kunstwerk (besonders in Versform) verfassen" (definitions from Duden). The two homonyms are etymologically unrelated and should not be used to support the idea of poetry as concentration.

Labels: etymology, typographical and other errors

Vicky Osterweil, interviewed by Zoé Samudzi, "Stealing Away in America ," Jewish Currents (June 10, 2020):

The word "loot" was taken from Hindi by [British] colonial officers. It first appears in English in an 1845 colonial officer's handbook.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives earlier examples, s.v. loot, n.²:

Etymology: < Hindi lūt, according to some scholars representing Sanskrit lōtra, lōptra booty, spoil, < the root lup = rup to break; others refer it to Sanskrit lunt to rob.

[....]

[1788 Indian Vocab. 77 Loot, plunder, pillage.]
1839 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 45 104 He always found the talismanic gathering-word Loot (plunder), a sufficient bond of union in any part of India.

Id., s.v. loot, v.:

1842 [implied in: LD. ELLENBOROUGH Let. 17 May in Hist. Indian Admin. (1874) 194 The plunderers are beaten whenever they are caught, but there is a good deal of burning and 'looting' as they call it.

Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), p. 55, s.v. reup-:


More from Vicky Osterweil in the same interview:

Riots are really emotive, an emotional way of expressing yourself. It is about pleasure and social reproduction. You care for one another by getting rid of the thing that makes that impossible, which is the police and property. You attack the thing that makes caring impossible in order to have things for free, to share pleasure on the street. Obviously, riots are not the revolution in and of themselves. But they gesture toward the world to come, where the streets are spaces where we are free to be happy, and be with each other, and care for each other.

Labels: etymology, lexicography

Charlotte Higgins, "Forget Boris Johnson—the classics are for the working classes too," Prospect Magazine (January 28, 2020):

Classics and class have the same root. That is, the verb clamare, to call out. "Classis" meant a group of people "called out," for example by means of a census for military service; and in the late 2nd century AD, the Roman writer Aulus Gellius referred to the greatest authors as scriptores classici, "classic writers"—as opposed to second-rate authors, scriptores proletarii. We now have classic books, classic cars, classic films, and so on—those called out for greatness. But the classics of the classics, the top of the drawer, the best of the best, are always smugly supposed to be "the" classics: Latin and Greek, and the worlds associated with them.

Classics is derived from Latin classicus and class from Latin classis, but are classicus and classis derived from clamare? Apparently not in a direct line. The most that can be said is that classis might be derived from calare and that calare and clamare share a common ancestor.

Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1991), p. 134:


Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. rev. Jacques André (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 125 (classicus, classis):


Id., s.v. clāmō:

Même racine que dans calō...

Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 118 (classis):


de Vaan, p. 117 (clamo):


de Vaan, pp. 84-85 (calo):


Hat tip: Jim K.

Labels: etymology

Steve Sailer, "Why Did It Take Farmers and Philosophers So Long to Understand Heredity?" Unz Review (November 7, 2019):

Our word "race," meaning a lineage or breed, is etymologically linked to our word "race" meaning a test of speed, in part because breeding faster racehorses took up a lot of space in the English mind.

Screen image:


I don't think there's any etymological link between these two homonyms.

---

From Dr Dunstan Lowe:

After consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, I just wanted to confirm your suspicion, in today's blog post, that there is no etymological link between 'race' (competition) and 'race' (ethnicity). The former first appeared in connection with horsebreeding as Italian razzo (then razza), whose origin is disputed but is probably either from ratio or generatio. The latter is a borrowing from early Scandinavian ras, meaning onrush (originally of water, and hence also a word for a water-channel). In fact the word 'rush' comes from the same origin.

Of course, there can be perceived folk-etymological links between words that have no basis in fact. That is the position to which your author would presumably resort.

Labels: etymology, typographical and other errors

Paul Anthony Jones, "10 Body Parts Hiding in the Dictionary," Mental Floss (June 27, 2017, updated October 25, 2019):

The word genuine originally referred to things that were natural or innate, rather than acquired or added later. In that sense, one explanation claims that it derives from gignere, a Latin verb meaning to birth or to beget, but a more imaginative (and no less likely) theory is that the word actually comes from genu, the Latin word for knee. According to this theory, a father would acknowledge the paternity of his genuine offspring by placing his child on his knee, and from there, the use of the word to mean authentic or real emerged.

Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, 4th ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 273, accept the derivation of genuinus from genu:


But cf. Norman W. DeWitt, "Semantic Notes to Latin Words," Classical Journal 31.8 (May, 1936) 505-506 (at 505):

Dens genuinus means "wisdom tooth" in our parlance, from a noun corresponding to γένυς, "jaw," literally "jaw tooth" or "cheek tooth," the same root as in gena. Seemingly the influence of folklore accounts for our word "genuine." People can be trusted after they have cut their wisdom teeth.

The same word γένυς sometimes meant the jaw with the beard on it. Hence ingenuus, "unbearded," "innocent," "ingenuous." Both of these words are usually assigned to a supposititious root genu- from gigno. Even so the semantic problem remains unsolved. The above explanations fit both form and meaning.

Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008) accepts the derivation of genuinus from gena (p. 257), but connects ingenuus to gigno (p. 260).

Robert Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1991), pp. 256-257:

genuinus dens. PAUL. FEST. 94 genuini dentes, quod a genis dependent. SCHOL. Pers. 1,115 genuinus proprie dicitur dens, qui sub genis est.

The Oxford Latin Dictionary has two separate entries for genuinus, the first as an adjective "perh. formed fr. INGENVVS on anal. of adulterinus," the second as a noun meaning tooth, derived from gena (cheek).

Hat tip: Jim K.

Labels: etymology

Robert Graves (1895-1985), The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, 4th ed. (1997; rpt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), p. 53 (discussing the Sumerian goddess Belili):

The Slavonic word beli meaning 'white' and the Latin bellus meaning 'beautiful' are also ultimately connected with her name.

Latin bellus has nothing whatsoever to do with Belili. It's a diminutive related to bonus. See Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet, Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Latine. Histoire des Mots, 4th ed. (Paris: Klincksieck, 2001), p. 73:

De bonus existe un diminutif familier, employé à toutes les époques: bellus, de *dwenolos, dont la parenté avec bonus avait déjà été reconnue par Priscien, GLK II 80, 7.

---

Dear Michael Gilleland,

It may interest you to know that Max Vasmer (Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, 1950-58) provides the following non-Slavic Indo-European cognates for the Russian белый: Sanskrit bhālam "radiance", bhāti "shine", Greek πεφήσεται (from φάινω from *φάνɩω), πέφη, ἐφάνη, Lithuanian bolúoti "whiten", Latvian bãls "pale", Lithuanian balas "white", Greek φαλός, λευκός, φάλιος, Albanian ballë "forehead, brow", Old Icelandic bál "fire" (Этимологический Словарь Русского Языка, перевод с немецкого и дополнения О. Н. Трубачева, Издательство АЗБУКА, Санкт-Петербург, 1996, том I, стр. 149).

Yours sincerely,

Alistair Ian Blyth

Labels: etymology

Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013), p. 4:

Most of us have happy memories of watching our mothers in the kitchen, performing feats that sometimes looked very much like sorcery and typically resulted in something tasty to eat. In ancient Greece, the word for "cook," "butcher," and "priest" was the same—mageiros—and the word shares an etymological root with "magic." I would watch, rapt, when my mother conjured her most magical dishes, like the tightly wrapped packages of fried chicken Kiev that, when cut open with a sharp knife, liberated a pool of melted butter and an aromatic gust of herbs. But watching an everyday pan of eggs get scrambled was nearly as riveting a spectacle, as the slimy yellow goop suddenly leapt into the form of savory gold nuggets. Even the most ordinary dish follows a satisfying arc of transformation, magically becoming more than the sum of its ordinary parts.

Does mageiros really share an etymological root with magic?

According to Hans Dohm, Mageiros: Die Rolle des Kochs in der griechisch-römischen Komödie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1964), pp. 72-74, Greek μάγειρος (mágeiros = cook) is related to μάχαιρα (máchaira = knife). Dohm gives credit for this etymology to Vittore Pisani, "Una parola greca di probabile origine macedone: μάγειρος," Revue internationale des études balkaniques 1 (1934) 255-259 (non vidi).

But cf. Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, III (Paris: Klincksieck, 1974), s.v. μάγειρος, p. 656, who concludes, "Pas d'étymologie établie." Chantraine is also agnostic about μάχαιρα (p. 673): "Mais il n'y a pas d'étymologie: le rapprochement avec μάχομαι n'est pas plausible." Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), is unavailable to me (Brill advertises it as "A must-have research tool that should be on every classicist's desk"—it costs only $575).

On the theory of an etymological connection between μάγειρος and μάγος, see Rüdiger Schmitt, "'Méconnaissance' altiranischen Sprachgutes im Griechischen," Glotta 49 (1971) 95-110 (at 107):

Durch nichts begründet ist Hemmerdingers anschließende lapidare Feststellung: „Sur μάγος sont formés des mots qui ont trait à la boucherie ou la cuisine (μαγειρεῖον, etc.).“

The quotation comes from Bertrand Hemmerdinger, "158 noms communs grecs d'origine iranienne, d'Eschyle au grec moderne," Byzantinoslavica 30 (1969) 18-41 (at 19), which I haven't seen. Other than Hemmerdinger, whose theory Schmitt calls unfounded, I'm not aware of any scholar who connects mageiros with magic.

Hat tip: Jim K.

---

Thanks very much to Aurelian Isaïcq for transcriptions of Beekes, s.v. μάγειρος:

The word looks non-IE, because of the alternations ει/ī and (if μάχαιρα belongs here) γ/χ. Is it Pre-Greek, deriving from *mak-ar^y-? Aeol. μάγοιρος, mentioned by LSJ s.v., is only attested in Greg. Cor., which is not a trustworthy source.

and s.v. μάχαιρα:

I compare μάγειρος 'cook', and on account of the interchange γ/χ conclude that it is a Pre-Greek word.

---

On p. 457 of Pollan's book read "Euripides" for "Euripedes".

Labels: etymology

Geoffrey Lewis, "Etymologist's Quicksand," Arabicus Felix: Luminosus Britannicus. Essays in Honour of A.F.L. Beeston on his Eightieth Birthday, ed. Alan Jones (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1991), pp. 236-239 (at 236-237):

But it often happens that 'the same word' in two unrelated languages fortuitously has the same meaning in both. Old Turkish ayıttı, like Latin ait, 'quoth he'. R.A. Fuller uses the term 'look-alikes' for 'forms that resemble each other in sound and meaning but in which the resemblance is totally without linguistic significance. Old Japanese kaF-u 'buy' certainly resembles German kaufen; and Old Japanese Fone means 'bone'' (The Japanese Language, Chicago 1967, p. 61). He goes on, however, to say: 'It is comparatively easy to persuade even the non-specialist that such coincidences between individual forms are sheer accidents'.

Here I must disagree. In the first place, it is sometimes very hard indeed to persuade non-specialists that English jubilee and jubilation are not etymologically related, any more than sorry and sorrow are, or that no etymological connection has yet been shown between English bad and Persian bad (meaning 'bad'). In the second place, Fuller has probably never had to deal with enthusiastic amateurs who have discovered in Turkish the key to Etruscan. 'If you admit that Tarquin is an ancient Etruscan title and that Tarkhan is an ancient Turkish title, why won't you go one step further and concede that they are the same word?' When I hardened my heart and told one such that her list of correspondences was of no use because all the Turkish words she cited were Persian or Arabic borrowings that had been unknown to the Turks before the tenth century AD at the earliest, she replied indignantly, 'How can you be so pedantic when the lives of whole peoples are at stake?' Though very much annoyed, she was quite undeterred, and for many years continued to bombard me with news of the progress of her investigations.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Labels: etymology

Dear Mike,

'Wan-' is a curmudgeon's prefix par excellence, just as 'wane' must be one of the guild's pet verbs. Hardly surprising then in this wanawizzi world that it's all but gone by the board. 'Wannabe' is an open invitation to Heideggerian etymologizing.

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. WAN-, prefix:

a prefix expressing privation or negation (approximately equivalent to UN- prefix¹ or MIS- prefix¹), repr. Old English wan-, wǫn-, corresponding to Old Frisian. wan-, won-, Old Saxon wan- (only in wanskefti misfortune = Old English wansceaft), Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wan- (modern Dutch in many new formations, esp. in the sense 'wrong', 'mis-', as in wanbestuur misgovernment, wanluid discordant sound), Old High German wan-, wana (only in wanwâfan unarmed, wanaheil unhealthy, infirm, wanawizzi lacking wit, insane), Middle High German wan- (only in wanwitze inherited from Old High German), modern German wahn- (in wahnwitz, wahnsinn insanity, commonly apprehended as compounds of wahn n., delusion; also in some dialect words, chiefly adopted from Low German); ON., Swedish, Danish van- (in many old formations, to which modern Swedish and Danish have added many more, chiefly adopted from Low German). The prefix is in origin identical with WANE adj.

In Old English the number of words formed with the prefix is considerable, but none of them has survived into modern English, and only one (wanspéd, ill-success) into Middle English. Of the many new formations that arose in Middle English, only wantoȝen, undisciplined, WANTON adj. and n., still survives in use (with no consciousness of its etymological meaning); wanhope and wantrust may have been suggested by the equivalent Middle Dutch forms. It was in the north that the prefix was most prolific, and it probably continued to be productive far into the modern period. The following words, peculiar to the Scottish and northern dialects, are recorded in the Eng. Dial. Dict., mostly with examples (or references to glossaries etc.) from the 18th c., but few if any of them are now in current use:—wancanny adj., WANCHANCY adj., wancheer grief, sadness, wancouth adj. = uncouth, wandeidy adj., mischievous, WANDOUGHT n. and adj., wanearthly adj., WANEASE n., WANFORTUNE n., wanfortunate, adj. WANHAP n., WANLIESUM adj., wanlit adj., wanluck, wanown't adj. = unowned, wanreck 'mischance, ruin', WANREST n., WANTHRIVEN adj., wanuse misuse, waste, WANWEIRD n., WANWORTH adj. and n.

wannabe, n. and adj.
Pronunciation: /ˈwɒnəbɪ/
Forms: Also wannabee.
Etymology: WAN- prefix + epenthetic a + BE v.
A. n.
         = WAN-A-BE n.; an inadequate individual with a defective sense of his or her identity.

Season's greetings,
Eric Thomson

Labels: etymology, lexicography

Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 49:

The forests were in fact commonly referred to as the locus neminis, or "place of no one" (it is probable that even the Latin word nemus, or woodlands, comes from nemo, meaning "no one").

City and forest were thus rigorously set off from one another. In the forest one was no one—nemo. The res nullius stood over against the res publica in such a way that a sylvan fringe gave the civic space its natural boundaries.

Id., p. 255:

My remarks about the res nullius and the nemus/nemo connection derive from Bechmann (Des arbres, 25-26).

Harrison's source is Roland Bechmann, Des arbres et des hommes: la fôret au Moyen Âge (Paris: Flammarion, 1984), translated by Katharyn Dunham as Trees and Man: The Forest in the Middle Ages (New York: Paragon House, 1990), neither of which I have seen, except for a "snippet view" in Google Books.

It may well be that "The forests were in fact commonly referred to as the locus neminis," but I can find no example of the phrase prior to Bechmann. Also, unless I'm mistaken, there seems to be no etymological connection between nēmō (no one) and nemus (grove): see Alois Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2. Aufl. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910), p. 514, and Ernout-Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1951), pp. 436-437.

Labels: etymology, typographical and other errors

R.A.B. Mynors, commentary on Vergil, Georgics 1.164:

The tribulum was a wooden sledge, the underside of which was thick-set with nails or sharp flints; on this the driver stood or sat as it was towed round the threshing floor (see on 176-86) by his oxen, and it broke up the ears and chaff so the grain could be separated from them....the instrument was widespread over the Mediterranean and Levant, e.g. in Palestine, 2 Kings 12.31, 2 Chronicles 20.3, Isaiah 41.15 ('Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth')....In Latin the idea was so common that the insignificant verb terere tended to be replaced by the more mouth-filling tribulare (as, e.g., edere was by manducare), and the Christian fathers have bequeathed to us 'tribulation' in the metaphorical sense.

Mynors goes on to cite James Hornell, "The Cypriote Threshing Sledge," Man 30 (1930) 135-139, who writes (at 135):

In Cyprus every farmer threshes his own grain, employing for the purpose a very ancient type of implement, known as dukáni (δουκάνι or δουκάναις), which, for want of a better term, may be rendered "threshing sledge." Its special interest lies in the fact that its lower surface is armed with serried rows of chipped flints, which if found apart and the real origin unknown, may be mistaken readily for palaeolithic artifacts. Such an implement furnishes a striking object lesson of what the ingenuity of ancient man, ignorant of metal working, was capable, in adapting a crude and refractory material to a purpose of considerable complexity. Its survival to-day may also be taken as exemplifying the extreme conservatism of the Eastern agriculturist.

This dukáni of the Cypriote is a broad board about six and a half feet long, of which a length of nearly five feet is straight, the remaining portion, about twenty inches at the forward end, being inclined upwards at an angle of from 18 to 20 degrees. The breadth varies in different dukáni from 24 to 27 inches....

Except for a bare margin of eight inches at either end, the straight section of the sledge is studded on the lower side with many rows of sharp-edged flints (athkiatchia), inserted by their bases into long and narrow triangular slots.

On p. 136 Hornell provides the following photograph:



Hornell describes the operation of the dukáni on p. 138:

A chair and sometimes one or more heavy stones are placed upon the upper side of the sledge, midway between the two battens; on the chair the driver takes his seat and with vigorous prods of his goad starts the cattle off, to drag the sledge round and round the threshing floor over thickly strewn loosened sheaves.

For more interesting details, see John C. Whittaker, "Alonia and Dhoukanes: The Ethnoarchaeology of Threshing in Cyprus," Near Eastern Archaeology 63.2 (June 2000) 62-69. According to Whittaker (at 62), "Until the 1950s, the threshing sledge was in common use in Cyprus. Today it has been replaced entirely by tractor-powered threshing machines and combines."

Labels: etymology

H.C. Beeching, To My Totem, motto (from Vergil, Eclogues 1.1) plus lines 1-4:

"Sub tegmine fagi."

Thy name of old was great:
What though sour critics teach
The beech by the Skaian gate
Was not, alas, a beech...

One of the "sour critics" was Anonymous, who wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine 3 (June 1835) 566, footnote:

The φηγὸς of Homer should not be translated the beech-tree, as Cowper and Pope have done. It is an oak, and we doubt whether the beech is to be found at all in the plains of Troy.

See, e.g., Alexander Pope's translation of Iliad 6.237-241 (Pope's lines 296-301):

Meantime the guardian of the Trojan state,
Great Hector, enter'd at the Scaean gate.
Beneath the beech-tree's consecrated shades,
The Trojan matrons and the Trojan maids
Around him flock'd, all press'd with pious care
For husbands, brothers, sons, engag'd in war.

Ἕκτωρ δ᾽ ὡς Σκαιάς τε πύλας καὶ φηγὸν ἵκανεν,
ἀμφ᾽ ἄρα μιν Τρώων ἄλοχοι θέον ἠδὲ θύγατρες
εἰρόμεναι παῖδάς τε κασιγνήτους τε ἔτας τε
καὶ πόσιας· ὃ δ᾽ ἔπειτα θεοῖς εὔχεσθαι ἀνώγει
πάσας ἑξείης· πολλῇσι δὲ κήδε᾽ ἐφῆπτο.

Liddell and Scott define Greek φηγός (transliteration phēgós) as Valonia oak (scientific name Quercus macrolepis). Lewis and Short define the cognate Latin word fagus as beech-tree (scientific name Fagus silvatica).

The mistake of Pope and Cowper can be attributed to dictionaries, e.g. Clavis Homerica (Rotterdam: Leers, 1662) p. 184, which translated Greek φηγός into Latin as fagus, a mistake repeated in other dictionaries into the 19th century.

The same Clavis derived φηγός from φαγεῖν, "quia olim homines fructibus arboreis victitabant," i.e. "because once upon a time men used to feed on mast," an etymology often accepted by modern scholars, e.g. by the aptly-named Edward S. Forester, "Trees and Plants in Homer," Classical Review 50 (July 1936) 97-104 (at 98).

But most reputable etymologists today posit separate Proto-Indo-European roots for φηγός (from bhāgo- = beech tree) and φαγεῖν (from bhag- = divide, share, get a share, i.e. of food, hence eat).

From Proto-Indo-European bhāgo- (beech tree) we get not only English beech, but also book and the buck- in buckwheat.

From Proto-Indo-European bhag- (share, get a share, eat) are derived the English prefix phago-, the suffixes -phage, -phagia, -phagous, -phagy (all via Greek φαγεῖν, e.g. dysphagia = difficulty swallowing), and baksheesh (via Persian).

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who paraphrases Richard Bentley—"It's a pretty tree, Mr. Pope, but you mustn't call it a 'beech'."

Related posts:

• Patulae Recubans Sub Tegmine Fagi
  
• Appointment With a Beech Tree

Labels: etymology

Aldous Huxley, "Canned Fish," in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956; rpt. London: Chatto & Windus, 1975), pp. 128-135 (at 130):

Buried in every language are nodules of petrified poetry, rich and unsuspected veins of fossil wisdom. Consider, for example, the French word travail. It is derived from Late Latin trepalium, the name of a kind of rack used for punishing criminals or persuading reluctant witnesses. Etymologically, work is the equivalent of torture. In English we preserve the word's original sense in relation to obstetrics (a woman 'in travail') and have endowed it with the secondary meaning, not of work, but of wayfaring. Journeys in the Middle Ages were exhausting and dangerous. 'Travel' is trepalium—torment for tourists.

The word 'work' is emotionally neutral; but 'toil' and the now obsolete 'swink' carry unpleasant overtones. It was the same in the languages of classical antiquity. Ponos in Greek and labor in Latin signify both 'work' and 'suffering.' "And Rachel travailed," we read in the Book of Genesis, "and she had hard labour." Two words for work, two words for pain. Moreover, when Modern English 'labor' carries its primary meaning, it generally stands for work of the most disagreeable kind—compulsory work, as in the case of penal 'hard labor,' or the heavy unskilled work which is performed by 'labourers.'

This is the generally accepted etymology of travail and travel. Besides English dictionaries see, e.g., Henry and Renée Kahane, "Byzantium's Impact on the West: The Linguistic Evidence," Illinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 389-415 (at 409):

The name of a fourth-century tool of torture, τριπάσσαλον tripássalon, consisting of Grk. τρι- tri- 'three' and πάσσαλος pássalos 'stake', was borrowed, within the Christian terminology, through translation: Lat. trepalium, a compound of tri- 'three' and palus 'stake', appeared in 582 and became the base of Fr. travail and its numerous cogeners, such as Eng. travail.

But apparently the etymology is disputed by Charles H. Livingston, Skein-Winding Reels: Studies in Word History and Etymology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957) = University of Michigan Publications in Language and Literature, 29, which I haven't seen.

According to Du Cange, trepalium is a hapax legomenon, occurring only in Canon 33 of the Council of Auxerre (non licet presbytero nec diacono ad trepalium, ubi rei torquentur, stare). I don't find τριπάσσαλον in Liddell-Scott-Jones or Bauer-Gingrinch-Danker, and the digital Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is unavailable to me. The Greek word occurs in Passio Andreae 10—see Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, Part II, Vol. I, ed. Max Bonnet (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1898), p. 23.

Labels: etymology

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, s.v. pity:

ME. pite — OF. pité (mod. pitié):— L. pietās, -tāt- PIETY. In later L. pietās acquired the sense of compassion, kindness; OF. pite and piete had both senses, but were subsequently differentiated, and this was reflected in the corr. Eng. forms as now used.

The sense "compassion, kindness" can also be seen in earlier Latin, according to Nisbet and Rudd in their commentary on Horace, Odes 3.21.4 (pia testa):

The adjective here means, not 'devout' (which does not suit a deity), but 'kindly', 'loving', 'caring' (qualities that reciprocate human devotion). For this rare usage cf. Virg. Aen. 2.536 'di, si qua est caelo pietas quae talia curet' with Austin's note, 4.382 with Pease, 5.688 f. (addressed to Jupiter) 'si quid pietas antiqua labores / respicit humanos', Martial II.3.9 'cum pia reddiderint Augustum numina terris', Weinstock 249 (citing Oscan material), RE 20.1.1180, Encicl. virg. 4.95. This is the meaning of pie Jesu, and pietas in this sense has given rise to the English 'pity'.

Labels: etymology

Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology, s.v. slim:

LG., Du. slim, repr. MLG. slim(m), MDu. slim(p) slanting, cross, bad = MHG. slimp (-b) slanting, G. schlimm grievous, awkward, bad:—Gmc. *slimbaz.

I've always been fond of the etymological fallacy, and now I'm glad to learn that (etymologically, at least) there is something bad in being slim. Cf. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.2.192-195:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

I was once slim and dangerous. Throughout high school, I weighed less than a hundred pounds. But now I am "omo de panza," if not "omo de sostanza."

Labels: etymology

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, XVII (Spring), discussing "sand foliage," i.e. "the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad":

No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. Internally whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat, (λείβω, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; λοβός, globus, lobe, globe, also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed,) with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.

Calvert Watkins, "Indo-European Roots," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), pp. 1505-1550, isolates five different roots of the words discussed by Thoreau:

1. gel-¹ (pp. 1515-1516, "To form into a ball, with deriviatives referring to a compact mass or coagulated lump, and to the qualities of viscosity and adhesiveness"): whence globus and globe (with the qualification "perhaps")
   
2. leb-¹ (p. 1525, "Base of loosely related derivatives meaning 'hanging loosely'"): whence labor, lap, lapsus, lobe, λοβός (with the qualification "perhaps" for labor)
   
3. lēi-³ (p. 1526, "To flow"): whence λείβω (cf. libation)
   
4. leup- (p. 1527, "To peel off, break off"): whence leaf
   
5. plab- (p. 1535, "To flap"): whence flap

Labels: etymology

Edith Hall, "Classics, Class, and Cloaca: Harrison's Humane Coprology," Arion 15.2 (April 2007) 111-136 (at 118, with note on p. 134):

...the Indo-European etymological root from which "scatology" derives is ultimately the same as the root of scire, "to know"²⁰...

²⁰Ralph A. Lewin, Merde: Excursions in Scientific, Cultural and Sociohistorical Coprology (London 1999), 5.

In my copy of Lewin's book (New York: Random House, 1999), this is on p. 3 (not 5):

The word "science," meaning knowledge, and the word "shit," from the Old English scitan, both apparently derive from the same ancient Indo-European root, as does the Greek word from which scatology is derived.

Lewin cites no authority or evidence, but he is correct, according to Calvert Watkins, "Indo-European Roots," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), pp. 1505-1550.

Watkins s.v. sker-⁴ (at 1540):

Excrement, dung. Extended root of sek-, "to cut, separate," hence "to void excrement." 1. Lengthened o-grade form *skōr- in Greek skōr (genitive skatos < *sk-ṇt-), dung: SCATO-, SCORIA, SKATOLE. 2. Extended form *skert- in taboo metathesis *sterk- in: a. Latin stercus, dung: STERCORACEOUS; b. variant forms *(s)terg-, *(s)treg- in Germanic *threkka- in Middle High German drëc, dung: DRECK. [Pok. sker-d- 947; 8. (s)ter- 1031.]

Watkins s.v. skei- (at 1539):

To cut, split. Extended root of sek-. 1. Latin scire, to know (< "to separate one thing from another," "discern"): SCIENCE, SCILICET, SCIOLISM, SCIRE FACIAS; ADSCITITIOUS, CONSCIENCE, CONSCIOUS, NESCIENT, NICE, OMNISCIENT, PLEBISCITE, PRESCIENT. 2. Germanic suffixed form *ski-nōn- in: a. Old English scinu, shin, shinbone (< "piece cut off"): SHIN¹; b. Old French eschine, backbone, piece of meat with part of the backbone: CHINE¹. 3. Suffixed zero-grade form skiy-enā in Old Irish scīan, knife: SKEAN. 4. Extended root *skeid- in a. Germanic *skītan, to separate, defecate, in (i) Old English *scītan, to defecate: SHIT (ii) Old Norse *skīta, to defecate: SKATE³; b. suffixed zero-grade form *sk(h)id-yo in Greek skhizein, to split: SCHEDULE, SCHISM, SCHIST, SCHIZO-; c. nasalized zero-grade form: *ski-n-d- in Latin scindere, to split: SCISSION; EXSCIND, PRESCIND, RESCIND. 5. Extended root *skeit- in: a. Germanic *skaith- in (i) Old English scēadan, to separate: SHED¹ (ii) perhaps Old English scēath, sheath (< "split stick"): SHEATH; b. Germanic *skīth- in Old Norse skīdh, log, stick, snowshoe: SKI; c. o-grade form *skoit- in Latin scūtum, shield (< "board"): ÉCU, ESCUDO, ESCUTCHEON, ESQUIRE, SCUDO, SCUTUM, SQUIRE. 6. Extended root *skeip- in Germanic *skif- in a. Old English *scife, pulley (< "piece of wood with grooves"): SHEAVE²; b. Middle Dutch and Middle Low German schīve, a slice: SHIVE¹; c. Old Norse skīfa, to slice, split: SKIVE; d. Middle Low German schever, splinter, akin to the Low German source of Middle English scivre, splinter: SHIVER². [Pok. skei 919.]

To summarize:

• From sek- come sker- and skei-.
  
• From sker- comes Greek skōr, skatos (whence scatology).
  
• From skei- come not only Latin scire (whence science) but also *skeid- (whence Germanic *skītan, whence Old English *scītan, whence shit).

Labels: etymology, noctes scatologicae

W.H. Auden, Lullaby (April 1972), line 31:

Let your last thinks all be thanks.

Auden wasn't just idly playing with words that superficially sound similar. He was aware of the etymological connection between thank and think. See the following, originally written for but eventually omitted from Auden's "The Giving of Thanks" (Mademoiselle Magazine, 1944):

So let's turn to that best of all desert-island books, Murray's New English Dictionary. There we find that, in the teutonic languages, to thank is to think, to think is to thank.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) s.v. thank, n.:

OE. þanc, þo̢nc = OFris. thonk, OS. *thank (MDu. danc, D. dank), OHG., MHG. danc (G. dank), ON. þökk (:-þanku fem.), Sw. tack, Da. tak, Goth. þagks:-OTeut. *þanko^z, f. ablaut stem þenk: þank: þunk: see THINK. The primary sense was therefore thought.

OED, s.v. think, v.²:

Cognate with Old Frisian thanka, thenkia, thenzia, tinsa, etc., past tense thogte, tochte (present stem forms with stem vowel i may perhaps result from merger with a cognate of THINK v.¹; West Frisian tinke), Old Dutch thenken, past tense thāhta (Middle Dutch denken, dinken, Dutch denken), Old Saxon thenkian, past tense thāhta (Middle Low German denken), Old High German thenken, denken, past tense thāhta, dāhta (Middle High German denken, German denken), Old Icelandic þekkja, past tense þekkti, in early use also þátti, Old Swedish þækkia, Old Danish tække, Gothic þagkjan, past tense þāhta < the same Germanic base as THOUGHT n., THANK n., and I-THANK n., probably < the same Indo-European base as Old Latin tongēre to know (only in Ennius, as reported in a quotation in the 8th cent. A.D. writer Paulus Diaconus), Oscan tanginom opinion; a different ablaut grade is shown by THINK v.¹

Labels: etymology