[PLUG-TALK] Origin of expressions

John Jason Jordan johnxj at gmx.com
Fri Jul 16 18:36:20 UTC 2021


On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:03:31 -0700
Russell Senior <russell at personaltelco.net> dijo:

>A long time ago, on public radio, there was a brief segment, I think on
>one of the news shows, where John Ciardi would explore the etymology of
>various words and expressions.
>When he'd debunk some made-up etymology for some expression, i.e. one
>that didn't survive a modicum of research, he'd called it "junk
>etymlogy". A classic junk etymology example is esparagus, with the
>cheap made-up origin being some phonetically seemingly-plausible
>"sparrow grass". After you have been exposed to some of these, you are
>immediately suspicious of various too-cute etymologic claims, and you
>start demanding evidence.
>
>Many of his debunkings came by way of the Oxford English Dictionary,
>where researchers report first usages of words and expressions, with
>citations. 

Both the Multnomah County Library and the PSU Millar Library have the
OED online.

There is a specific type of junk etymology that linguists label 'folk
etymology.' Sparrow grass is an example, but there are many of them.
Sometimes they are accompanied with changes to the pronunciation and
even spelling to make the etymology more credible. One of my favorites
is 'chaise lounge,' pronounced 'chase.' It came from a French
expression for a chair with a seat that stretches out in front so your
legs can be at the same height as your seat. In French it was simply a
'chaise longue,' pronounced [ʃɛz lõŋ], translated as simply 'long
chair.' But to English speakers 'longue' looked like 'lounge,' a word
that English already had, and 'chaise' looked like the name of the
person who invented it, which ought to be pronounced like the name
'Chase.' In fact, today it is spelled 'chaise lounge' and pronounced
accordingly. Nobody is aware that it's was originally just French for a
long chair.

And speaking of a chair and its French equivalent 'chaise,' brings me
to point out the concept of rhotacization, unrelated to etymologies, but
still fascinating. Rhotacization is one of the ways that sounds change,
and refers specifically to an s becoming an r. Note that the r in this
case is not the vowel-like r of present day English, but the tap [ɾ],
still used in many European languages, which was the r that was used in
Norman French of 1066. In both Parisian and Norman French the word had a
final -e, which was still pronounced, but in Parisian French the s did
not undergo rhotacization like it did in Norman French, plus the Norman
ch was pronounced [tʃ], as it has not gone all the way to [ʃ] as it had
in Parisian French. So in Paris it was a [ʃɛze], while the Duke of
Normandy, called it a [tʃɛɾe], which the English borrowed as 'chaire,'
later dropping the final -e.

After 1066 English borrowed massively from Norman French, but
only rarely from Parisian French. (The Normans were actually
Scandinavians who had invaded northwest France from about
600-800CE, much as they did in England, hence 'Norman' was originally
'north man.') And sometimes this created fun word histories. For
example, we borrowed 'chief' from Norman French, where it was pronounced
much as we do in present day English. But much later we borrowed the
same word again, only this time the Parisian form, 'chef,' which we
pronounce today much the same as they do in Paris. Any time you find a
French word in English with a 'ch' pronounced [tʃ], you can bet it came
from Norman French, not Parisian or some other variety of French. Of
course, both French words were from Latin caput 'head,' where the
middle p had become pf and then f, the same as happened in German,
giving us English 'pepper' for German 'Pfeffer.'

That's enough for a Friday morning. :)



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