where "words" come from?

[FredLC]

A few days ago, I talked with a friend that happens to work with linguistic studies, and she told me the origin of probably the most eloquent interjection of the English language – F.U.C.K. (I can't really avoid posting that word).

She explained to me that during a certain period in the middle ages, nobles had the power to interfere in the sex life of their subjects, and that it happened that sometimes people had to ask for permission to engage intercourse (imagine that)…

So, F.U.C.K. is nothing but the union of the first letters of each sentence of the given authorization, that was:

F ornication
U nder the
C onsentment of the
K ing

Now, as I found it really curious and I really like that sort of curiosity, I wanted to bring this to you guys, and ask if you happen to know any other words/expressions that have interesting historical origins.

I know it’s not exactly “history in discussion”… but well, I think it’s a great theme nonetheless.

Regards .

 

[polymath]

Amusing but sadly not true, the origin is from words like 'fokken' (Dutch, meaning 'breed' as in livestock) and 'fokka' (Swedish, means what we think it should).
But a word origins thread sounds good to me. Anyone?

 

[FredLC]

Well, I vote for keeping the thread.

However, i'll suggest another job for someone....

Regards .

 

[Sodak]

Polymath is right. Old english "fokken" meant "to pound against." It doesn't require a very creative mind to figure out how that meaning got used for ... ahem... you know.

Old Germanic had the same word, the Dutch just used it for what they had the animals do. "Ik fok schapen" in Dutch is quite innocuous (literally: I f*** sheep), but you'll never hear an Englishman say that. Or at least I hope you never do...

Shakespeare coined literally hundreds of phrases and words. I've seen entire paragraphs written with nothing but phrases of his joined by the occasional older word. He had a truly fascinating mind.

Many grammatical rules in English were invented in an attempt to make it more like Latin. IIRC, this was mostly in the 18th and 19th century. Latin was viewed as the purest or most perfect language, and efforts were made to make english "better." Also, spellings of some words were changed - island was given an S even tho it had never been pronounced, dumb a B, etc - in order to be more latin.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by Sodak
Many grammatical rules in English were invented in an attempt to make it more like Latin. IIRC, this was mostly in the 18th and 19th century. Latin was viewed as the purest or most perfect language, and efforts were made to make english "better." Also, spellings of some words were changed - island was given an S even tho it had never been pronounced, dumb a B, etc - in order to be more latin.

Sodak, I don't know where you get your information, but you couldn't be more wrong.

The 'Latinization' of English came during the Middle Ages, when French was the language of court. There was no concerted effort to make the language "better" by making illogical changes to spelling and whatever.

"Island" has two accepted possible derivations: One - it comes from the Old High German "isila", or two - From Old English "igland" and influenced by Old French "isle". In Middle English it was sometimes spelled "iland". But the "s" was added (or re-added) long before the 18th century.

"Dumb" derives from the Old Saxon "dumb", which comes from Old High German "tump". The modern German language dropped the "p/b" at the end.

You do seem to be correct about "fokken", at least.

 

[Sodak]

I wasn't talking about the latinization of the language, but the imposition of grammatical rules, called prescriptivism. This entailed the creation of rules of grammar that were not based upon how the language was spoken, but rather how the authors thought it ought to be spoken. To quote from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (regarding L. Murray's English Grammar of 1794):

"But most of [Lindley Murray]'s analyses, and the detailed principles of his Appendix, 'Rules and observations for promoting perspicuity in speaking and writing', contain the kind of arbitrary rule and artificial, Latinate analysis which was to fuel two centuries of argument."

Examples:
It is I = right, It is me = wrong (Latin form rule, not english)
[/i]Double negatives cancel each other to make a positive.[/i] According to Greek logic it makes sense, but it was not the norm in english language.

Such books (another was Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar in 1762) were widely used, despite vocal opposition to them by other writers. Jonathan Swift was a vocal proponent of prescribed language. They eventually fell away, but what they taught trickled down to at least as recently as when I had to study grammar. Much of what was being taught was outright contrary to how we spoke - the same problem had by youth 200 years earlier.

My dictionary lists island as coming from middle english iland, which comes from old english iegland. Dutch eiland comes from an equal old germanic root. In either case, the s was added but never pronounced.

Ik hoop maar dat ik mijn nederlandstalig voorbeeld goed heb...

 

[Vrylakas]

There have been many theories about the origin of that word, one being the fokken/ficken one Polymath mentioned and another being that the 19th century London constabulary had a specific acronym, f.u.c.k. (whose meaning I can't recall), that stood for a certain type of prostitution offense.

In Central Europe everyone I know uses a variation of the Latin term curva ("curvey") to denote both whores and the "f" word. Consequently, in nearly every Polish film made in the last few years you here the protagonists constantly spouting "kurwaje..." this and "kurwaje..." that....

 

[Padma]

Ok, Sodak. I understand where you are coming from with prescriptivism. You are indeed correct.

In my own (weak) defense, I must admit my last course in linguistics and etymology was over 25 years ago. That bit apparantly got jogged out of my readily accessible memory.

 

[Sodak]

Okay, linguistics is one of my favorite topics, I hope others will help keep this thread alive...

English legal language first developed in England (of course). By the 12th century, French had already been firmly established in the isles. Because society was essentially bilingual - French was still distinct from English, the meshing that later came was still a new process. Anyway, because of bilingual use, legalese needed to accomodate both languages. Many paired terms that survive today were simply two words with identical meanings. Courts were assured that anybody who came before the bench would understand at least one of the two.
ex.:
breaking and entering
cease and desist
will and testament
-----------------------------------
English spelling baffles many people, including native speakers. The primary reasons for this are twofold:

1) Spellings have remained fairly constant, while the words get pronounced differently as time goes on. Vowel shifts (e.g. ~1600 most english vowels changed) and loss of consonants (e.g. the "k" and "gh" of knight were both spoken in old english, niether by middle english) account for this.

2) Spellings tend to reflect what was spoken around London, as that is where most printing took place. However, many words from other dialects become the general term in English. For example, in "two", the w was pronounced in the south of England. However, "to" came to be the generally used pronunciation.
-----------------------------------
Food for thought... what do those who have learned second languages find most interesting about the new tongues?
...

 

[polymath]

I studied Latin and French for ten years in total. I mostly studied Latin for the literature, the poetry to be precise, and am fairly fluent in French, but only studied it because I had a knack for it.
What I found most satisfying was that they all complement each other, the Latin and French add weight to my understanding of English. So much so, in fact, that I would say it would be impossible to have an expert's understanding of the English language without a good grounding in the other two.

What is most interesting about them?
Latin: What I like most is the brevity of the language. It often takes twice as many words to say the same thing in English as in Latin. This is to do with the language structure, of course, but I still love that concise aspect.

French: I was pleased that it was quite possible to pick up a book in French from the 17th century and read it with practically no problems. Moliere, for example, was an absolute joy. (I believe Fawlty Towers owes a great deal to Moliere.) I am not so sure a Frenchman who knows modern English could do the same with a Shakespeare original text.

I had a go at Greek for a year or so as well, but it didn't grip me so much, maybe it was the new alphabet to learn before you can even get going. Pity.
I'm going to take a stab at German soon, I've got about fifty different methods of learning tapes, CD-ROMs, etc at home, and I ought to use them I suppose. I can order food and beer at the minute, which means at least I won't starve when I'm over there.

I hope this thread keeps going too, nice subject.

 

[Sodak]

Learning German will give you the same sort of insights that French and Latin did, I suspect. I speak only a smattering of German, but am a fluent Dutch speaker. After you get competent at German, re-read Chaucer in the original. You may find an extra appreciation for what he wrote! (an annotated copy may still be a necessity, tho...)

Dutch is appealing to me because it is not (heavily, anyway) overrun with French words. Words are constructed with very intuitive germanic roots. This is just a small difference, really, but one that I think does matter. Even if someone knows the meaning of vessel, the word boat is more meaningful to speakers of germanic language - only because it fits better with the whole construction of the language. Yes, this is vaguary at its best, but I think it has merit. Deciphering verbiage is much easier when the roots are 'intuitive'.

Learning spanish has been rather different (only tourist-speak at this point). My only connection to its roots are the anglicized latin and french words - guesswork of meaning is far less reliable than it would be if I was learning swedish, for instance. Anyway, the new (to me) grammar structure has been fun to learn. I learned french in school, but that seems more of a latinized germanic structure like english, really. Spanish is untainted by the familiar.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by polymath
Latin: What I like most is the brevity of the language. It often takes twice as many words to say the same thing in English as in Latin. This is to do with the language structure, of course, but I still love that concise aspect.

As one who never studied Latin, I find this interesting. I spent two years in Italy a few years ago, and one of the things I found interesting about Italian was how many words it took to say something that was short and simple in English. I would assume Italian is the nearest modern language to Latin. (Yeah, right. Well, it makes a kind of logical sense, anyway.)

Actually, I am sure the problem is the modern world. Things that a Roman would have said in Latin can be said very concisely. But Latin doesn't handle the modern world very well. What's the Latin word for 'jet fighter', for instance? As the modern languages developed, they would rarely invent new words out of whole cloth, but would describe things with explanatory phrases tacked on. This may make the language more cumbersome, but it is no less clear to the speakers of it. To take it to a stereotypical extreme, an aboriginal tribe may have a word for 'airplane' that directly translated means 'great flying bird that carries people in its belly'. Why? Because the language never had a need for a word like 'airplane'.

Of course, many languages also incorporate new words from other languages. The tribe mentioned above may just call an airplane an airplane, because that's what the people who fly in it call it. IIRC, the Swahili word for 'television' is 'televisioni'.

Anyway, I agree that knowing another language (or more) that is related to your own language is a great way to get added insight to how your language works. I used to speak German very well, and I learned a great deal about how English worked thereby. I do wish I had studied French as well, but, ce'st la vie (I think that's right.)

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by Sodak
My dictionary lists island as coming from middle english iland, which comes from old english iegland. Dutch eiland comes from an equal old germanic root. In either case, the s was added but never pronounced.

Ik hoop maar dat ik mijn nederlandstalig voorbeeld goed heb...

Your Dutch example is OK, yet in German it is insel, so where does that come from???

What I like about languages is to go back to the times where languages like English, Dutch, German, Frisian etc. were not yet standardized (these are the Germanic languages that I can understand very well) and, like Old English, not heavily influenced by other tongues. Yet a lot of these words today are very similar.

Compare some:
English one, two, three --- yesterday --- beast --- island --- boat
Dutch een, twee, drie --- gisteren --- beest --- eiland --- boot
German einz, zwei, drei --- gestern --- beist --- insel --- boot
Frisian ien, twa, trije --- juster --- bist --- eilân --- boat

Interesting here is that the basic structure is the same (apart from island), but that sonants form differently as the starting consonant does. This is typical IMHO for the way dialects vary when going from one region to another. The example also shows that English and Frisian have a close relation as Dutch and German have. Dutch is the standardized version of the dialect west of Amsterdam and German is that of the area around Frankfurt (please correct me if I am wrong).

Can our scandinavian fanatics add to some of these examples?

 

[Beam]

Just a follow up to the Old English iegland (for island). The coastal sea to the north of the Netherlands and Germany and to the west of Denmark has quite a number of islands where the name ends with -oog, sounds like ieg! Name for the sea by the way is Waddenzee, Wattensee and all of the coast from origin speaks Frisian.

 

[Hitro]

Originally posted by Beammeuppy
Interesting here is that the basic structure is the same (apart from island), but that sonants form differently as the starting consonant does. This is typical IMHO for the way dialects vary when going from one region to another. The example also shows that English and Frisian have a close relation as Dutch and German have. Dutch is the standardized version of the dialect west of Amsterdam and German is that of the area around Frankfurt (please correct me if I am wrong).

I think the "High German" (the official German) is originally that of the region around Hannover.
Another thing about "island" and so on: The word "eiland" actually exists in German as well. It's just kind of obsolete, but you find it in older books or as a synonym for "insel".

 

[Beam]

Interesting about the insel / eiland thing. Do you know of any Inseln in the German language area that are called eiland by some means?

 

[Hitro]

Not particular ones, but generally if you use eiland today you mean a rather small island, or an unimportant one. For example Cuba wouldn't be called an eiland but an insel. Same with any other island you know by name, except maybe to point out how unimportant it is, in a sarcastic way.

 

[FredLC]

Well, when I started this thread (even if with an erroneous example), i hoped for nothing but to acknowledge new curious origins for words.

I never hoped that I would find so many people with such deep studies on languages. Well, I’m glad it worried that way (although I keep hoping for the curiosities, even with the discussion going the way it is being fine).

I am also a lover of the studies of languages, but I simply don’t have that much background as some of you. Besides my native Portuguese, all I can really say that I KNOW is English, but still I have some problems placing the “H”s in the right place in words like “trough” and “thought” and “throughout”. Is there any rule that can help me doing that?

One of the major problems that I think that we Brazilians have as we study English is that in many words the letters simply appears to have pronunciations that are totally different from how they sound in the alphabet, or different from other words of the same language.

Example: “bookmark”: the “a” have a sound that doesn’t match what it sounds like when alone, and certainly different than in the word “family”.

I got passed that stage, but people beginning have a real hard time with that. In Portuguese, like in French, we have “accents”, or little marks that alter the sound of a letter when it have to be changed, and just one or two examples of unmarked shifts that have very clear and easy rules, specially with the vowels.

Maybe I’m totally wrong, but that varying pronunciation, in English, sounds too random to me, unless there are rules to that that I’m unaware of.

Now, though English is the only other language that I can actually claim that I speak, I do have a little insight of Spanish. Funny thing is that, besides it and Portuguese being very alike, I’m having a harder time learning that than English.

That’s because in English, when I didn’t knew something, I’d pretty much shut my mouth, while in Spanish, being so alike my home language, I have the bad habit of believing that I can finish the sentence, what makes me mix them, a real “Sportunguese” .

Other than that, all I can say is a few words in Latin, due to my work as a lawyer.

So, this time I’ll make use of it in my finishing sentence.

Carpe Diem .

 

[Beam]

Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by fredlc
One of the major problems that I think that we Brazilians have as we study English is that in many words the letters simply appears to have pronunciations that are totally different from how they sound in the alphabet, or different from other words of the same language.

Example: “bookmark”: the “a” have a sound that doesn’t match what it sounds like when alone, and certainly different than in the word “family”.

I got passed that stage, but people beginning have a real hard time with that. In Portuguese, like in French, we have “accents”, or little marks that alter the sound of a letter when it have to be changed, and just one or two examples of unmarked shifts that have very clear and easy rules, specially with the vowels.

Maybe I’m totally wrong, but that varying pronunciation, in English, sounds too random to me, unless there are rules to that that I’m unaware of.

Yes, fredlc, there ARE rules and they are ingrained in us from birth, so I have to really scratch my head and think back to my early grammar school days to remember how to explain them at all.

All our vowels have basically a 'long' form and a 'short' form. Long forms of the vowels are like those found in the words:
cape, scene, site, rote, cute.
Short forms can be heard in the words:
cap, scent, sit, rot, cut.

So here you see one basic rule: if the word ends in vowel:consonant:'e', the 'e' is silent, and the vowel becomes long. Of course, every rule has its exceptions, and this doesn't explain how to pronounce diphthongs, let alone sounds that were diphthongs before the 'Great Vowel Shift' that Sodak refers to above. e.g. prior to about 1600, 'meet' and 'meat' were two distinct, different sounding words. After the great vowel shift, they sound identical - a long 'e' sound.

And of course, there are things like: why does the A in 'father' have the same sound as the O in 'mop'? And the O in 'mother' has the sound of U in 'cup'. And 'fir', 'fur', and 'fer' all sound identical.

We have other weird rules, too. Like 'I before E except after C'. But it has numerous exceptions: 'Neither financier seized either form of weird leisure'.

I agree that accent marks of some kind would be a help, but the language didn't develop that way, and now we're kind of stuck with it. For those of us for whom English is our first language, we grew up with the oddities, so it doesn't seem that strange to us. We learned the rules 'by osmosis', if you will, so correct spelling/pronunciation isn't TOO hard. (Then again, I look at some of the 'creative spelling' used by some posters.... )