Language Maven gets a strike again

William Safire's On Language column yesterday decided to pay a tiny bit of attention to language. In the midst of a rambling and uninteresting survey of the use of tier regarding presidential candidates he decided to look at the etymology of the word.

Having asked "What’s a tier, anyway, and who arranged its rendezvous with this generation of Americans?" he tries to answer his own question.

Here goes: Tier, from tire, is of Old French origin, the noun meaning “rank, order,” surfacing first in 1569, leading to the verb tirer, “to draw, drag, elongate, pull” (maybe that’s where “to pull rank” comes from).

Then he jumps to its use in ranking those who aspire to political office.

He has obviously referenced the OED for much of this information. Except for that "pull rank" conjecture. Where did that come from? Just because tier might have origins meaning both words? How do we get from tire to pull rank? Other than that, Safire's information is very close to the entry, which reads in part

tier - [Orig. tire, a. F. tire, in OF. (c1210 in Godef.) ‘suite, sequence, range, rank, order’: cf. tire à tire in succession, one after another, f. tirer to draw, elongate.]

And as he has done before the pundit mistakes the OED early entry of 1569 for the date the word surfaced. OED early entries are not to be taken as earliest known usages of a word. It's not just common sense tells us that the words were around before the citations: it's documentation. The OED entries are often just early notable and exemplary usages.

*The noun tire is found in ME meaning a row of fur (1437) or gems ("Ye Ruby suld be ye fyrst in ye secund tir of ye xij stones": Lapidary in Bodleian MS Add. A.106 a1500). And Safire's claim that the noun (which we know surfaced and even made it into print at least 100 years before 1569) led to the verb tirer is hard to understand. The very OED entry that he has mistakenly trusted to provide an earliest date, claims that tire à tire came from the verb tirer.

And the ME verb tiren (f OF tirer) that most closely matches the meaning “to draw, drag, elongate, pull” is usually found in relation to a bird of prey tugging and tearing flesh. A similar verb (of identical form) tiren is a shortened form of atiren from OF atirier meaning to outfit, furnish, equip, prepare or adorn, and has many connections to martial and ceremonial contexts. This second verb seems a likely source of modern tier meaning "A row, rank, range, course" or "A row of guns or gun-ports in a man-of-war or...in a fort." Either ME verb can be found as early as the fourteenth century. They certainly did not come from (or after) the 1569 "surfacing" of the noun.

Of course this much searching would have led Safire to make a connection with attire which certainly would have confused the surety of his findings and forced him to talk about an interesting tho unclear etymology. And Safire seems to enjoy stopping short of good (or any) scholarship, and ignoring it when he finds it.
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*ME dates and citations from the excellent Middle English Dictionary.

Solved: Middle English Manuscript

Regarding the last post Daniel asks "So what can you tell from a handwriting analyst's perspective? Are they angry or lying or maybe a bit egotistical? :)"

I think Chris Blake really needs to put more than a grain of salt into his lesson plans.

Casey suggests/asks "It looks like "wheyder" to me, so I guess that would make it "wither?" I think so too. I should point out the thorn (þ) in the previous snippet that looks identical to a 'y'. This is common in MSS.

Then he asks "But among so many variations for 'whether,' how could 'wheyder'--if 'whether' was intended--be an 'error?' Seems like these crazy middle-English speakers didn't really have orthodox spellings and their necessary opposite: errors." Well I suppose the question is fair. If there are so many spellings how can a new one be considered an error and not a new legitimate variant? Having not yet perused LALME I cannot say for sure, but I would think that there is still a requisite convention to any spelling. (I read MSS on a micro-(stanley)-fiche.) There were so many dialects that those variants are not single occurances but evidence of the motley mosaic that was Middle English. So if enough people spelled it that way--it's not an error. Mediaevalists have always been so Post-Modern. (Post-Modern Man: PoMo Sapiens?)

Update: After looking at the MS carefully with Professor Astell we came up with a supportable transcription of the odd word I had previously mentioned.



I overlooked an obvious character. The fourth from the end is not a 't'--no 't' in the MS rises so high above the line. It's a 'k'. So we have a kyng of some sort. But the line needs a verb so we look at the -yng as the present participle ending and -thyngk- is there as a base. So what type of "thinking"? Vin-? Vui? Viii? Vni? Is it a typo for unthyngkyng? "Thoughtless"?
Or is it an almost impossible to pronounce vm-? Yes. Yes it is. Although I find no other instance of v=u in the text, the transcription would fit a form coming from the Old English ymb/ymbe meaning "around" or "about" or "near". The line is then part of a description of a man thinking about his character and fate.

Middle English Handwriting.

My recent library time has been spent on the second floor of HESSE in front of a big clumsy microfilm projector. I have fun flipping through the notebook and reading the descriptions of the manuscripts. That is if I can find the corresponding text on the scroll. Although I'm looking for a text ca. 1350-1450 my first standard is the handwriting. So I've printed out several excerpts and studied them only to find that they're either much later or indecipherable or too short to meet the requirements of my project. Here are a few interesting items.


mye blode (ra(n)ne) down be mye cheke


thow prowde man þ'fore be meke

I'm not absolutely sure about "ranne". The 'r' and the 'e' look certain. The 'n' looks clear and the 'a' is a probable. I have found the following spelling of 'man' (at least I hope it's 'man') in another line.


This is pretty good evidence for 'ranne'.

Not every puzzle is so easy. I found the following two lines in another MS.

And what he sall be at his ende
And whyderward þ^t he sall wende

I see that the 'y' and the 'þ' are almost identical.

In this same MS I found the following.

And what he is & whe?der sall he

The character in question could be either a 'y' or a 'þ'. If I translate the word as 'whether' both are reasonable as errors. The Middle English Dictionary I use online (click here for Purdue access) provides the following as some possible spellings for the word:
whethere, whethir(e, whethur(e, whethre, whetir, wheder(e, whedir(e, whedur, whedre, whedder, wheddir, wheither(e, wheithir, wheidir, whither, whithur, whider, whidir, whother, whothir, whoder, whather, wher(e, wheer, wherre, whor, whar(e, wer(e, war(e, hweðer(e, hweðre, hwaðer, hwæðer, hwæder, hwere, hwor, wheþþr(e, whær, 3weþer, 3weþur

(errors) wheper, wherther, weðe, queþe, hewðer, fader, spyer, dur, whe3(h)er, whoyþer

So I start thinking it looks like an error. But could I have found a spelling error not yet found by the MED? I doubt it.

If I translate it as "whither" the MED gives me these possible spellings:
whider, whid(e)re, whidir, whidur, whither, whithir, wheder, whedir, whedur, whether, whethir, whethre, whethur, wheoder, whader, whoder(e, whodir, whodur, whother, whuder, wider, widir, widur, widdere, wiþþere, weder, wether(e, wethir(e, woder(e, wuder, qweder, qwedir, quid(d)er, quither, queder, quedire, quedur, quether, quethur, hoder(e, houdere, huider hwider, hwiðer, whudere, hwuder, 3wodere, wheyder, wheyther, whaþer, qwhider, qwheyer, quehdir, qhedder, hweder

(errors) w3ide, fwider, (?error) wherther

And so I find the form. This word 'wither' is closely tied to the "heaven or hell" question which is appropriate to this MS. I think I found my answer. And there's a bonus. 'wheyder' appears to be an uncommon form that may give me just the necessary boost towards finding the regional dialect.

But then I find this.


I figure the first letter is a "v" followed by some minims. There's an "h" and probably a "y". The last few letters look like "ngtyng". The minim before the "h" looks crossed. My guess is it's a "t". So: vinthyngtyng? Vuithyngtyng? But what if it's not a "t"? I have two weeks to figure it out.