No one is born unfranchised

In a recent post John McIntyre writes

I came across a sentence in James McPherson’s Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief that referred to disfranchised African-Americans. To enfranchise is to give someone the franchise, the vote. To deny someone the vote is to disfranchise. The more common term in use is disenfranchise — which would suggest taking the vote away after it had been given. I’m not going to grow red in the face and pound my fist on the desk over this one — it’s not worth it. But it gladdens the heart to see a writer use a word in a precise sense.

Oh that he could move just a little farther away from his lightest of censures. I disagree with this good-natured judgment regarding these forms on several grounds.

I disagree with his judgment of precision. Praising the precise use implicates the use of disenfranchise as less precise. It is of course not so. The precision lies within the nuanced intention of the writer/speaker and the understanding of the reader/listener. A change in meaning dulls not the edge of meaning.

But the morphological premise of his argument is shaky anyway. To franchise is just as much to grant rights as is to enfranchise. So disenfranchise no more means to take away a previously held right than does disfranchise. And if we want to look at the history of the words (which is relevant by the agreed terms of a discussion of language change) disfranchise has meant, and still often means, to deprive of rights held prior.

The prefix en- doesn't give enfranchise any further derived meaning. It's probably from the Old French enfranchiss- and not simply formed from the addition of en- to the English verb franchise. Enfranchise means the same thing as franchise and has historically meant the same thing.

What Mr McIntyre seems to want is a morphology that compositionally derives a sense of deprivation or keeping from. Something that could be accomplished by a prefix like un- which would indicated the state of not having been affected in the way indicated by the verb. Unfranchised and Unenfranchised are both attested by the OED with only a few citations.

The prefix dis- on either word could be considered equally problematic if we read the derived meanings as an undoing of a previous state. The 6th definition given in the OED is having the sense of undoing or reversing the action or effect of the simple verb. In these words the state would be having certain officially recognized rights. And as Mr McIntyre says, this would suggest taking the vote away after it had been given.

But I suggest that those un- forms are not only superfluous, they are incorrect. The dis- prefix is not merely acceptable despite it's compositional meaning, it is in fact more accurate. The sense of reversing is important in the use of the the terms. As I hear and try to use the words, they indicate that certain inalienable and inherent rights and freedoms have been taken away by institutions that don't respect all people equally.

To put it most simply: disfranchisement and disenfranchisement is precisely what happened to the slaves who used to have freedom and rights. These were taken away from them. If we believe the words of our founding documents then we also believe in G-d given rights.

So is Palin Goose or Charlie?

A short piece at dcexaminer.com takes a look at the history and current state of maverick. Usually pieces like this are eager to provide an easy story that sounds reasonable. And they're often much too easy to be true. Those are called folk etymologies.^†

But this story keeps it together and gives a decent history.

In the 1860s, Samuel Maverick was an indifferent herder who refused to brand his cattle. When cowboys would see his unmarked cows wondering the countryside, they'd say, 'Oh that's a Maverick.'

Compare that to the OED entry:

< the name of Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-70), U.S. politician, and the owner of a large herd of cattle in Texas in which the calves were unbranded.

Also relevant to the story of this word: the use of an emerging derivation

It seems the family's biggest confusion is not that McCain links himself to a liberal family (We have some Republicans in the family now admits Mrs. Maverick) but that he hasn't done anything very mavericky.

Mavericky is an adjective that is formed by the derivational adjective suffix -y. It's been making the rounds. SNL used it amusingly in its VP debate sketch

Tina Fey (as Sarah Palin): With Barack Obama you're gonna be payin' higher taxes. But not with me and my fellow maverick. We are not afraid to get mavericky in there and ruffle feathers, and not got to allow that. And also too: the great Ronald Reagan.

---

† We could say a lot about the different types of folk etymology. Two major types: 1) Explicit: a false story about the history of a word. Explanations like the claim that posh is an acronym for Portside Out Starboard Home; or that fuck is an acronym meaning for unlawful carnal knowledge or fornication under carnal knowledge or fornication under command of the king; or that hooker (prostitute) is related in origin to Civil War general Joseph Hooker —all false. 2) Effective: a morphological analysis that mistakenly connects words just because they sound or look similar. These might not be explicitly noted but they often affect pronunciation (as Geoff Nunberg suggests that a folk etymological connection to words like molecular and particular has effected the pronunciation 'nuk-yu-ler') or meaning (as jejune has been connected to the idea of youth probably because of resemblance to juvenile while the true etymology connects it to the sense of emptiness by fasting).

Dormie: considering the links

My favourite golf term: dormie (also dormy).

In match play the score is kept by counting the number of holes each competitor wins. The total number of strokes doesn't matter.

When a player is leading by the same number of holes left in play, that player is dormie, or dormie-X (where X is the number of holes left to play). The trailing player then has to win every remaining hole just to halve the match (you don't tie; you halve). The player who is dormie will win the match by winning or halving any of the remaining holes.

A player who is dormie is in a position to likely win the match outright and is guaranteed at least a half.

Two very different theories on its origin:
The Wikipedia page takes an ambitious stance, connecting it to the plural of dormouse, a little rodent found in Scotland. It further connects the word to golf competition by claiming that the reclusiveness of the little beasts made any sighting on the links a good omen.

The USGA settles on a derivation from dormir meaning 'to sleep' since the leading player can rest easy as it is now impossible to lose. I must admit this is the derivation I always assumed. The connection to being dormant, just waiting emerge, makes intuitive sense.

Funk & Wagnalls 1960 takes it back to dialectal English dorm meaning doze -- and further back to Latin dormire.

Webster's New Twentieth Century 2nd ed simply calls it Scottish in origin.

But it's hard to attest. And few dictionaries have much confidence in any derivation.

The OED doesn't offer an etymology.
The American Heritage Dictionary claims unknown origins.
Webster's New World Third Edition puts only a question mark in the brackets.
Merriam-Webster also throws up its hands.
The Historical Dictionary of Golfing Terms agrees that it's Scottish but offers no further derivation.

John Ayto doesn't offer an entry in his Dictionary of Word Origins but he does wonder if hibernating dormouse gets its name from connection to French dormeuse: sleeper (fem). Similar etymologies of dormouse are possible and they get some nods from dictionaries as a possibilities. Something that muddies the lucky dormouse connection mentioned above as well as the arguments against it.

...so the US team won the Ryder Cup. Is it just me or do chants of USA! USA! really make little sense in sporting events?

Malwebolence -- evil in the tubes

I hadn't heard the word malwebolence before today. But it gets 144,00 Google™ hits. Many of them are recent. It's malevolence on the web.

Rich Hannon in a recent Spectrum blog post uses it in the title of a NYTimes article he read about trolls and the online havoc they wreak.

It's an interesting word. Mal- is of course the prefix indicating general … uh … badness -- be it through evil or neglect. Malevolent malnourished maladroit malign &c The sense of willful evil isn't still there in all these words tho malus was evil in Latin.

Web is the locative infix. No it's not. But I've not used the phrase locative infix yet on this blog and when it comes to a bad joke I believe better wrong than never.

And -olence?

We can't get too technical with coined terms such as these. They don't often follow an etymological orthodoxy. So the -ol- would normally be connected to a -volen- base (a form based on the present participle of Latin velle; desire, will) that we find as the center piece in male-/ bene-/ [volen] \-t \-ce and other related frankenwords.

Hannon suggests another etymology:

Malwebolence is a newly coined word that hacks together mal (bad), web and violence.

I'm not sure where Hannon gets this analysis. The web story doesn't offer the etymology. Tho he says the title is "Malwebolence – The Trolls Among Us" the online page itself only uses "The Trolls Among us" as the title. There is a link to the story under the heading Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling. But the body of the story doesn't even have the word. Is it in the print version? Any readers out there?

Well -- whoever did it -- throwing violence in there is an unnecessary stretch. It's etymologically gratuitous violence. I'll stick with web malevolence as the influence.

But what I like most about the word is the solid phonological link to the original. If all we're doing to malevolence is using -web- instead of -ev- we have a nice ∅ → w / l__ɛ which makes some sense. It's almost vocalization. In a while we'll test the pronunciation to see if the l can sustain an adjacent w without being swallowed up into pure vocalization. And then of course going from v to b requires only a tiny little change from +continuant to -continuant. The sound is still consonantal. It's still voiced. And since English doesn't have a labiodental stop the loss of continuance naturally nudges it over into the bilabial column. And phonologically they're both just [labial] anyway. Gorgeous.

Being a jerk doesn't quite capture it

The other day in our friendly office the topic of decimate came up. I think I must have brought up in the middle of one of my rolling-eye-rants about the LSSU list.

One person in the room had never heard that decimate meant (a long time ago) to destroy one tenth. Everyone else had heard that but didn't care. Everyone agreed that as the word is used now it is understood to mean the destruction of almost all and some had assumed it meant more specifically all but one tenth.

I made the point that almost no one uses it today to mean the destruction of one tenth. And if they did mean it that way who would understand them? (There was an on-and-on-and-ongoing ADS-L thread about evidence that anyone uses it to mean 'destroy one tenth' anymore.)

Well some people clearly do. But only because they want to prove that they know the etymology. But that's being an ass. It's obfuscation in the guise of appearing smart. It's showing that you know enough about an etymology to use an original term but not enough about communication (and people) to realize that others expect that you speak with the intention of being understood. This is similar to insisting on using the word niggardly and holding firm to the meaning of cheap or miserly. Yes it does mean that. But it's clear that it will be misunderstood by many. Many.

So the suggestion arose -- and I like it:

We need a word for the act of using a word in order to prove that you know what it has meant in some contexts -- even tho or more likely because you know that people will misunderstand or take offense.

Any suggestions?

Sorry Quincy. You're not allowed in here.

Languagehat links to a couple posts found over on New York Magazine's Vulture branch. It's all about a squabble brought about by a copy editing topic on HBO's Wire.

Jump to the comments. NNALL (whose comment is an "Editor's Pick") adds some observations and opinions regarding the extent to which some copy editors are driven by their idiosyncrasies. One claim caught my especial attention (influenced certainly by the fact that languagehat also found it worth quoting).

Technically you can't perform an autopsy on a different species, so if a racehorse died mysteriously and some reporter wrote that veterinarians hoped to learn more after an autopsy, it would be changed to 'necropsy' or 'post-mortem examination.'

I'm not sure what "Technically" means in this case. That's often used for an etymological argument. You might have heard a claim like technically, 'jejune' means 'empty' and I'm sure you've heard something like technically 'decimate' means get rid of one tenth. (This last topic has been booming on ADS-L for about a week and a half.)

So what is it that technically keeps a pathologist from performing an autopsy on anything but another human? Is it like saying that homicide can only be murder of a human because the homi- part means man/human? There's nothing in the etymology or autopsy that refers to humans. Or is it the same species part? The comment says the issue is "a different species" so does this mean that if horses were smart enough (and had opposable thumbs) they would be able to perform autopsies on other horses?

There's aut(o)- meaning 'self' and there's -(o)psy related to optic. From that we get the seeing for oneself sense of the word. I don't understand from where this prescription claims its logic. Can't a veterinarian see for herself why a racehorse died? And please don't offer the obvious explanation that prescriptions are rarely based on good logic. Copy editors often have a decent argument for their style preferences. What's the argument here?

Anyone?

_

OK. But what do you mean?

Continued from here here and here.

Fay claims there are also connotative and semantic problems with Read's proposed etymology of OK. The first problem he identifies is that "'OK' has always had some widely understood and accepted special connotations of impropriety to it." He cites two occurrences from the theatrical weekly, Paul Pry that Read uses as evidence: the first, a story about a benefit for the widow and children of Henry J Finn; the second, a story about a "horde of bloods" from Boston who engage in a "hob-a-nob": probably a round of drinking.

Though Fry claims that "Read says the editor apologized the next day for using the expression" it is not clear from Read's article that the expression was the reason for the apology. What Read says is that "in the next issue the editor apologized for the article that had contained O.K." While the expression could possibly be the reason for the apology it doesn't seem likely. The apology appeared the day after the article about the drinking buddies: three weeks after the article about the benefit. Such timing suggests that the apology addressed something other than the OK abbreviation. As Read recaps: the OK was "in a piece that slipped past the editor by mistake." It was the piece, not necessarily the OK that slipped by.

Evidence that OK was considered an undesirable form could help Fay's argument that it was a borrowing from the Choctaw. Fay pulls a quote from "O.K.; a True Tale of the Late Election," a fictional piece in Brother Jonathan (21 November 1840): "Drums beat in the street and shouts of O! K! made the night hideous." Perhaps the line assures him of the etymological connection to Choctaw. Such assurance must come by courageous conjecture.

As further evidence that many viewed the Choctaw language as undesirable and inferior, Fay relies on "Brinton's implication that Choctaw was the language of 'ignorance and immorality' while English was the language of 'godliness and civilization.'" Brinton did in fact make the ethnocentric and bigoted claim of "ignorance and immorality" but he was not saying anything about the language. He was giving misguided praise to the missionary efforts of the Reverend Cyrus Byington. The statement is found in the biographical introduction to an article on Choctaw grammar published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (4 February 1870). It offers little more than circumstantial support for the argument that OK was decried because of an undesirable origin.

The semantic "problem" with Read's etymology: "No one would seriously argue that in any but one or two instances the expression 'OK' has been used to express 'Old Kinderhook.'" It's true that there is only light evidence of the occurrence of "O.K." as a substitute for the words "Old Kinderhook." But Fay shifts his focus claiming that "even 'Oll Korrect' is often not a good semantic fit for the expression 'OK.'" He suggests rather that "the traditional, non-abbreviation 'okay' seems to fit perfectly" in those otherwise awkward uses.

We may presume that he relies on the 'non-abbreviation' because it shakes loose from the need to represent either "oll korrect" or "old Kinderhook." Fay's entire argument predicates the etymology from the Choctaw "okeh" which he glosses as "it is so and not otherwise." (I will address his discussion of the Choctaw connection in another post.) He cites a linguist (Herbert A Badger) who in his 1971 dissertation notes "the occurrence of okeh in Choctaw conversations in much the same syntactic and semantic environments as the American OK."

Abbreviations do not always function syntactically or semantically as their long-forms. Especially when they represent forms that are not nouns. Consider such up-and-coming abbreviations as PO or LOL. These are far from standard. The former takes the past-tense marker after the "O" (I was so PO'd) even tho the long form takes the marker after the first segment (I was so pissed-off) and the latter (when pronounced "ell oh ell") is heavily mocked even in extremely casual speech. And although there are some who use "ell oh ell" in speech (yes--I have heard it) they rarely intend it as a replacement for "laughing out loud". I've never heard anything close to "I elled oh ell when heard the joke!" Abbreviations--especially slang abbreviations--often work within patterns that differ from the rules applied to the long form.

Read addresses the flexibility of casual forms in his "First Stage" paper saying that "slang expressions are notoriously loose, and it should not be expected that either O.K. or all correct would be used in a strict sense." Fay does not share Read's willingness to accept such loose interpretations from an abbreviatory etymology. He finds the "all correct" gloss suspect in the following passages where he feels that long form does not fit as well as "it is so and not otherwise."

1. The net proceeds was upward of $1,200, O.K.


2. [O]ur Bank Directors have not thought it worth their while to call a meeting, even for consultation, on the subject. It is O.K. (all correct) in this quarter.


3. The house was O.K. at the last concert, and did credit to the musical taste of the young ladies and gents.

Holding to the premise of Fay's argument we find the very fault with his "okeh/okay" gloss that he posits on the "O.K." gloss. The first example can take the "it is so..." gloss easily. But examples 2 and 3 work better when the abbreviation is replaced with "all correct". In sentence 3 it is hard to see how a re-affirmative would be intended or even how it would make sense.

Fay then relies on a nebulous argument regarding the impressions made by the differing etymological definitions.

But in almost all of those cases, the essential "feel" of the word is not conveyed by "all correct." To use the terminology of the Choctaw linguist, the "syntactic and semantic environments" do not quite fit. In all of those cases, the tradition "feel" of "okay" is a much better fit.

The better fit is not clear.

Impelling Fay to question and counter Read's conclusions is an article on the Folk etymology of OK that Read wrote in 1964. Fay also introduces another voice, the writings of Woodford Heflin who questions some of Read's earlier conclusions. Further posts will consider several new voices and other arguments, including those specifically those in favor of a Choctaw origin.

When OK became OK

[continued from here and here]

Fay's summary of Read's second paper on the history of O.K. begins with a criticism of the evidence it presents. Fay claims that although the Read repeats the connection to oll korrect he "is able to offer only two examples of clear cut instances of this 'general usage.'" He dismisses the relevance of all examples that were found making reference to a story about Andrew Jackson's legendary poor spelling. Read provides a total of six examples of "oll korrect" spelled-out. Not all include the abbreviation. This is still good evidence connecting O.K. to "oll korrect" as an intended meaning. Especially considering the several examples Read provides in the first paper that convincingly connects "O.K." to "all correct" without the facetious spelling.

Fay misstates a few of Reads arguments claiming that he entirely dismisses the relevance of any occurrence that connects O.K. to Andrew Jackson and he even quotes Read as claiming that any attempt to connect William Harrison to "Oll Korrect is "simply a transference from one false story to another." In fact the transference that Read refers to is the claim that Jack Downing authored the story connecting Jackson to O.K. Downing wrote a letter saying that "Gineral" Harrison used the phrase "Oll Korrect" and was subsequently accredited with attributing the phrase to Jackson. Throughout his treatment of this story Read asserts that the story was most likely false and born of political motivations. Far from entirely dismissing the relevance of the stories Read grants that the stories show a political connection and interest in the meaning of OK.

Countering the attribution does not counter the general usage. Examples tied to a specific story are not proof that it didn't occur generally. Read's First Stage paper gives especially strong evidence of the connection to "all correct" and the motivation of the Jackson digs very reasonably provide a 'spell-out' to make sure the joke makes the point of his failings with letters. Even the examples connecting OK to Jackson remain relevant.

They are particularly relevant to Fay's earlier claims that there was no evidence of "oll korrect" as an intended meaning of OK. Tho Read's first "First Stage" paper doesn't meet Fay's expectations of evidence, such is amply provided in the "Second Stage" paper.

Fay writes:

The evidence he presents in the "Second Stage" paper documents extremely persuasively that "OK" was very widely used during this time as a colloquial expression of affirmation, but it was not employed in general usage as an abbreviation for 'oll korrect' (except in connection with Jackson) any more than it was in dozens of other ways.

This attempt to detract from the connection between oll korrect and OK overlooks the very simple explanation that the meaning would likely widen since the first appearance of the abbreviation. Read relies on C.G. Greene's use in 1839 which stands well as the earliest use complete with gloss. Because Fay feels justified in dismissing the bulk of examples he is able to allow two examples originating in Ohio where he is better poised to connect the phrase to Choctaw influence which would of course be more likely on the "frontier." This of course requires that he defy the argument that all examples are relevant. As all examples are relevant we find several that do originate in New England.

Fay's thesis that OK is an affirmative by influence of a similar Choctaw form then takes arms against Read's antithetical support of the connection to "Old Kinderhook." A Newark NJ paper told the story of a group demonstrators using OK as a rallying cry. Read quotes the Tammany editor who writes in New Era (27 May 1840) explaining the bifurcate significance of OK: he mentions a pin

having upon it the (to the 'Whigs') very frightful letters O.K., significant of the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, old Kinderhook, as also the rallying word of the Democracy of the late election, 'all correct.'

Fay challenges the explanation arguing that the Tammany Society "delighted in using what they perceived as Indian expressions whenever possible." He introduces his argument by explaining: "In 1812 a branch of the Tammany Society was formed at Hamilton, Ohio. They called their meeting place 'Wigwam No 9,' and met to listen to 'long talks.'" He then claims "The New York Tammanies of 1839-40 were not very different, nor were they perceived as very different, from the Ohio Tammanies of 1812." From six months of New Era microfilm archives Fay provides a few accounts as evidence that the Tammany meetings served as little more "than an occasion to delight in Indian speech and practices." Although the number of these accounts is good evidence that there was interest in such activity the details do not preclude other interests or purposes.

Fay further claims that Read's faith in the importance of the New Era pin advertisement is mistaken and misplaced. He writes:

Others have not always share Read's interpretation of the notice. The notice does not materially seem to be particularly about "Old Kinderhook." On the contrary, it is hard to imagine a more explicit argument that in 1840 the expression "OK" was popularly associated with Jackson and the Choctaws at the Battle of New Orleans. At least the writer of the ad saw no need to explain the connection. Both "Old Kinderhook" and "all correct" seem rather to be afterthoughts to exploit the sportive acronym fad.

It makes little sense to discard the relevance of a provided gloss because a contrary unmentioned gloss is more likely to be assumed. It is mere conjecture that the writer intended the connection that Fay claims he "saw not need to explain." Jackson is mentioned in the ad (as "the hero") because he wears the "old white hat with a crape" depicted on the pin. While Van Buren is mentioned by name and is certainly more likely the focus of a campaign pin as the incumbent candidate in the roiling election.

Fay then argues that the ad would not have been and influential instance of the use and that there is little evidence of "Old Kinderhook" in wide circulation, stating that "the one example Read cites of general usage of the name "Old Kinderhook" may have been more tongue-in-cheek than an example of 'general usage.'" But he makes no sound argument that a tongue-in-cheek example is not a reflection of "general usage."

Fay also overlooks one stilt of Read's argument when he challenges the significance of O.K. He grants that it would have been a parallel reference to Van Buren and Richard Mentor Johnson (Old Kentuck). "For the Democrats to suggest that the popular nickname "Old Kentuck" referred to the Democratic Johnson was a gag to take a slap at Clay and the Whigs." This is a point that Read makes. It was appropriated to mock and frustrate the opposing party. Such a motivation does not discount another connection. In fact it makes the point that there was a struggle to cement the term in common usage. This is key to Read's main thesis that this time was an important one in cementing OK in general usage because political currents were greatly motivated to appropriate and claim phrases. Controversy is a reliable force of lexical influence.

Read’s reliance on the Kinderhook connection is to explain what caused OK to enter common and general use. This goal may withstand even an argument that OK stood for other things just as commonly.

And he provides extensive examples that point to a wide and varied awareness of "Kinderhook" as a common nickname. In two pages Read offers sixteen examples of "Kinderhook" used in references to Van Buren including a song containing the line "Then give three cheers for Kinderhook" in the Boston Morning Post (21 May 1840) and an account by the Englishman Edward Waylen who recalled travels towards Kinderhook and the impressive effect on passengers as the town grew nearer. His fellow Englishman Archibald Montgomery Maxwell produced the "curious" account of traveling past "Render Nook, the great centre of Loco-focoism in these parts."

Read concludes his paper confidently, saying

In the trajectory of O.K., "Old Kinderhook" represents a "booster shot" that marks an important stage of its course. Our historical information is now rich enough so that we can plot the trajectory of O.K. as it has rocketed across the American linguistic sky.

Fay does not share the same confidence and turns to another form of challenge. He takes issue with semantic and syntactic evidence. Such will be the focus of the next post on this textured question.

Ok. Let's continue.

In February of 1963 A.W. Read's article "The First Stage in the History of 'O.K.'" was published in American Speech. In this article Read establishes a culture of rampant wordplay and facetious abbreviations and spellings. The primary objective of the article is to show that his article "The Evidence on 'O.K.'" which was published 20 years earlier in The Saturday Review of Literature claimed too late an establishment of O.K. in American use. Read argues that by 1838 the "craze" of misspellings and initialisms had set the stage for O.K. to enter a wide use as an abbreviation for oll korrect. This was 2 years earlier than the 1840 campaigns that his prior article had identified as the first stage of development.

Read identifies several instances of O.K. used as early as 1839. In that year the announcement of a trip by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society got attention from the Boston papers. Charles Gordon Greene wrote about the event using the line that is widely regarded the first instance of this strain of O.K.: complete with gloss.

...he of the [Providence] Journal, and his train-band, would have the 'contribution box,' et ceteras, o.k.--all correct--and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.

Several instances of O.K. followed--Read gives seven instances that provided a gloss and five that didn't. In his article "The Choctaw Expression 'Okeh' and the Americanism 'Okay'" Jim Fay writes that the unglossed instances are evidence that the meaning is clear: "The reader is assumed to be already familiar with the term and its meaning." Several of these instances are in response to each other and 4 of the first 5 uses are given a gloss. It makes sense that the meaning of the phrase in a responsive succession would foment a fast familiarity.

Fay also advises that even with the gloss in a few cases "'all correct' does not seem to be a particularly good fit semantically or syntactically. In all instances the term is used in an informal, uncultured context." It's difficult to know what Fay means by "uncultured" but his reticence to grant felicitous use has been addressed by Read who provides good evidence of the "loose" and facile use of slang terms. Even addressing concerns (raised by W.A. Heflin in his article "'O.K.' and Its Incorrect Etymology") regarding the exact term "all correct" with the following example from a headline:

PENNSYLVANIA ALL CORRECT
The returns of members to the State Legislature exhibit a great democratic gain, and what is of the utmost importance, the REDEMPTION OF THE SENATE FROM THE CONTROL OF FEDERALISM.

It's not clear what Fay intends by claiming that "In none of the dozen quotes offered by Read is the expression used as an abbreviation for anything." In several of the quotes the gloss indicates that it is most certainly an abbreviation for "all correct."

Fay questions the validity of the conclusion of Read's article calling it "startling." To Read's summation:

...in the spring of 1839, O.K. became current as standing for 'oll korrect,' in a slang application of all correct, and from there it became widespread over the country. Thus the emergence of O.K. is well accounted for.

Fay responds: "except for one instance in which he speaks about the use of humor in 'the emergence of "oll korrect,"' that term does not appear any place in the paper until this summary." In fact the term does appear 2 pages before this conclusion when Read establishes the trend of humorous misspellings. Identifying such a trend is vital to Read's argument because the glosses "all correct" would not otherwise make sense as the full form of O.K. Read provides such examples as "O.W." (glossed "all right" presumably for oll wright) as analogous explanation. It is not a startling jump to recognize that the gloss does not need to reflect the jocular spelling.

Fay argues it is a liability to Read's argument that not a single instance of "oll korrect" is in evidence. This is certainly a huge lapse in the evidence. Even with other humorous spellings in evidence such as the gloss "pocket the kash" for "P.K." and "morning kall" for "M.K." Tho the humorous passages that contain "O.K." do not provide the same reflective humorous spelling in the gloss it is not clear that all writers were given to the convention.

Fay implicates the absence of a humorous gloss saying: "This includes instances in which the writer spells 'Boston' as 'Bosting' or uses N.S.M.J. for ''nough said 'moung[sic] gentlemen' or uses the phrase 'Vell, vot ov it!' but still glosses 'O.K.' as 'all correct.'" However the examples may be accounted for by noting that writers use these re-spellings to reflect an altered pronunciation and in one case the elision of letters in necessary to explain the initialism. It would make little sense to provide "enough said among gentlemen" as a gloss for N.S.M.J.

Still the case is far from proved. We may understand why stark evidence of a connection to 'oll korrect' is not found, but even a most reasonable explanation of the omission does not allay our desire for evidence. At some point we may have to admit that none of the competing etymologies are infallible. At this point we can say that Read has clearly demonstrated that the regular use of O.K. with the gloss "all correct" took root during a time when many phrases were abbreviated with letters that represented a "sportive" spelling.

In this essay Read does not make the case for the connection to Old Kinderhook and he has not shown the infiltration of the phrase into widespread everyday use in conversation. He notes this next step in a final footnote.

The relation of this first stage to the political development of 1840, when O.K. burst into overwhelming national currency, will be dealt with in another study, "The Second Stage in the History of 'O.K.,'" to appear in the May issue of American Speech.

A forthcoming post will focus on Fay's discussion of the "Second Stage" article.

Let's get started. OK?

The arguments should start slowly and continue at a deliberate pace because they can get boring quick. In a recent post I mentioned the ongoing deliberation between two sources of OK. I stated that one group claims the initialism originated from Martin Van Buren's birthplace of Old Kinderhook and that another group claims it started from oll korrect. That's not the most accurate abbreviation of the debate.

OK has is a long-contested etymology and it is familiar reading for most serious students of lexicography and etymology. And it is an interesting one. So I shall polish and clarify my statement regarding the Old Kinderhook -vs- oll korrect camps. Both phrases are widely regarded as co-contributors to the widespread use of OK. By many of the same people. The current meaning of approval is attributed to early association with oll korrect: a humorous misspelling of all correct. The same arguers who grant that much typically grant that the phrase was then cemented into common usage by the publicly repeated often reported campaign cries of Van Buren's supporters. This view is largely built on the findings of Allen Walker Read which he shared in a series of articles for American Speech in the early 1960s.

Justin makes the following comment in a response to my previous post:

At any rate, I've found Read's etymology questionable in its construction and especially in his approach to arguing it. Others have as well. It is curious that Read disregarded any Native origin of the word, and then ascribes its creation whole cloth to a group whose main unifying feature was mimicry of things they thought were 'Indian'.

He then provides the URI of a piece that also questions Read's conclusions and methods. The essay "The Choctaw Expression 'Okeh' and the Americanism 'Okay'" was written by Jim Fay in 2002 and a revision posted in 2007 less than one month ago.

I will distribute my discussion of this piece and its argument over several posts. I will not consider Fays claims in the strict order in which he presents them. Instead the order will follow the publication dates of Read's articles.

Although in 1941 Read had published "The Evidence on 'O.K'" in the Saturday Review of Literature, his series in American Speech began with "The First Stage in the History of 'O.K.'" in 1963. I will commence by evaluating Fay's criticisms of this latter essay which he lays out in his section "Read's 'First Stage' Paper."

But I promised to move slowly. So I shall let this introduction stand. Fay's essay is not a short piece but it's worth either perusing¹ (if you're in a hurry) or perusing² (if you have more time).

OK is just okay

A few days ago Buffy tried to convince me that writing out 'okay' is preferable to using the capitalized letters OK. Not more correct. Not preferred by style guides. Just better. She even enlisted the support of her professor Chris Blake who dedicated a chapter in his most recent book to the issue.

In his short chapter "KO @ the Okay Corral" Blake offers the following argument:

We should change our current aberrant house style whereby we capitalize the word okay. Okay does not deserve to be uppercased. OK stands out and up, heralded on a page of print, yet it is the epitome of mediocrity. All lower-class words such as okay deserve lower-case status.

The chapter is full of enough corny jokes and cutesy orthographic games to deflect any serious contention. It's a satirical transcript of a meeting about publishing and style issues. He's having fun here so the occasional blasts of prescriptivism work best with a nudge-nudge tone. I'll look beyond his warning "--- it all, let's / these flaws before we cave in completely." By using "---" for "dash" and "/" for "slash" (I think that's what he intends) this line says DON'T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY. And Blake does like to advise that quite often. He's dedicated to self-deprecation. How else could he dare to suggest (as he does in the chapter) that relaxed orthography is "Barbarism!" crying out that "These are the last gasps of civilization."

Now--Consider how you knew that one of the lines in that last paragraph implies a loud voice. Not the exclamation mark. The all caps. As Blake himself suggests--capital letters get attention and demand power.

And that is the core of Buffy's preference for okay and her dislike for OK. OK looks too eager. It yells. It's not understated or humble as the word should be. OK is only okay. It's not great or fabulous or amazing so it deserves no all-caps spelling. She has always thought so.

But it's an initialism isn't it? And we overlook the 'all-caps=loud' convention in most other initialisms. I've noticed several other initialisms in blogposts and email messages lately that are almost always written with all caps. I've mentioned them before. Putting them in all caps is a good way of calling enough attention to them and perhaps even assuring the reader that there is no typo. "This is really what I intended. Now figure it out."

But some take more effort than others. And some take very little effort at all. When I was a child I would ask my mother if it was OK for me to turn on the TV. And FWIW IIRC she usually told me WRT the TV to leave it off. OTOH she sometimes said it would be fine. IOW OK.

AFAIK none of you readers had to scream out those initialisms. But OK is so common it doesn't need the signal to attention. We know what it means immediately. And we have okay as an alternative. We have emcee for MC and deejay for DJ. They're all fine.

When Buffy told me how brash and aggressive OK looks to her I suggested a new way of reading a few phrases.

• House MD! is on tonight.


• The UN! is in NY!


• I was born near Washington DC!


• Do you use a MAC! or a PC!? (I know I know. It's Mac and it's not an initialism.)


• I graduated from the U! of M!

----------------
Etymology Epilogue
In the chapter Blake has one character explaining that some people trace OK back to oll korrect. The character named "Chris Blake" counters this etymology and claims that it's more likely an abbreviation of "Old Kinderhook" the birthplace of Martin Van Buren because the US(!) president liked to sign off his notes with O.K.

The OED gives more credence to the Oll Korrect origin, relying on the "detailed evidence provided by A. W. Read" in American Speech. In its list of citations an 1839 source provides the gloss "all correct" alongside an uncapitalised o.k.. Old Kinderhook is only listed under O.K. as it refers to Van Buren his campaign or his supporters.

The source for all correct (C.G. Greene--Boston Morning Post) is also listed in Webster's New World 3rd edition as the earliest known use. John Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins agrees with the oll (or orl) korrect origin claiming reinforcement from the Van Buren campaign cry.

WNW also suggests the possibility of an alteration of Scottish och aye 'oh yes'. This is harder to connect because of no clear trail like the 1839-40 explosion in the US.

Funk&Wagnalls (1960) and Webster's New Twentieth Century (1979) both recognize "Old Kinderhook" as the likely origin. Because of the available evidence and the clearer semantic connection I'm siding with Ayto WNW and OED. In any case there's no reason to think it's more likely to have originated with Van Buren. It makes more sense that Van Buren supporters fell upon an initialism identical to theirs that was tied to a sense of approval so they appropriated that connotation for their own use of O.K.

That'll learn ya

Buffy just finished reading a book that her former professor and now friend Chris Blake wrote. Along with the occasional bursts of laughter (because he's quite funny) and the frequent pauses to discuss and investigate his claims (because he's quite provocative) she also pointed out a few mistakes (because he's quite human). There were very few -- such editing oversights as giving a character two different names and giving a quote two different speakers.

Buffy is a close reader. I flinch every time she looks at my writing. She follows arguments well and she catches all inconsistencies. And she remembers from several years ago Blake enlightening his students by informing them that nauseous (causing nausea) is commonly misused when the speaker means nauseated (feeling nausea); and that comprised of is misused when the speaker means composed of.

So there on page 82 of his book Buffy found that her mentor wrote

and the human sanctuaries that comprise the church are free to wonder and probe without fear

A stumble she figured. Surely he remembers his old rule. Then on page 92:

It was a test comprised of one hundred problems

Blake is a fine writer and editor. He uses words knowingly and he expresses himself clearly. And I'm not going to say anything critical about his use of the word comprise in these sentences. When Buffy shook her head on reading them I asked her to temper her distaste. There were certainly other instances of Blake's writing that deserved a some teasing.¹

I will however take issue with his lesson to the students. Perhaps he will temper the very advice he has shown he doesn't always heed.

Here's the usual argument regarding this word: To comprise means to bring together or collect. So a house comprises thousands of bricks. A mall comprises many smaller stores. And a university comprises several schools/colleges. Ergo! (those pedants like to say as much as they can in Latin) it is incorrect to say that a burrito is comprised of lettuce tomatoes beans cheese etc. It is incorrect to say that 88 keys comprise a full piano keyboard. And it is doubly incorrect to say that this nation is comprised of 48 states.

Before I address the fluidity of language I should note that the etymology of the word does go back to a meaning of collecting and gathering. And if we look carefully we find that the word merges with comprehend. According to the OED the -prise ending was probably formed by analogy with several other English words such as enterprise -- the verb derived from the formally identical noun.

To put it simply: nouns that ended in -prendre showed a pattern of becoming verbs ending in -prise. Some verbs ending in -prendre followed suit.

Now some will wail and moan and argue still that comprised of meaning made up of is a recent misunderstanding and misappropriation of the word. That it's a flat mistake: the wrong meaning. This argument will often go to such horrific worst case scenarios as "what if up starts to mean down?" They argue that words so arbitrarily linked to meanings will eventually become meaningless.

Point 1) The very fact that they know a word is being used incorrectly means that the intended meaning is clear. If I say "Two cups comprise a pint" or "I listened to a choir comprised of 32 singers" the meaning of the word is clear. Not arbitrary. We are allowed to use context.

Second point) It's not a recent trend. The OED entry includes the meaning "To constitute, make up, compose" and provides citations as early as 1794. Nine citations are included for this meaning: more quotations than are given for any other use. The passive use meaning "To be composed of, to consist of" gets four citations of its own. The earliest included is from 1874.

Meanings change. And it's mere convention that determines which meanings connect to which forms. This is not to say that those conventions don't serve a purpose. My point is simply that when the currents of language create the occasional polysemy and the occasional complete shift it is not a deterioration. It is merely evidence that language is of the people for the people and yes by the people.

And scoff as you might I'll bet you are okay with this (I now address the skeptics). Let's take a look at the history of apprise. The -prise ending is also derived (by analogy) from a form ending in -prendre. That early form of the word (from the French) had the meaning to grasp or understand. We still have that meaning preserved in the familiar form apprehend. And apprise once had the same meaning. But it went through a very reasonable shift and came to mean inform teach or enlighten.

Where's all the complaining about that shift in meaning?

-----------------------

Take a look at his Union College profile page (link above) and note his use of aerobie as a mass noun. It's like he thinks it's a real sport or something. (This may be related to the aggrandizing effect of mass nouns that I've mentioned before.) Now I agree that "throwing aerobies" sounds like a juggling act. Couldn't he just say "throwing around the ol' aerobie"? Yeah. That sounds more like fun and less like a sanctioned and organized activity.

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.
------------------------
*ME dates and citations from the excellent Middle English Dictionary.

What's in dossier's dossier?

Nancy Friedman (at Away With Words) has posted some observations about Perrier's new campaign that plays with the water's familiar logo. Comparing the ads to an older (for Napier jewelry) ad she notes that while the jewelry slogan "Napier is Snakier" was a clue to pronunciation (they obviously rhyme right?) the Perrier ads probably don't intend the same. She writes (regarding the word 'manlier' incorporated into the logo): "I'm not certain Perrier actually wants us to say man-lee-AY, but maybe we can start something."

This reminded me of the recent Gallicism topic (scroll down or click here). For the record: If people start pronouncing common words like easier, funnier hungrier manlier angrier etc with the "-eeAY" ending I'll definitely agree with Mr Urdangs "pretentious crap" claim. "Oh...this brie is a little cheesi-ay than I like. I don't usually try foreign foods but I'm feeling a little risky-ay than usual."

So I started thinking about the -ier ending on words that are likely to be pronounced in English with the Gallic "ee-ay" ending. I came up with a list of several words and started comparing all listed pronunciations in all my dictionaries. Of course the etymology of the words is relevant so I started paying attention to those too. And I found a fun little disagreement. As etymologies will often reveal. The word in question: dossier

Sources consulted: OED, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Webster's New World, Webster's New Twentieth Century, Funk & Wagnalls, John Ayto's Dictionary of Word Origins, Online Etymology Dictionary

All sources agree that the word is French in origin, meaning a bundle or collection of papers, and those who push it further agree that the root goes back to dos: back < Latin dorsum.

The connection to back as identified by MW AHD WNW and Ayto is that the bundle of papers was labeled on the back (probably spine?).

The OED says of the bundles: "from their bulging [they] are likened to a back."

A nice online site, the Online Etymology Dictionary, is the only source I found that claims both possibilities, saying that the connection is "supposedly" to the label on the back, but "possibly" from the resemblance to a curved back.

Will we find conclusive answer to this?

How many gigawatts would it take...

Daniel often plays around with words over at his non-etymologically-dedicated web log. Choosing to fashion a word for one occasion he writes

I think I collected Praveen because that seems like an anatopism (anachronism for a place?) for Bow, New Hampshire.

So of course I piped in with a chiding tone and offered the following jab.

anachorism already works for that.

Daniel always responds well to any discussion of words and can always contribute as much as he is willing to learn. He writes

Even though there are twice as many occurrences of anachorism as there are anatopism (4,400 to 2,200), I'm gonna stick with anatopism for a couple reasons. First, I "created" (though it previously existed) it for myself, and second, the Shorter OED has anatopism and not anachorism. And while it isn't worth anything Wikipedia has an entry for anatopism too. What does "chor" mean in Greek?

I don't really like the close spelling of anachorism and anachronism either, and it seems like anachorism has more connotation of error or mistake, while I'm looking for "out of place." Thank you for providing some options though, I do appreciate it.

I will not argue against his decision to stick with it.

Some observations:
A) Anachorism and anatopism were both probably coined specifically to serve as companions to anachronism. To deem the former suspect because of its similarity is a valid aesthetic stance.

2) The use of ana- as a prefix for the "out of time" word is a stretch as the prefix means back or backwards. It is perhaps appropriate in anachronism which etymologically means something closer to "too early a time" than "in the wrong time." Etymologically anachorism and anatopism don't make much sense. Does "behind or after the place" really capture the intention?

For the sense of "outside the correct time (or place)" the para- prefix works well. In fact parachronism is listed by the OED with a citation about 5 years earlier than anachronism. But an even earlier citation than that (by almost 25 years) is given for metachronism in 1617. The meta- prefix is slippery and can mean with or above or beyond or behind or between or resulting from or occurring after or it can denote a process of change. So at least one of those can work well for the typical meaning of anachronism. I like para- because with its own varied uses it retains the idea of beyond. Even when used to mean with it has a strong connotation of separateness.

Next) To answer Daniel's question: χωρίον can be read as country or place. It would be fun to make a well navigated journey between anachorism and anchor. The connection between a word about being out of place and a word about being in only one place could support quite the fun little etymoscopy. A quick and unexamined glance shows me that it's not as simple as this post could handle; though for a second I thought it might be.

4th) The Shorter OED is an excellent desk reference that goes deeply into its hoard. In exchange for this depth the tome sacrifices breadth. The ambition of the full OED cannot be well met on a desktop. Of course we can trust that the editorial decisions account for something of course; but shall I start trying to use "bootylicious" just because it's listed?

Faux Etymologies

Every once in a while I question the ambition of my posts. Usually right after I hit the "publish" button. One of my interests is etymology and several of my posts have done little more than report on the Middle English, French, Old English, Old French, Latin, Greek, or Indo-European roots of our words today. This requires little more than a trip to the OED to plot the history of the word in English, then a trip to Webster's New World and American Heritage to trace it back to IE then identify a few cognates. There's little analysis going on when I decide to do one of these quick reports.

In just the last day or two etymology has ridden a swell of attention on my own posts and in linguistic conversations elsewhere. Just scroll down (or click here or here) to read my posts on conceive and human. Earlier today on the ADS-LISTSERV Laurence Horn suggested that William Safire needs to open the OED before he guesses about etymology:

Tell it to Safire, who noted toward the end of yesterday's "On
Language" column:

==========
And when anticipating the surge of the politically hot word surge, I
wrote that it came from the Latin surgere, ''to rise,'' which is
correct, but speculated that it may also be the root of surgeon. Not
so; Cynthia Wolfe and a bunch of cheery folks waving scalpels pointed
out that the word comes from the Latin chirurgia, based on the Greek
kheir, ''hand.'' An antiquities dictionary defines the Greek word as
that ''which cures diseases by means of the hand,'' distinguishing
surgeons from physicians, who treat with medicines.
===========

There is to be sure a place for etymological speculation in columns
on language--linking "Cry Uncle" to the punchline of a late 19th
century joke, as in Michael Quinion's recent column, or deriving "the
whole nine yards" from Montagnard references during the Vietnam War
may qualify--but publishing an incorrect etymology that could be
easily be quashed by cracking *any* dictionary (with etymological
info) somehow doesn't strike me as mere "speculation"...

LH

On Languagehat is a discussion of the origin of dodo.

On Language Log Barack Obama's first name gets some attention.

I'm not sure there's any real danger in not knowing the true history of a word. But it is amusing and then a little frustrating when hokum hinders honest inquiry.

Disoriented West

A quick observation. Tonight on C-SPAN I watched the broadcast of the State of Black America presented by Tavis Smiley. On the panel were several speakers who shared their visions and concerns for American race issues openly and passionately.

Cornel West spoke ambitiously. And he made a powerful etymological claim. According to West the word human comes from the Latin humando which means 'burying.' Yes humando means 'burying' in Latin. No, human does not come from humando.

I did a little searching to see if this is a favourite claim of West's. It appears he does like to use this claim when he speaks. He made the claim at Stanford in 2004. And at the Commonwealth Club of California a few days later, where he says "our English word human derives from the Latin humando which Vico reminds us in the twelfth paragraph of The New Science is defined as burying...burying...."

He didn't develop the device recently. On the website for Loma Linda University (my sister's alma mater) I found a transcript from 1997 when West addressed the Black Alumni of Loma Linda and La Sierra Universities (BALL). He has apparently simplified his claim in the last few years. Back then he said

Let us always remember the word, "human," comes from the Latin Humanicus, derived from Humando which means "to bury." To be human is to bury your dead, to bury your loved ones, to put those beloved corpses in the grave, and somehow connect yourself to them. To never forget.

Human comes from the Latin adjective humanus. Humanicus* means "affairs of humans" or "events of life." Neither "came from" humando, though they are related to the verb by a shared Indo-European root *(dh)ghom- or *dhghem- meaning "earth." I'm sure I'm not the only one to call him on this etymology. It may be an honest mistake. But it's probably based on the common mistake of overeager etymologists to overlook the important difference between a direct historical derivation and a more complex etymological relation.

[Update: It's amazing what an active link will do to bring you back to a forgotten post. And how helpful comments are in highlighting mistakes and needed clarifications. *I can't defend humanicus. It should be humani, plural of humanum.

When I say that human and humanicus [sic] are related to "the verb" I mean an actual verb that meant bury: humo, humare, humavi, humatum -- not humando: a word I don't know. Thank you for pointing this out.]

Immaterial conceptions

A curious friend has been hounding me for an answer about semantic development and dating. Regarding the verb conceive he's been wondering about the original meaning. Specifically, which meaning came first: "become pregnant" or "get and idea." We see Shakespeare using the word as a pun in The Taming of the Shrew --

Widow: Thus I conceive by him.
Petruchio: Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?
(V.ii)

And in Hamlet --
Hamlet: ...Have you a daughter?
Polonious: I have, my lord.
Ham.: Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to't.¹
(II.ii)

And elsewhere. Many of Shakespeare's uses of the word don't lend themselves so easily to a pun. He leans heavily towards the verb meaning to understand, perceive or consider.

The office desktop Webster's doesn't provide much help, telling us only that it came from Old French then giving the OF form without a gloss. One rule of thumb for dictionary etymologies might be that when the etymon is provided without definition the meaning is the same as the last one mentioned. The word has been borrowed as is.

But his Webster's doesn't give root words and morphemes thorough attention. So we can go to the OED for that. Surely there we will find out what the early roots meant and what the word first meant: we'll get a look at the entire dossier of to conceive.

According to the OED the Latin word was concipĕre, comprising con- altogether and capĕre to take.

We also find that "Nearly all the senses found in Fr. and Eng. were already developed in L., where the primary notion was app. ‘to take effectively, take to oneself, take in and hold’."

This isn't either of the definitions in question. We have here a more concrete meaning from which two other narrowings developed in French and English as well as in the original Latin. So which meaning branched first?

Of the two meanings (become pregnant and understand) the OED cites Cursor Mundi a pre-1300 northern text that refers to Mary's conception, through the holy spirit, of "þat blisful child." This transitive form is accompanied by an intransitive form in the same text which asks "Womman þat neuer neghed man, Conceiue hu sal sco?" ("A woman that never knew man: how shall she conceive?")

The OED cites John Gower's Confessio amantis in 1393 possibly using the word as a "conscious reference" to a passive sense (to be conceived) and the intransitive mentioned above.

This same text is cited as using a sense as we currently use "catch" in the phrase "catch a cold," without the necessary connotation of illness. The citations demonstrate this usage with such conceptions as sickness (Gower 1393) and putrefaction (Bonet 1684), but in one example a plant blooms after conceiving water (Golding 1587), and flax and tinder are described as being "apt to conceiue fire" (Hakewill 1621).

That's just the first branch of the word. Branch II "To take into, or form in, the mind" gives Richard Rolle of Hampole's Psalter vii, pre-1340 as its earliest citation: "He hais consayued sorow."

"To form and entertain (an opinion)" is an obselete usage first cited in John Wyclif's Selected Works c1380: "We wolen seie opinli þe sentence þat we conseyven." And its contemporary meaning "To form (a purpose, design, etc.) in the mind; to plan devise, formulate in idea" is cited as well, even as early as 1340.

Other very closely related uses are cited from c1340 in Hampole and c1330 in Robert Manning of Brunne's Chronicle.

To speak more of the origins before or outside English, the third branch is identified by the OED as being variegated and "mostly after Latin." Having previously seen that Latin saw pretty much all the meanings that we find in French and English, this looks like our catch-all category. Many of these uses are cited with later sources. We didn't expect to find the influence of Latin ending without a fight did we?

Many of these forms are very similar to those we've already considered. There are some specific uses such as the executing a legal action, formulating or uttering a prayer or other speech, or taking an oath.

Another very early citation is of King Alisaunder c1300. "How hent the gentil knyghtis, How they conceyved heom in fyghtis." This is a reflexive verb meaning "to comport oneself."

The answer to your question Casey? Though we're dealing with citations and approximate dates (note all those c's and a's before dates) I like the clarity offered by the Latin etymon. A verb meaning "to take together" might prudently be considered the general verb that eventually narrowed. Because English conceive reflects the semantic spectrum of concipĕre in Latin we should not be surprised to see no clear precedence of one meaning over the other in English. Whether an idea or a fact or some water or fire or a zygote was "taken in" first doesn't look to be a salient detail of the word's English time line.

I'm sure somewhere the bifurcation in Latin might be more clearly placed temporally. But not in the OED.

The OED does not give much attention to IE roots. For those I like to consult Webster's New World. Following the word back to the IE root we find the base *kap- meaning "to grasp." Following this forward then leads us to the Latin capĕre which Webster's claims had the primary sense "to hold, have in hand."

The hand is about equidistant from the belly and the mind.

---------------
_{1. The line in F1 reads "but not as your daughter..." This changes the pun slightly. It directs the meaning more clearly towards become pregnant. I like the editions excluding "not" and focusing on Hamlet mocking Polonious' desire to keep Ophelia innocent/naive. Because the old man has previously warned Ophelia about tendering him a fool the semantic ambivalence is nicely preserved.}

No Ap-ologies Necessary.

Well I can't remember exactly what the wording (or the clue) was, but in a category called "World Museums" Alex Trebek read aloud something that indicated the answer would be some type of -ology. I believe a patchwork or mötley form of the clüe was

(something-or-other was offered to this-or-that museum on the condition that they agree to keep on staff an expert in) "this -ology."

No contestant supplied the right response and Alex, true to the rhythm indicated in the clue, provided the answer with a pause after the type and before the -ology. I.e. the answer was anthropology, but he pronounced it with an obvious pause after "anthro-" then he proceeded to finish with "-pology."

So what type of "-ology"? According to Alex's pause, the "anthro-" type.

There's something missing there. The form of the clue and the syllabification of the response imply that the word is split two different ways. Either as anthrop-ology, or anthro-pology.

Is it that one is a phonetic/phonological syllabification while the other is an etymological syllabification? Well the phonological split would probably favour a maximized onset (some will disagree, but I like it as a rule of thumb) and that would explain why Alex provided the response with the pause before the [p]. [æn.θrə.'pa.lə.dʒi].

So it would seem at first that the clue asked for a type of "-ology" because etymologically the suffix is -ology. And other sciences would seem at first to support this as a suffix. bi-ology, psych-ology, anthrop-ology, astr-ology, meteor-ology, zo-ology all end in -ology. And that's the common belief: that -ology meanse "study of." But most people know that the root that means 'life' is bio- no bi-. And most people can figure that the root for star is astro- which makes more sense than astr-. And since we know the Greek for 'word' or 'reason' is logo-s (and some snooping shows us that logia was discourse) we're left wondering why the Jeopordy! writers decided to ask for a type of "-ology". Why take that stranded -o- (which lost an -n in the combinative role) and separate it from its root? This is an unfair question because the -o- in many -ology words is a productive connective form on analogy with the regular -o- ending of Greek nouns in combinative form. In other words, because it is so regular some argue that -ology might be considered a form.

But in our current tale Alex Trebek snubs the last TWO segments of the Greek combinative form άνɵρωπο-. Why? Probably because -pology is not nearly regular enough to be recognized as a suffix. And since the 'o' represents the stressed vowel of the word, without it "-logy" is a rare and uncomfortable pyrrhic foot. On it's own -logy would most likely get a stress on the first syllable and that would require either the odd sounding ['lʌdʒi] rhyming with "fudgy" or the shift to ['ladʒi] rhyming with "stodgy" or a shift to a possible underlying form ['lo^wdʒi] rhyming with...go-gee? flow-gee?

By choosing to give half of anthropology in the clue the Jeopardy! writers typed their way into a corner. It's like when you start an analogy and it turns out to be...a...not...good analogy.

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Afterthought: There is of course a tangent right into the discussion of 'workaholic' which some continue to argue would mean a person addicted to workahol. But why isn't it spelled 'workohol'?

Tower of Babe-l

Not a great pun. Not much of a pun at all. But you'll forgive me I hope - as the recent birth of my niece has me thinking about baby-talk. and a recent correspondence with my good friend Daniel had me thinking about language development. In that exchange Daniel suggested that "the confounding of language at the Tower of Babel wasn't thorough enough" (I think he might have been referring to my tiresome and confusing answer to a very interesting question). But even just the name of the tower has caused plenty of confusion.

People like to credit 'babel' with the origins of the word babble. At first it sounds good - supportable by orthography, phonology, semantics (including connotation and denotation) mythology . . . and let's pause on that. The connection is likely a myth. The name can be traced so easily to the Akkadian bab (gate) + ilu (god) that we pretty easily have to abandon the echoic origin of the place name - which leaves us with the question of the origin of babble.

Is it still possible that babble came from Babel? well of course it is. But if we look carefully we find other more likely sources. Babel's synonymy with cacophony dates to the mid 1500s while babble's synonymy with blather goes back to the early 1400s - and other very similar forms can be attested as far back as the thirteenth century - and in several languages.

It's no secret to students who paid attention in school that barbarian comes from similar origins. Meaning strange or foreign and probably imitating language sounds. The alternation of /r/ and /l/ makes perfect sense as they're both coronal liquids. And the low back vowel /a/ as in father is an easy lax sound. Can we predict another word used to mimic "meaningless" or indiscriminate language? How about blab? blablablah? The already mentioned blather - blare (using both /l/ and /r/) - blatant (from spencer's faerie queen - the blatant beast had a thousand tongues and used them all carelessly - probably symbolic of the ignorant masses) - these are all tellingly similar.

So is a baby likely to make these types of sounds? Well let's look backwards at this question. Are we likely to hear these sounds in a baby's babble? Let's not forget the origins of baby - probably echoic of what we hear as baby talk - and what sound do we ourselves make when imitating a baby's burp or belch? Or better yet what sound do we make when reacting to the mess a baby leaves on our shoulder? There might be no official spelling for it but we've probably seen it in several cartoons or other written dialogues - bleah.

So here's a question i'd love for you the dear reader to answer: What words can remember pronouncing incorrectly when you were a child? Or a word that a younger sibling cousin niece or nephew mispronounced?

Instead of patient i said pedatient until I was about 4 years old.

Instead of until my sister (who just had the baby of her own) said ultin.

Your feedback will fascinate me.