CORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIES
If we are to avoid on the one hand the danger of regarding a dialect
as nothing better than a wilful perversion of standard English, we
yet must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the smooth-running
course of true sound-laws, or the rural charm of quaint words, into
the opposite error of supposing that irregularities and distortions do
not exist. There are in the dialects numbers of words which can only
be regarded as corruptions and mispronunciations of literary English,
but considered relatively to the whole vocabulary the proportion of
them is very small. Many even of the most obvious are not without a
certain interest as examples of popular etymology, or of practical
word-formation, as, for instance, when smother and suffocate are
blended into the useful word _smothercate_ (Not.), or bold and
audacious into _boldacious_ (Der. Cor.). Some apparent corruptions are
in reality old forms which can be found in the literary language in the
earlier stages of its existence. For example: _abuseful_ (Yks. Lin.
War. Shr. Hrf. Glo.) for abusive is not uncommon in seventeenth-century
literature, though it must have died out later, as it is not noted
by lexicographers such as Bailey and Johnson. The word _fancical_
(gen. dial.) for fanciful occurs in 1676 in a work entitled _Musick’s
Monument_, by Mace. _Druggister_ (Yks. Lin. Pem. e.An. Som. Cor.)
for druggist is registered in Sherwood’s _Dictionary_ (1672), ‘A
druggister, _drogueur_.’
Or again, the dialect form may not be directly taken from the
standard language, but may be traced back through some other linguistic
channel which has influenced its development, e.g. _angish_ (Irel.)
is not a mispronunciation of anguish, but it is developed from the
Gaelic form _aingis_. _Squinacy_ (Sc. Irel.), and _squinancy_ in the
compound _squinancy-berry_ (Cum. Lan. Ess.), the black currant, are not
corruptions of quinsy, but are from O.French _squinancie_, quinsy. But
I shall reserve the treatment of historical forms such as these for a
later chapter.
[Sidenote: _Latin Phrases taken into the Dialects_]
A few Latin phrases have made their way into the dialects, where they
have assumed curious forms and meanings. For example: _hizy-prizy_ (Nhb.
Yks. Chs. Der. Som. Dev.), a corruption of _Nisi prius_, a law-term. It
is used to signify any kind of chicanery or sharp practice, or, used as
an adjective, it means litigious, tricky; and in the phrase _to be at
hizy-prizy_, it means to be quarrelsome, disagreeable. The plural form
_momenty-morries_ (Nhb.), skeletons, stands for _memento mori_, remember
that thou must die, the name given to a small decorative object
containing a skeleton or other emblem of death, cp. ‘I make as good use
of it as many a man doth of a Death’s-head or a memento mori,’ _1 Hen.
IV_, III. iii. 35. The Latin _nolens volens_ appears as _nolus-bolus_
(Wil.), _nolum-wolum_ (Wil. Dev.), _hoylens-voylens_, _oilins-boilins_
(Cum.). A mother sending off an unwilling child to school will say:
Oilins-boilins, but thee shall go. _Nominy_ (Nhb. Dur. Yks. Lan. Chs.
Der. Nhp.) represents the Latin _nomine_ in the formula _In Nomine
Patris_, &c., the invocation used by the preacher before the sermon. It
means: (1) a rigmarole, a long rambling tale, a wordy, tiresome speech;
(2) a rhyming formula or folk-rhyme. A knitting nominy used by girls in
Northamptonshire is as follows:
Needle to needle, and stitch to stitch,
Pull the old woman out of the ditch.
If you ain’t out by the time I’m in,
I’ll rap your knuckles with my knitting-pin.
_Paddy-noddy_, or _Parinody_ (Yks. Lin.), a long tedious rigmarole, a
cock and bull story, is a corruption of _Pater noster_. The form
_non-plush_ (many dials.), a nonplus, dilemma, surprise, usually occurs
in the phrase: _at_, or _on a non-plush_, e.g. I was taken all on a
non-plutch. _Vady_ (Sus. Dev.) is a shortened form of _vade mecum_, used
to denote a small leather cylinder, containing change of raiment, and
other small comforts of the traveller.
The French _rendezvous_ appears as _randivoo_, _randivoose_
(Dev. Cor.), _randybow_ (Nhb. Chs. Dev.), _rangevouge_ (Cor.), meaning
a noise, an uproar, but the literary sense remains in the verb
_rumsey-voosey_ (Wil.), e.g. He went a rumsey-voosing down the lane to
meet his sweetheart.
[Sidenote: _Corruptions and Mispronunciations_]
_Jommetry_ is interesting for the sake of its meaning. It is used in
Gloucestershire in the sense of magic; anything supported in a
mysterious and unknown manner might be said to hang _by jommetry_; the
phrase _all of a jommetry_ means in pieces or tatters. _Lattiprack_
(Wil.) for paralytic is a strange distortion. _Hapsherrapsher_ (Cum.
Lakel.) for haphazard is equally unreasonable, but agreeable withal.
Forms like _solintary_ (Nrf.) for solitary, _skelington_ or _skelinton_
(Yks. Lan. Stf. War. Wor. Shr. Glo. w.Cy. Dor.) for skeleton, have
acquired an intrusive _n_ in common with many words in the literary
language, as messenger, scavenger, &c. _Skelet_ (Sc. Lin. Cor.) is not a
corruption, but a pure French form, cp. ‘_Scelete_, a skeleton,’
Cotgrave. Pronunciations such as: _chimbly_ (var. dials.) for chimney;
_singify_ (Yks. Lan. Der. Brks. e.An. Hmp. I.W.) for signify; _synnable_
(Yks. Lan. Chs. Stf. Shr. Suf. Ken.) for syllable; _ulster_ (Cor.) for
ulcer; _pumptial_ (Not. Rut. Lei. Shr. Som.) for punctual; _turmit_ or
_turmut_ (gen. dial.) for turnip, can all be accounted for phonetically.
_Hantle_ (Sc. Irel. and n. counties to War. Wor. Shr.) is a perfectly
legitimate contraction of handful, but besides the ordinary meaning, it
can also denote a large quantity. A story is told of a Scotch minister
who alluded in his sermon to the fact that a number of his flock had
joined the Baptists, thus: I thocht till ha’e gethered ye under my
wings, as a hen gethereth her chickens, but a hantle o’ ye ha’e turn’t
oot to be deuks, an’ ta’en to the water.
[Sidenote: _A ‘nice Derangement of Epitaphs’_]
Occasionally one literary word is mistaken for another, and adopted
in its place, as, for instance, _information_ (Lin. Sus. Som. Dev.)
used for inflammation; _sentiment_ (Lin. Nrf.) for sediment. A farmer
having been asked if he would clean out a pond, replied: No, sir, I
can’t undertake the job; there’s a sight of sentiment in that there
pit. _Profligate_ (Shr. Dev.) for prolific is a surprising change of
adjective, especially when applied to the guileless and innocent. I
remember my old nurse, when she took to minding chickens because we had
outgrown the need of her daily ministrations, telling me that she had
collected a ‘sitting’ of a certain kind of eggs, because she thought it
would produce ‘a profligate hatch’. This is paralleled by the use of
_reprobate_ for probationer. The Vicar’s daughter asked a young girl
if she had joined the parochial Guild. The reply was: Oh, yes, Miss!
Last week I were took in as a reprobate (Lin.). A youth writing home
from Canada to his father the village blacksmith, in describing the
Coronation festivities in the city where he dwelt, wrote: The soldiers
fired three volumes. A rheumatic old woman, who had been taken with
several others for an excursion on a very hot day, said to me: Have you
heard what a very nice exertion we had yesterday? Quite recently too,
I was told of a man who had been ‘crossed in love’ in his youth, that
he had been a woman-atheist ever since. One is constantly reminded of
Mrs. Malaprop and her ‘nice derangement of epitaphs’. _Unction_ (Sc.)
for auction, with its derivative unctioneer, is probably a phonetic
change; and the same may be said of _ivory_ (Irel. Not. Lin. Rut. Hrt.
e.An.) for ivy. The use of _persecute_ for prosecute may be merely
the result of confusion of prefixes, as in: discommode, dismolish,
mislest, perdigious, preverse. The use of the native prefix _un-_ where
the standard language has _im-_, _in-_, &c., is very frequent. For
instance, _unpossible_ occurs in all the dialects in Scotland, Ireland,
and England. Other examples are: undecent (many dials.), unlegal
(Yks. Midl. War. Hrf.), unregular (many dials.), unsensible (Sc. Dur.
Yks. War. Sur.), unpatient (Sc. Dur. Lan.), unpeaceable (Yks. Som.),
unperfect (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Som.), unpassable (Sc. Yks. Som.). The three
last were once good literary forms, and may be found with quotations
from learned authors in Johnson’s _Dictionary_. Beside _unconvenient_
there exists in many dialects the useful compound _ill-convenient_.
_Unhonest_ for dishonest, though now a dialect form, occurs in
literature of the sixteenth century.
[Sidenote: _Curious Prefixes and Suffixes_]
Sometimes the prefix _un-_ is a superfluous addition, as in:
_unbeneath_ (n.Yks.), beneath; _unempt_ (Nhp. Hrf. Oxf. Bdf. Wil.), to
empty; _ungive_ (Lan. Chs. Lei. Nhp. Bdf. Hnt.), to relax, give way,
thaw, though this last form has the support of early literary evidence.
But on the other hand, _un-_ is used in the formation of practical
native words, for which the standard language substitutes words of
foreign extraction, for example: _uncome_ (Sc. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.),
not arrived; _unfain_ (Sc. Yks.), reluctant; _unhandy_ (Pem. Glo. Ken.
Dor.), incapable; _unfriend_ (Sc. Nhb. Yks. Not. Hrf. Dev.), an enemy.
_Ungone_ (n.Cy. Yks. Lan. Lin.), not gone, not sent, is merely making
one simple word out of two, with no gain in meaning, but ‘he’s just
ungone’, for ‘he is at the point of death’, rises almost into poetic
simplicity. In the hybrid form _unheeastie_ (n.Yks.), indolent, we have
an old word which recalls the ‘lowly asse’ of Spenser’s Una:
One day, nigh wearie of the yrkesome way,
From her unhastie beast she did alight,
And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay
In secret shadow, far from all mens sight.
(_F.Q._ I. iii.)
It would be easy to collect together a large number of words with
curiously assorted suffixes, and many of these words are decidedly
effective. To quote a few examples: _affordance_ (Cum.), ability to meet
expense; _abundation_ (Chs. Shr. Stf. Wor. Hrf. Glo.), abundance;
_blusteration_ (Cum. Lin.), the act of blustering; _prosperation_ (Yks.
Chs. Shr.), prosperity, as used in the old toast at public dinners,
Prosperation to the Corporation; _comparishment_ (Irel.), comparison;
_timeous_ (Sc. Irel.), timely; _timmersome_ (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel.
Eng.), timorous; _unnaturable_ (Yks. Lan. Lin. Nhp.), unnatural.
Corruptions not infrequently are due to the blending of one word with
another; for instance, _champeron_ (Oxf. Brks.) is a contamination of
champignon and mushroom, M.E. _muscheron_, Fr. _mousseron_; _jococious_
(n.Cy. Yks. Ess.) is a compound of jocose and facetious; _obsteer_
(Lin.), sulky, awkward, is an amalgamation of obstinate and austere;
_tremense_ (Ken.) embraces both tremendous and immense; _thribble_ (Sc.
Nhb. Cum. Yks. Lan. Der. Not. Lei. War. Wor. Ess. Ken.) is treble under
the influence of three; _boldrumptious_ (Ken.) is the magnificent
product of bold, and rumpus, and presumptuous, and its meaning may be
gathered from such a sentence as: that there upstandin’, boldrumptious,
blowsing gal of yours came blarin’ down to our house. _Battle-twig_
(Yks. Stf. Der. Not. Lin. Lei. Nhp.), an earwig, is a corruption of
beetle + earwig, contaminated with battle + twig.
[Sidenote: _Corruptions due to popular Etymology_
_Corruptions due to Sound Change_]
Closely akin to these are the corruptions due to what is called popular
etymology, where an unfamiliar word or syllable becomes converted into
a familiar one. Occasionally it is possible to trace some association
of meaning to account for the change in pronunciation, as when
week-days becomes _wicked-days_ (w.Cy. Som.), probably with an idea of
contra-distinction to Sundays and Holy Days. _Illify_ (Lakel. Cum. Yks.
Lan. Stf. Lin.) for vilify explains itself. The common example given
to illustrate this change is the standard English word belfry. Dr.
Johnson states the case thus: ‘_Belfry._ n.s. [_Beffroy_, in French,
is a tower; which was perhaps the true word, till those, who knew not
its original, corrupted it to _belfry_, because bells were in it].’
One is tempted to suggest that _madancholy_ (Yks. Lan.) for melancholy
started life as a descriptive term for victims of melancholia, but
unfortunately there is the fact that just in those districts where the
word occurs, _mad_ does not mean insane, but annoyed, angry, and the
suggestion is shown to be absurd. _Madancholy_ must therefore rank with
the great majority of corruptions due to sound-change, typified by the
hackneyed form _sparrow-grass_ for asparagus. Jerusalem artichoke for
_girasole_ artichoke is recognized as standard English, so also is
gooseberry. Dr. Johnson has: ‘_Gooseberry._ n.s. [_goose_ and _berry_,
because eaten with young geese as sauce].’ Modern philologists,
however, scorn this simple solution, and referring us to a French
original, they say gooseberry is a corruption of *groise-berry, or
*grose-berry. In Marshall’s _Rural Economy of Yorkshire_ (1796) we
find the form grossberry, and this gross- is the same as the element
gros-in French _groseille_, a gooseberry. The Scotch form is _groset_.
The pronunciation _cowcumber_ (gen. dial. use in Sc. Irel. Eng.)
for cucumber was early recognized as corrupt. A paragraph in a book
called _The English Physitian Enlarged_ (seventeenth century) is
entitled: ‘Cucumers, or (according to the pronuntiation of the Vulgar)
cowcumbers.’ Other examples from various dialects are: _ash-falt_ for
asphalt; _brown-kitus_, _brown-titus_, _brown-typhus_ for bronchitis;
_chiny oysters_ (Wil.) for China asters; _Polly Andrews_ (Glo. Wil.)
for polyanthus; _rosydendrum_ (Chs.) for rhododendron; _curly-flower_
(Lin.) for cauliflower; _fair-maid_ (Cor.) for fumade, fumadoe, a cured
(formerly smoked) pilchard, Sp. _fumado_, smoked; _hairy-sipples_ for
erysipelas; the _janders_ (many dials.) for jaundice; _a-kingbow_,
_king-bow_ (Som.), for akimbo; _pockmanteau_ (Sc. Nhb. Lin.) for
portmanteau, but the substitution of _pock-_ for port-is probably
due to association of meaning with _pock_, a bag, sack, or wallet;
_airy-mouse_, _hairy-mouse_, _raw-mouse_ (Hmp. I.W. Wil.), _rye-mouse_
(Glo. Wil.), for rear-mouse, the bat, O.E. _hrēre-mūs_; _screwmatic_
(War. Nrf.) for rheumatic; _tooth-and-egg_ (Nhb. Lan. Der. Not. Lin.)
for tutenag, an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. Years ago--years and
years and donkey’s ears, as the saying is--when motor-cars were yet
unborn, and when even tram-cars were unknown to country children, I can
remember my father trying to explain to the little carol-singers at
Christmastime, that they had introduced a corrupt reading into the text
of their carol, when they sang:
The moon and the stars
Stopped their fiery ears,
And listened while Gabriel spoke.
[Sidenote: _‘The rustic Etymologer_]
Now and then we meet with a deliberate attempt on the part of dialect
speakers themselves to explain the mysteries of word-derivation. The
writer of a book entitled _The Folk and their Word-Lore_ tells of ‘the
rustic etymologer’ who explained that the reason why partridges are so
called is ‘because ... they love to lie between the furrows of ploughed
land, and so _part_ the _ridges_’. Further, he tells us that: ‘a
cottager lamenting that one of a litter of puppies had a hare-lip
(divided like that of the hare), or, as she pronounced it, _air-lip_,
explained that it was so called because it admitted the air through the
cleft, which prevented the little creature sucking properly.’ But these
are not the folk who are responsible for the absurd popular etymology
which associates the modern colloquial and slang use of the word _lark_
with the O.E. _lāc_ sb., joyous activity, sport, _lācan_ vb., to play,
and with the dialect _lake_ (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der.
Not. Lin. Glo.), to play, sport, amuse oneself. This error is the
invention of non-philological people who speak standard English. It
could not have been propounded by any one who uses the word _lake_, nor
by any one who understands English philology. O.E. _lācan_ would have
given in standard English, and in most of the above-mentioned dialects,
a form _loke_, and under no circumstances could it have acquired the
_r_. Apparently _to lark_ is a verb made from the substantive _lark_,
the bird. O.E. _lācan_ has died out, but its Scandinavian cognate O.N.
_leika_, to play, sport, remains in the dialect form _lake_.
For mere distortion and mispronunciation a good illustration is the
variety of dialect shapes which the word breakfast assumes, such as:
_bracksus_, _brecksus_, _brockwist_, _buckwhist_, &c. A remark often
heard in Ireland is: Well, I have the price av me supper now, an’ God is
good for the brukwust. _Dacious_ (Lin. Som.), impudent, rude, is an
aphetic form of audacious, e.g. Of all th’daacious lads I iver seed oor
Sarah’s Bill’s th’daaciousest. _Demic_ (Yks. Not. Lin.), the
potato-disease, is an aphetic form of epidemic; similarly _pisle_
(Yks.), a narration of any kind, is an aphetic form of epistle.
_Obstropolous_, a corruption of obstreperous, and _obligate_ for oblige,
are in general dialect use in Scotland, Ireland, and England.