"French" fries

I find that the Ore-Ida Potatoes Twitter account (don't ask how I got there) has just published an absurd piece of false etymology:

#DidYouKnow French Fries got their name from U.S. soldiers who tried the crispy treats while stationed in Belgium during WWII #TaterTrivia

The first alarm bell that should go off is the implication that there were no French fries in the USA before 1941.  Of course there were, and the Oxford English Dictionary cites "French fried potatoes" from back in the nineteenth century.  "French fries" shortens that. (I have noticed that pretentious restaurants will occasionally use the three-word "French-fried potatoes" on their menus.  Which brings up--to hyphenate or not to hyphenate "French-fried?")

But why they are French fried is a different question.  The dictionaries and the English translation (1961) of Larousse Gastronomique do not say; but the verb "to French" can mean to cut foods into long thin strips.  So perhaps a French fried potato is Frenched, then fried.

Finding Roman laws

I'm working on a paper on a late Roman statute called the Lex Rivi Hiberiensis.  Tonight I settled down to start reading other laws in an important modern collection: Riccobono et al, eds., Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiuistiniani [=Sources of pre-Justinian Roman Law] (1940-43). It goes to show how much you need to learn before you can even use some books.

First, this book usually called FIRA by authors.  Finding FIRA is the first problem, because there is another FIRA (often cited in the same passages), the Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui (=Sources of Ancient Roman Law), a work by Bruns and others (7th ed. 1909).  But once you've done that, there's many other compilations of Roman legal materials.  The most commonly used are Girard's Textes de Droit Romain--now succeeded by Giuffre's Les lois des romains (1978)--and Crawford's Roman Statutes (1986).  The point of these books is to make legal materials easily available to interested students who don't have the time for or access to the massive publications of Latin inscriptions that have been emerging year on year for nearly 150 years.

But you have to worry about selection bias.  The bias is based mainly on what makes a Roman law--if one accepts Theodor Mommsen's theory that "laws" were only those accepted by the Roman people (leges rogatae) or imposed upon the Roman people by a leader (lex datae) then the Lex Rivi Hiberiensis and statutes that might be comparable wouldn't be included.  The law I am interested in was intended for subjects of the Roman empire, not for Romans (of the city and its surrounds) themselves.  This particular distinction is followed in Crawford's Roman Statutes.

The other collections are more broadly based, and more useful for me.  Riccobono's work, in view of the debated meaning of lex, calls statutes like mine imperial constitutiones (even though many of them call themselves leges).  Riccobono's work is in Latin too, and so you have to read closely to find out the selection procedures--based, I think, mostly on intactness.  Once you've got that, you can start reading.

Anglicisms

Hispanophone purists are probably concerned about the creep of English into their language; one never sees signs in New York for alquilar (the textbook word I learned for "to rent"), but instead only rentar or renta.  I've heard that carro (= "car" + o) for automobile is used occasionally, and I was especially surprised to see today that someone had turné a paper over to someone else--that is "turned" it over (the word is apparently the 1st-person preterite of turnar = "turn" + infinitive ending -ar).  

But all these words, even if they are adoptions of common and useful English words, seem to have healthy precedents in literary Spanish.  Renta and rentar, carro, and turnar can be found in the official dictionary of the Academia Real Espanola, the royal and more-or-less official source for the Spanish language.  European languages have such broad vocabularies, and they all betray the influence of the same Latin words.

Dirty words and the "bunny" problem

You can now tell your friends that you know a dirty word in ancient Greek.  Apparently, in sophisticated writing the Greeks would never use βινέω (bin-AY-o).  In use (as opposed to the dictionary entry) it was βινῶ, (bin-OH), "I fuck."

As you might imagine, the dictionaries of ancient Greek have really lightened up about βινέω in the last century or so.  The 19th-century Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek lexicon defines it with Latin plus a gentle explanation: "inire, coïre, [go in, unite] of illicit intercourse," and the Chantraine Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Grecque (1984-90) adds the more literal Latin futuere.  (For Latin dirty words, see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary.)  Today, the new ancient-Greek dictionary the Diccionario Griego-Espanol is wonderfully straightforward, defining the word with the infinitive joder, which is also what a Spaniard will say when he stubs his toe.  The DGE contains several excellent quotes such as ὅστις γε πίνειν οἶδε καὶ βινεῖν μόνον, "he only knows how to drink and fuck,"1 and ἥδιστον εστιν ἀποθανεῖν βινοῦνθ᾽ ἅμα, "it is pleasantest to die fucking at the same time."2  The DGE translates the (imperfect-tense) passive form of βινέω as mariconeaba, which I gather means "he was being fucked in the ass."  

The ancient Athenians themselves sometimes softened βινέω for public consumption to κινέω (kin-AY-oh), which usually means "to move."  The LSJ uses "sens. obsc." (sense obscure) for this euphemism, while the etymological dictionary notes the sens erotique.  Moving from β to κ to soften the impact on sensitive ears may have a parallel in the move from "coney" to "bunny" in English to refer to a rabbit.  It's an interesting coincidence.  The Oxford English Dictionary and etymological dictionaries of English all say that "bunny" is a familiarization of "bun" to refer to the animal, based on the little "bun" tail it has.  Hardly anyone now uses "coney" for rabbits.  Yet there is an internet rumor, which has occasionally made it into print, that "bunny" became popular when the earlier word "coney" came (with a vowel shift) to sound very much like "cunny"--the female pudenda.  I have not been able to find evidence for this happening; the printed evidence for it is speculative.  One day I'll look more closely at how the senses developed.

1. HOS-tis geh PINein OY-deh kai bin-EIN MON-on; Aristophanes, Frogs, line 740.
2. HEY-distohn estin apothanEIN binOONT HAMa; fragment 6 of the work of the comic poet Philetaeros

Hard work

"Whenever he felt he just couldn't take another chart or equation, he would switch over to verse, and vice versa."

--Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad, trans. Michael Kandel

Gems from the ancients

One of the statutes of Numa, from Rome in 7th century B.C., is translated at the link as

"If a man is killed by a thunderbolt the proper burial ritual shall not be performed."  

Because, of course, Zeus wished the man dead and had a good reason for it.

The Greek Aristophanes, in a lost comedy called Daitales, refers to one of a pair of brothers as ὁ σώφρων, "the clever." The other is ὁ καταπύγων, "the one who takes it in the ass." C. Murphy, "Aristophanes and the Art of Rhetoric," Harv. St. in Classical Phil. 49:69, 71 (1938).

Inappropriate description

I'm taking a few classes in dead languages at Columbia University, and reading much more literary analysis by Classics and English department academics.  I read in Frederick Ahl, "Form Empowered: Lucan's Pharsalia" (in Boyle, ed. Roman Epic), p. 137:

"[Roman poet ]Lucan's moral symbol, [the Stoic philosopher] Cato, shares rhetorical ground with the shrewdly apolitical Christ . . ." 

Yes, that Christ.  Regardless of whether Christ was apolitical or not (I don't think he was) referring to the putative Messiah as "shrewd" and "apolitical" is an instance of tapinosis, unintentionally belittling one's subject with descriptive terminology.

Funerals

"circumpotatio . . . must be calqued on περίδειπνον, which must originally have meant a meal consumed with the corpse placed in the middle [citing Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft] as an Irish wake used to be (and perhaps still is)"  (Edward Courtney, Archaic Latin Prose (1999) p 25).

A calque is a word-for-word translation from another language for the same term, rather than importing the word in the original.  So circum = περί = "around" and potatio = "drinking-bout" and δείπνον = "meal."

Attorneys, lawyers, etc.

My current research is on terminology for attorneys.  Because each American state or other jurisdiction has a "unified bar," all legal practitioners are called by the same term.  Most commonly, Americans use lawyer or attorney, or the more lengthy attorney-at-law.  They might be called counsel for the purposes of elegant variation, or be named counsellor-at-law in their own letterheads or on the outside of an envelope.  Attorney-at-law, sounding fancy, is used this way too.")  Lawyers can be called advocates too, but so can non-lawyers.  I favor "lawyer," because it's a very plain word and it means what it says.

England does not have a unified bar.  There are solicitors, who do most of the day-to-day practice like contracts, wills, and so on; for court cases they will hire barristers to represent their clients in court.  In the research for a paper I'm doing, I've uncovered a whole catalog of less-well-known names for practitioners of law.  These are mostly from Bouvier's Law Dictionary (2d ed. 1843 and "Third Revision," 1914) and from Noah Webster's dictionaries of 1828 and later.

Advocate--a general name for a lawyer, but in Scotland the members of the profession are so called and are members of the Faculty of Advocates.


Apprentice: According to Frederic W. Maitland barristers were called "apprentices" in the middle ages.

"The bar"--used to refer to lawyers while they are pleading in court, referring to their proximity to the physical "bar" that separates judge and lawyers from spectators in the courtroom.

Civilian--a prominent expert in the civil law (there's apparently no "commoners" practicing the common law).

Doctor--presumably the title for a member of the College of Doctors, practitioners before British ecclesiastical courts in the eighteenth century.  Having the juris doctor degree doesn't really entitle an American attorney to be called "doctor."   You might say he'd be laughed out of court if he assumed the title.

Esquire--a very fraught title, placed after a lawyer's name when addressing him in writing or, more frequently nowadays, used by the lawyer himself. 

Jurist--an academic who holds forth on the law; a judge; or, perhaps more jokingly, any lawyer.

Notary--a professional in civil law jurisdictions who handles various matters focused on legal documents, especially in real estate.

Proctor--a practitioner in ecclesiastical courts.

Serjeant-at-law--an earlier term for barrister.

The ass and the arse

There's an interesting ambiguity, in America at least, behind what we mean when we call insult someone for being an "ass."  Famously, a Dickens character says "the law is a ass--an idiot."  What sort of an ass is the basis of the character's metaphor?  It is most likely the four-legged beast of burden, not the sitting-end of a person.   Dickens, in a crude mood, would probably have called his nether-end his "arse": this is the British word for the body part because, until the nineteenth century, "ass" was reserved just for the animal.  However, for me the situation is different.  As a modern, urban American I don't have much experience around the animal, the "ass."  An ass is still a stupid person, but the metaphor is anatomical: When I use the word I most likely have the image of the buttocks of a person (or some animal--think how "horse's ass" = "fool") when I call you an "ass"--it's the end without the brains in it, for sure. 

In the nineteenth century (according to spellings in Bryan Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage, to the Oxford English Dictionary, and to Jonathan Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang), in Britain and America "arse" began to be pronounced as what would sound to an American like "ahss" or "ass."  The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary says that "arse" became "ass" as a "vulgar and dialect sp[elling] and pronunciation of arse"; other dictionaries aren't too helpful as to the source of the change; certainly the British change at that time of most syllable-end rs to the schwa sound (the vowel in "good") must have had something to do with it.

Etymologically, "ass" the animal and "arse" the body part are very different words.  The word for the animal in Old English was "assa/asse," (masc./fem.) with the alternative "esol" (see also the supplement; Germans still say "Esel").  There's a forest of cognates in the Germanic and Celtic languages that are dealt with in good etymological dictionaries like the OED, C. T. Onions' Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, and the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology; they trace the word all the way back to a Sumerian (!) cognate anšu, with the Latin "asinus" as the direct source. 

I'm of course far more interested in where "arse" comes from.  It's Old English, and the standard Old English dictionary Bosworth-Toller supplies the spelling "ears" and various delightful compounds like "ears-ende" for buttocks and "ears-gang" for latrines and their contents.  The Middle English Dictionary has a lengthy and fascinating entry on "ars." The other older Germanic languages had cognates and there's a Greek cognate ὄρσος which evolved into ὄρρος; Eric Partridge's Origins points to a Hittite cognate arraš.  There's apparently a proto-Indo-European cognate as well.

OK.  So what's the difference between an ass and a donkey?  Nothing, apparently (I think Americans, in view of the anatomical "ass," will always say "donkey"); it's a dialect or slang word first recorded in 1785 in George Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

"Professionalism" in America

Brian Garner complains in his Dictionary of American Legal Usage about how so many jobs are now said to be done by "professionals"--hairstylists, the "professional military," and so on--as opposed to the traditional three professions of law, medicine and the clergy.  Knowing a trade, or doing something for a living, does not make one a professional--that comes from the intellectual content of one's work.

There's a lot of what I think of as title drift, too: making work seem more sophisticated or, I hope, dignified, by giving old jobs more impressive titles.  Think of the "associates" at stores like Walmart or Target, who aren't associated with the store except as hourly employees.  I've heard employees at such places referred to as "partners," which twists beyond recognition both the commonly understood meaning of "partners"--individuals who jointly engage in some enterprise for the common and, I think, more or less equal betterment of both, or the legal definition of partners as joint owners with personal liability for the debts of the partnership.  The word "clerk" is a very old example of title inflation.  It's connected to the word "cleric," and suggested especially someone who could read and write because such skills were found only rarely outside those of the second estate.  This emphasis on reading and writing means "clerk" no longer signifies someone with a scholarly or religious background, but someone who keeps the books or other records in an establishment--think of clerks of court.  But "clerk" has been extended to people who have no advanced skills at all, particularly to those working at the counter at convenience stores.

Sometimes new names can be made up to enhance a profession.  H. L. Mencken's The American Language reports on National Association of Realtors trademarking the name "Realtor" for their real-estate-agent members (they still own the trademark) and undertakers beautifying themselves with the term "mortician."  It's a joke to call a garbage hauler a "sanitation engineer," but did you know that 9-1-1 dispatchers seem to really be called "public safety telecommunicators?"

Your word of the day: publican

"Publicans" in the New Testament are ostracized and hated, and Christ gives them the special attention all the ostracized receive.

And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?  (King James Bible, Matthew 9)

Calling the owner of a "public house" or "pub" a publican must be a pun based on the various references to publicans in the Bible.  (By the way: H. L. Mencken in the 1930s, according to The American Language II, thought the American word for pub was "saloon"; in 2012 in America it's almost certainly a "bar.")  In the Greek bible these people were τελῶναι (/telonai/, related to our word "toll") and in Latin, publicani.  They were "tax farmers"--people who extorted from the population a set amount for the Roman government's tax revenue, and kept any surplus for themselves.  "Publican" has been used often as a general term of abuse.

By any other name...

I just heard an NPR announcer mention Japan's "conservative Liberal Democratic" party.  I confess I don't know what makes a Japanese political party more or less conservative; but at least in Britain they do you a favor and call their right-of-center party "Conservatives" and their left-of-center party "Liberal" (the Lib-Dems; I haven't forgotten Labor, for most of the 20th century the leftist party).  Canada and Australia also have self-evidently named parties, which is nice for us less-informed foreign observers.  The Germans have "Christian Democrats" and "Social Democrats," which at least hint at the party's ideological bases.

I suppose that having a name paradoxically opposed to one's place on the ideological spectrum allows Japan's Liberal Democratic political party to hedge its bets and change its points of view.  Why else do America's mainstream parties have names that are content-free (like much of our political debate); "Democratic" and "Republican?"  Parties in the United States have often had empty names.  Surely some party names hinted at their members' beliefs, as with the Federalists and the Populists.  (The Wikipedia pages concern themselves with terminology.)  But who can tell from the name what a "Democratic-Republican" stood for?

Having empty names like Democratic and Republican and the Japanese "Liberal Democratic" makes it much easier to attach ideologies to a specific name.  I think Americans often, in very casual discussion, call left-wing ideas generally "Democratic" and right-wing ones "Republican"; since the 1960s this is where both parties have fallen along the ideological spectrum, and these positions are now pretty ossified.  For instance--even I find it jarring to think of people named  "Democrats" (in Japan) being called "conservative"; it's just not how my political terminology works.  

The suffix "-bonics"

Justice J. Michael Eakin of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has used the term "legalbonics," which he described in 2012 as content-free comments or "stupid" objections.  The justice called clumsy legal writing "legalbonics" in 2009 as well, perhaps referring to what is normally called legalese.  (Pennsylvania Bar Institute, Legal Writing for the 21st Century).  A 2005, anonymous cite for "legalbonics" is here.

The suffix "-bonics" must be from the dimly remembered "Ebonics" controversy of the 1990s--a proposal that schools reach out to black children by giving lessons in the children's putative style of English, named from "ebony" + "phonics."  From this, "-bonics" has been taken jocularly to denote "a way of speaking."  I have found a few instances of the use of bonics from the era, meaning 1) some local dialect ("Bubba-bonics"¹ in Citrus County, Florida) or 2) some disparaged false dialect (Newt-bonics²; Pol-bonics³ [half-Polish English]; hick-bonics⁴).

Most striking about legalbonics (coming from a public figure like Justice Eakin) is that today it's a little bit non-politically-correct.  Grouping black English in with clumsy legal writing ignores the insistence of many linguists that black English has its own consistent grammar and other features.  Using "-bonics" is meant to evoke the Ebonics controversy and righteous indignation about teaching black English, as in the 1990s quotes footnoted below.  However, it's hard to imagine Judge Eakin is evoking that in lectures to lawyers--there may be some continuing, oral use of the "-bonics" idea that's hard to find on the internet, and that has become a regular vocabulary item for bad or confused English.

For a grammar grinch like me--better, a lexicon-grinch--most striking is the peculiar creation of a suffix.  "Ebonics" really has the suffix "-ics"; the "-on-s" of "ebony" and of "phonics" were creatively (or lamely) lined up.    "Phonics" (from the Greek φωνή "sound of the voice" + "-ics," from -ικός, denoting a noun) is the source of the "-ics" suffix.  The coiners of "legalbonics" and other terms are create a new "-bonics" suffix for (bleh) comic effect.


1. Greg Hamilton, "Hey Bubba, whut chew think a' dis Ebonics nonsense?" St. Petersburg Times,  Jan. 5, 1997, 2.
2. George J. Wilberg, Letter to the Editor, Newsweek, March 3, 1997, 12.
3. Mary McGrory, "The GOP's Newt-bonics," Washington Post, Dec. 29, 1996, C1.
4. Kenneth Li, "Hick Meets Sick," Daily News [New York], May 4, 1997, 42.
 

"Folks" and folksiness

From the early years of the George W. Bush administration I’ve been hearing public speakers refer to others as “folks”—to sound more genuine, informal, democratic, maybe even American.   Paula Broadwell, the now-famous paramour of General David Petraeus started a lecture on her book with the following:

Before we get started I’d like to see how many veterans there are in the room, so I know I who I’m facing. Okay, well, first of all, thank you for all of your service and I know we might have a few folks that belong to Team Red White and Blue as well, are there any folks from this veterans’ support organization?  A couple of folks, okay great, thanks for coming.

Where one would usually say “people” or “individuals,” and then “anyone,” Broadwell gets in touch with her audience by using folks.  This is a folksy (that is, common-man, rural, simple) trope that Bush seems to have initiated—how else might a wealthy grandson of a senator-and-son of a CIA director/congressman show his natural small-town, everyday tendencies?  President Obama seems to have picked it up too.  I’m sure that we can multiply more and more political figures use of “folks.”  I wish I had saved a comment I once saw, sent to the IRS by a tax accountant on behalf of a large corporation, objecting to a new tax regulation in the name of “folks.”

The folksy use of “folks” seems like a newish innovation--maybe a Bush-era innovation.  The plural is an American innovation, recognized before the American Civil War in Noah Webster’s great dictionary.  He notes (s.v. “folk”) that 

“Originally and properly it had no plural, being a collective noun ; but in modern use, in America, it has lost its singular number, and we hear it only in the plural.  It is a colloquial word, not admissible into elegant style.”

In the definition: 

1. People in general, or any part of them without distinction.  What do folks say respecting the war?  Men love to talk about the affairs of other folks.

2. Certain people, discriminated from others, as old folks and young folks.  So we say, sick folks ; poor folks ; proud folks.” (The 1848 printing of the 1845 edition.)

In the authorities collected in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage there “folks” are typically referred to either as rural types, or in Webster’s definition, people in general or  “certain people, discriminated from others” sense.  There’s no indication that “folks” is used in the sense of particular citizens who might have particular, individual experiences, as Broadwell uses it and as Bush and Obama do. 

So these sources don't seem to indicate the politically valuable type of folksiness that Bush and Obama have tried to evoke, and with which they have infected other politically-minded people.  It strikes me as a very recent innovation.  My main objection to this use of "folks" is that it’s simply not genuine—it’s an attempt to inject some average-ness, some common-ness,  some unassuming-ness into the speech of persons who are definitely not average or common or normal.

Impressive title

I just read in Debrett's Correct Form that in Malta "the Executive Head of the University is termed "Rector Magnificus."

Business philosophy

I can't resist reporting on one of the most-true statements I have ever heard (although I'm not very well-read in philosophy).  The recorded message on the phone line at my insurance company, CIGNA, told me, "Your unique individuality is what makes you you." 

Office bullshit

Before the days of "synergies," "solutions," "leveraging," and "skill sets" there was plenty of office bullshit.

I've been doing some research on the history of commercial correspondence--letter-writing in the days before phone calls, faxes, and the telex--and have found many instances of "favor" to mean "letter."  It occurs especially in the locution "your favor(s)," as in "We beg to acknowledge receipt of your favor of May 24th . . ." as late as 1912 (Eleanora Banks, Correct Business and Legal Forms).  OED finds "favor" meaning "letter" as early as 1645, and by the time its letter F came out in 1895 OED editors labeled it "Now, at least in England, confined to commercial correspondence."  However, simultaneous American authorities label it "hackneyed" (Edward Hall Gardner, Effective Business Letters (1920); (Hotchkiss and Burnett, Advanced Business Correspondence (1920)).  The clunking respectfulness of "favor" could be made even more absurd:

"Gentlemen--We are in receipt of your esteemed favor of the 17th, ordering five car-loads of our best pine . . ." (O. R. Palmer, Type-Writing and Business Correspondence, 1891).

An example of another common feature from these old books: " Your favor of the 3d inst. is at hand, and we are surprised to learn that the books forwarded February 11th, by freight, have not been received.” (Thomas R. Browne and Edmond C. Browne, Miscellaneous Correspondence: Commercial and Legal Forms (Part I, 1907), p. 3.)   "Inst." ("instant") refers to a letter of the third day of the month in which the response is written; "your favor of the 3d ult." or "ultimo" would refer to a letter of the preceding month.

Your word of the day: "Spermologer"

Came across this one in my fitful studies of Greek. While St. Paul preaches in Athens the local philosophers taunt him and ask, "What might this spermologos [σπερμολόγος] be wanting to say?" (Acts 17:18).  The Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon shows the word is a combination of sperma (σπέρμα) for "seed" and logos (λόγος), a noun from the verb legō (λέγω), in one sense "to pick up."   "Spermologos" originally meant some bird that pecked for seeds, but applied disparagingly to a person it means he is a "babbler," in Liddell's and Scott's translation.  So "What might this babbler be wanting to say?" taunt the Epicureans and the Stoics in the Agora.  But you can Paul a "spermologer," and the word shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Squinch: a false etymology on Wikipedia

There's a couple instances of false etymologies on Wikipedia.  If something on Wikipedia looks too exotic or interesting to be true, it probably is.  Grant Barrett on "A Way With Words" pointed out that "homie" and "homeboy" are nineteenth-century black slang.  He had more than once changed the Wikipedia page "Homeboy" to reflect this, and each time others had changed it back to a false etymology: that homeboy came from homo or homme or hombre.

I discovered what looks like a false etymology in the Wikipedia article "Squinch."  A squinch is an architectural member that was an early (Byzantine?) solution to the problem of stacking an octagonal or a round dome on a square, four-walled structure: create four squinches, or little bridges at the corners of the walls, set at 45-degree angles to the walls.  The dome can sit on these, as well as the center-points of the four walls.  The Wikipedia article thinks squinch comes from a Persian word "pronounced 'sekonj.'"  "Persian, huh?" I thought.  The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to the French escoinson, meaning "from an angle" and via the English word "scuncheon." 

Can anyone out there explain the reasoning behind the Persian-word claim?