Snobs and Chauffeurs
Words don't necessarily keep the same meaning. Simple descriptive words such as rain or water are clear and necessary enough to be unlikely to change. Other more complex words have often come on quite a journey since they were first coined:
chauffer (French) to heat; then meant the driver of an early steam-powered car; subsequently chauffeur
sine nobilitate (Latin) without nobility; originally referred to any member of the lower classes; then to somebody who despised their own class and aspired to membership of a higher one; thus snob
theriake (Greek) an antidote against a poisonous bite; came to mean the practice of giving medicine in sugar syrup to disguise its taste; thus treacle
Are there any others you can think of?
chauffer (French) to heat; then meant the driver of an early steam-powered car; subsequently chauffeur
sine nobilitate (Latin) without nobility; originally referred to any member of the lower classes; then to somebody who despised their own class and aspired to membership of a higher one; thus snob
theriake (Greek) an antidote against a poisonous bite; came to mean the practice of giving medicine in sugar syrup to disguise its taste; thus treacle
Are there any others you can think of?
posted by Adam Jacot de Boinod at 3:07 PM
11 Comments:
Oh dear, here we go again.
"sine nobilitate (Latin) without nobility; originally referred to any member of the lower classes; then to somebody who despised their own class and aspired to membership of a higher one; thus snob"
The above is, of course, a load of complete and utter b*llocks. PLEASE stop peddling these silly old wives' tales about language. Has the drubbing that Tingo received given its author no pause for thought at all? It's really not rocket science: you hear some tall tale like this one, and before airing it whether in a book or a blog, you simply check it out in one of your many dictionaries or on a respectable website (a researcher is supposed to be able to tell the difference). For example, glance at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sno1.htm. Let's not see this one turning in QI or in the bookshops this Christmas.
This person should be reading
books about language, not writing them.
For example this one. There's also a very good book called the Oxford English Dictionary which is generally considered pretty reliable.
On your program aired by KPCC (Pasadena) earlier you asked for useful international usages for which there is no proper English equivalent. Here is one:
"m'khuton" - the apostrophe is for the upside-down e as phonetic writing has it. I'm told that the Greeks have an equivalent word. It is for the relationship between parents and parents-in-law (in-law, once removed, as it were) and is from the Hebrew but used in Yiddish. The word is not gender-free, so the female of this species in Yiddish is makhutenesteh, and she is a familiar character in Yiddish pop-songs, e.g., makhutenesteh tahyereh (dear female in-law-once- removed). Note that Yiddish uses of Hebrew words is Ashkenazic rather than Sfardic Hebrew pronunciation, not the now familiar Israeli Hebrew. The trigram root is from Hebrew khatan, meaning groom. Hebrew builds on trigrams, so wedding is khatunah, to become engaged is l'hitkhaten, etc. I find no equivalent in French or in German or Italian, and I think also not present in Polish or Russian, but I may be wrong. I've run out of familiar languages.
Vulgar stands for "vulgaris" or "common", "ordinary" in Latin.
Tragedy stands for "tragos" or "goat" in Greek. Early theater performers dressed in goat skins to look like satyrs.
Bureau:
1699, from Fr. bureau "office, desk," originally "cloth covering for a desk," from burel "coarse woolen cloth" (as a cover for writing desks), dim. of O.Fr. bure "dark brown cloth," which is perhaps either from L. burrus "red," or from L.L. burra "wool, shaggy garment." Offices being full of such desks, the meaning expanded 1720 to "division of a government."
(www.etymonline.com)
Regarding the sound represented by the apostrophe in m'khuton, the "upside down e". It's called schwa, see http://www.thefreedictionary.com/schwa.
A friend recently gave me your book as a birthday gift, and I must say I found it most enjoyable. I suppose I have a certain fascination with words - and non-words, e.g., kemp, ept, etc. - come to that. I have a particular interest in foreign (well, non-English) swear words. My personal favorite is the Dutch 'kreng' which is a dead (obviously) body which is bloated after being submerged in water for a substantial period of time. Wadlopen, also Dtuch, is as interesting a concept as it is a word. Lopen means to walk and het wad, or 'twad is the mud which is revealed when the tide is out between Gronigen province and the island of Tessel. In the summer it is considered great fun to dress in one's rattiest togs and go slogging thru this mud. Under the 'false friends' heading, salsa is the Portuguese word for parsley. And how could you have forgotten to mention 'harvest festivals', British for very large drawers (knickers, not the things you pull out of bureaus.
I have read an article on a magazine that spoke of the expressions to the world, and I have found with sorrow a presumed Portuguese expression: VIAJOU NA MAIONESE.
I am Portuguese, and I have never felt this expression. The person that has written the article has said that in to write the article if he was submitted to the book "The meaning of tingo."
I would like only to understand if the author of the book has made some true searches or does he think that Brazil still makes part of Portugal?
Ho letto un articolo su una rivista che parlava delle espressioni nel mondo, e ho trovato con dispiacere una presunta espressione portoghese: VIAJOU NA MAIONESE.
Sono portoghese, e non ho mai sentito questa espressione. La persona che ha scritto l'articolo ha detto che nello scrivere l’articolo se era affidato al libro “Il senso del tingo”.
Vorrei solo capire se l'autore del libro ha fatto delle vere ricerche o
pensa che il Brasile fa parte ancora del Portogallo?
Yiddish, being as adaptive a language as English, has words for other relationships besides in-laws once removed which draw from the languages spoken where these relationships are encountered. I have no makhutenem since my son's divorce, but I still have nextdoorekem.
"en person fra whiskeybæltet" (danish) means a rich person, living in the north part of Sjælland in Denmark. That's where all the rich people live in Denmark. Directly translated it means "a person from the whiskey-belt" because there is a stereotype in Denmark that all rich people are drunk all the time..
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