The Story of English in 100 Words

by David Crystal

  4. This scribe at work is probably Bede. The picture is in a 12th-century book from the north-east of England, The Life and Miracles of St Cuthburt.

  Some strange things happened to English as the centuries passed. As the language spread to other countries, such as the USA, Australia and South Africa, people started talking about American English, Australian English and so on. This meant that, whenever anyone wanted to talk about the language as it was used in England (as opposed to Britain), they had to use the curious repeated form: English English. And since the early 20th century the word has had a plural, Englishes, referring to the kind of English used in a particular region of the world. People talk of the new Englishes developing in such countries as Singapore and Nigeria – dialects of English, but on a grand scale.

  Anything associated with England attracted the adjective. In the 15th and 16th centuries, an often fatal sweating sickness (probably a type of influenza) was called the English sweat. In the 18th century, foreigners would describe people who were feeling especially low or depressed as having the English malady or melancholy. At roughly the same time, we see the emergence of the English breakfast – a substantial meal consisting of hot cooked food, such as bacon, eggs, sausages and suchlike. It was the contrast with the rest of Europe which was being noted: they just had continental breakfasts. And a similar contrast appeared during the 19th century: an English Sunday, with everything closed, was contrasted with a continental Sunday. In the USA, an interesting use developed in billiards and pool when a player hits a ball on one side so that it spins, affecting the way it bounces off another ball. It must have been an originally British technique, because the idiom is put English on the ball.

  People never seemed quite sure how to handle the word English. In the 17th century, translating something into the language was said to Englify or Anglify it. In the early 18th century it was Anglicised – a usage that evidently didn’t please everyone, for later in the century we find both Englishified and Englishised. Today it seems to have settled down as Anglicise, but there’s still some variation in usage.

  Anglo- and its derivatives have come to dominate, but there’s still some room in the language for Saxon. Celtic speakers sometimes refer to English people as Saxons and their language as Saxon, and the word is hidden within the Scots Gaelic (usually) jocular term Sassenach. Words in English that are of Germanic origin (as opposed to those from Latin and the Romance languages) are often called Saxon words. So there’s some life in the old word yet.

  Bridegroom

  a popular etymology (11th century)

  What has a man about to be married got to do with someone who looks after horses? People have come up with some crazy explanations. Perhaps, in a male-dominated society, the man was thought to be ‘grooming’ his bride, or giving her the value of a horse? Or perhaps, more romantically, he was going to carry her off on his horse? The truth is less exciting, but linguistically more illuminating.

  The word for a man about to be married, or just married, is first found in an Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospel of St John, but it turns up in an unfamiliar form: brydguma. This is a compound of bride and guma, which was a somewhat poetic Old English word for ‘man’. Half a millennium later, in William Tyndale’s translation of the same Gospel, it appears as brydegrome. Why the change?

  During the Middle English period, the word guma fell out of use. Probably most people never used it at all, for the recorded instances are all very literary. It must have been an odd experience, hearing the word brideguma when someone got married. Everyone knew what bride meant, but guma was a mystery.

  And so people, unconsciously, turned it into something more familiar. The change seems to have taken over a century. The latest example of brideguma – spelled bredgome – recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1340; the earliest example of bridegroom – spelled brydegrome – is 1526.

  Why did people replace gome with groom? Because the sound and the meaning of the two words were very close. When groom first arrived in English, in the 13th century, it meant simply ‘man-child’, ‘boy’. It then broadened its meaning to apply to adults, and soon seems to have been restricted to a particular kind of adult male – someone who had an inferior position in a household. By the 16th century, this sense of ‘servant’ had narrowed further to mean an attendant who looks after horses, and this is the primary sense today – though the older use is still seen in the titles of some members of the British royal household, such as Groom of the Chamber.

  So, at the end of the Middle English period, when guma was disappearing, groom, meaning ‘man’, would have been a natural replacement. And thus we have the modern form, which basically means nothing more than ‘bride’s man’.

  The history of English has many examples of this kind of development – what is called ‘popular’ or ‘folk’ etymology. When people encounter an unfamiliar word, they often try to make sense of it by relating it to a word they already know. And if enough people make the same guess, the new formation can become part of the language. We see popular etymology operating again when we button-hole people: we’ve quite forgotten that originally what we were doing was ‘button-holding’ them. And it’s there when we jocularly call asparagus ‘sparrow-grass’.

  Arse

  an impolite word (11th century)

  Arse wasn’t an impolite word when it first arrived in English. It simply meant an animal’s rump, and we see it recorded in writing, from around the year 1000, in all kinds of straight-faced settings, such as glossaries, poems and scholarly works. A 14th-century writer tells us solemnly that ‘haemorrhoids are fine veins that stretch out at the arse’. And in the 16th century the word even turns up as part of a sermon: ‘How arseward [i.e., perverse] a thing it is for every man to be given to his own profit,’ says the preacher. No hint of vulgarity here.

  But things didn’t stay that way. It was inevitable that, as soon as the word began to be used for the human posterior, the association with animals and with excrement would turn it into a ‘dirty word’. We can sense this when we see people searching for a more polite expression. We find bum and buttock in the 14th century, the latter soon shortened to butt, which later became popular in the USA. Backside appeared in the 16th century and posterior soon after. The high regard for politeness in 18th-century society led to several alternatives – bottom and behind, as well as the scientific gluteus maximus and the fastidious derrière. In the USA, the 19th century introduced a genteel pronunciation, ass. And as the politer terms increased, so did the rudeness level of arse.

  An early development was the application of the word to a whole person. Heavy arse, meaning a lazy fellow, is recorded in the 1500s. In Britain and Ireland it became a slang name for a fool – a usage which proved very popular in the 20th century, when comments such as I made a right arse of myself were increasingly heard. The verb also became widespread: to arse about/around is a ruder version of fool about/around.

  The last century also saw the word becoming popular in the British Isles as an exclamation. On its own (Arse!), it’s used as an expression of annoyance, a little stronger than Damn! and very much stronger than Oh no! In the form my arse! it’s a scornful rejection of opinion – a ruder version of Nonsense! and more focused, as it’s usually attached to words that the other person has said. ‘You seem a bit nervous,’ says A. ‘Nervous my arse!’ ripostes B. That’s quite a strong comment. Anyone wanting to retain the force but avoid the rudeness could substitute My foot!

  Arse is one of the ‘taboo words’ of English, whose role is so important in everyday speech that, despite the controversy they arouse, they need to be well represented in any word-list. But it’s important to appreciate that attitudes to taboo words vary greatly over time and place. There are huge differences of opinion over just how rude a word like arse is.

  Several expressions have retained their force, such as when a person is described as being pretentious (He’s up his own arse) or is given a contemptuous rejection (Kiss my ass!,
Up your ass!), and compounds such as arse-licking and arsehole are widely accepted as pretty rude. On the other hand, intensifying expressions such as boring the arse off someone (being extremely boring) or working my arse off (working extremely hard) are less so. The younger you are, of course, the less these usages will make you turn the slightest hair.

  Many people find the force of arse reduced when used in phrases, and may not consider such 20th-century expressions as arse-over-tip (‘head over heels’) or arse about face (‘back to front’) as being rude at all. The same applies to some of its uses as a verb, such as I arsed up my essay. And the word almost loses its identity in arsie-versie or arsy-varsy (‘upside down’, ‘backside foremost’), which was popular in the 1500s and still heard today. It was a jocular adaptaton of vice versa (versa being pronounced ‘varsa’ in the 16th century).

  Part of the uncertainty is that usage varies around the English-speaking world. The replacement of arse by ass in American English, universally encountered through US films and television programmes, has resulted in both forms becoming used in British English. A Brit who would never say arse in polite conversation might well use the intensifying I was working my ass off or talk about someone as being a smart-ass. And the unusual expression ass-backward(s), meaning ‘completely wrong, back-to-front’, has achieved a wider presence too, especially after Thomas Pynchon played around with it in Gravity’s Rainbow (1974). What’s unusual about it, as one of his characters says, is that the ass already faces backwards, so if the expression means ‘wrong way round’ it should really be ass-forwards. But what seems to be happening here is the development of a new, intensifying usage, meaning ‘very’, heard also in some other slang phrases, such as ass o’clock (as in I gotta get up at ass o’clock tomorrow, i.e. ‘very very early’).

  We have to be especially careful when it comes to the adjective arsy. In Britain, the word means ‘bad-tempered’ or ‘arrogant’, as in We get the occasional arsy customer in here. In Australia, the word has developed a positive meaning, ‘lucky’: That was an arsy goal. It’s wise to pay special attention to who’s speaking before deciding what to make of You’re an arsy bastard!

  Swain

  a poetic expression (12th century)

  It’s strange how some words end up only in poetry. Sometimes the reason is to do with the need to keep a particular rhythm in a line – so, if you’re looking for a word with a single beat, you can turn over into o’er, ever into e’er and often into oft. But with such words as lea (§2), dewy, dusky and darksome, which would be highly unlikely to be heard in everyday speech, it’s not at all clear why poets fell in love with them. The story of swain, meaning ‘lover’ or ‘sweetheart’, is one of the strangest, for there’s nothing in its origins to suggest that one day it would become a poet’s word. On the contrary. In Old English, a swan (pronounced ‘swahn’) looked after pigs (swine).

  The word began its journey towards a more refined life in the early Middle Ages. Any young man who held a low social position could be called a swain – but, as today, some low positions were higher than others. In particular, the word was used for one of the servants of a knight – the lowest level, below a squire and a groom, but still a desirable career for a young lad. Gradually, swain came to be applied to any man who was an attendant or follower, and then it broadened in meaning. When Chaucer describes Sir Thopas as a doughty swayn, he means simply ‘valiant man’, and when in one of the York Mystery plays Jesus is described as a litill swayne, the writer means only ‘little boy’.

  But then another association developed, with shepherds and farm labourers, and this is the one that appealed greatly to poets. In Spenser’s Fairy Queen (Book III, Canto VI, Stanza 15) we can see the romantic countryside associations beginning to build up: ‘the gentle shepherd swains, which sat / Keeping their fleecy flocks’. By the end of the 16th century, a swain had become a country wooer. There was even a short-lived derived form, swainling, which was sometimes also used for women.

  Poetic diction is an important element in the history of vocabulary, but it isn’t as popular now as it once was. Today the language of the streets provides most of the lexicon of poetry. We won’t find many modern poets using such words as swain. But Modern English does retain a couple of echoes of the early ‘dogsbody’ meaning of the word, in an unexpected place – the world of boats. The original pronunciation has been lost, but the old word is there in the spelling of boatswain and coxswain.

  Pork

  an elegant word (13th century)

  Why does foie gras sound so much more palatable than goose liver, or boeuf bourguignon more romantic than beef stew? The tradition of preferring French words to English ones in menus has a history which dates from the Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxons would have eaten sheep, pig, cow and calf; but these words were evidently too crude to satisfy the fastidious manners of the newly arrived French court.

  During the early Middle English period, a new set of words became established as the gourmet’s norm. People now ate mutton, pork, beef and veal. The recipe books of the period are full of French words. Here is the beginning of one of them – a 14th-century recipe for fig tartlets. The French words are underlined:

  Tourteletes in fryture. Take figus & grynde hem

  smal; do þerin saffron & powdur fort. Close hem in foyles of dowe, & frye hem in oyle.

  Tartlets in fritter (batter). Take figs and grind them small; put therein saffron and strong powder (spice). Wrap them in foils (layers) of dough and fry them in oil.

  You wouldn’t get far in the kitchen without French. The only cookery words that are Old English are grind and dough.

  Although pork started out within the language of elegant cuisine, its subsequent history was less salubrious. Already in the Middle English period the adjective porkish was being used as a rude description of fat (‘piglike’) people. An obese or greedy person might be called a porkling. Porky came later, in the 18th century, for anything or anyone resembling a pig, and it became the normal insult for someone noticeably overweight. Warner Bros reclaimed the phrase somewhat when the stuttering cartoon character Porky Pig was introduced in the Looney Tunes series in the 1930s. But the general trend was in the opposite direction. Pork continued to pick up negative associations.

  In the 20th century, the process continued when Cockney rhyming slang made pork pie a substitute for lie. Porky pie was used in the same way, and by the 1980s this had been shortened to porky. ‘Don’t tell such porkies,’ someone might say. It is a euphemism, humorously softening the force of lie.

  But the ultimate fall from grace came when pork began to be used for the penis in American slang of the 1930s. How did that change come about? The origin seems to lie in the 17th century. The implements used by pig slaughtermen were colloquially called pigstickers, and this term soon became slang for any kind of sharp implement, especially when used as a weapon. The association with pigs led to porker becoming a slang term for a sword. And the obvious parallels in shape and language (such as sword thrusts) led to both pork and pork sword being used for the male appendage. The French courtiers would have been horrified.

  Chattels

  a legal word (13th century)

  It must have been quite hard, being a lawyer in the Middle Ages in England. Originally, all your law books would have been in Latin. Then, in the 13th century, they start being written in French. Then along comes English. Lawyers had a problem. When they wanted to talk about a legal issue, which words should they use? Should they describe the issue using an English word or opt for the equivalent word in French or Latin? And would the words be equivalent anyway? There might be subtle differences of meaning between an English word and a French one which could make all the difference in a court of law.

  How to choose? If someone decided to leave all his property and possessions to a relative, should the legal document talk about his goods, using the Old English word, or his chattels, using the Old French word? The lawyers thought up an ingenious solution. They would use b
oth. If the document said goods and chattels, they would be covered against all eventualities. So that’s what they did. And the phrase goods and chattels is still used in legal English.

  A large number of legal doublets were created in this way, and some of them became so widely known that they entered everyday English. Every time we say fit and proper or wrack and ruin we are recalling a legal mix of English and French. Peace and quiet combines French and Latin. Will and testament combines English and Latin.

  The pattern caught on. After a while, lawyers began to bring together pairs of words from the same language. To avoid a dispute over whether cease meant the same as desist (both words are from French), they simply said that someone should cease and desist. That’s also why we talk about a situation being null and void or someone being aided and abetted. English words were combined too – hence have and hold, each and every and let or hindrance. Lawyers sometimes went in for even longer sequences, such as give, devise and bequeath. This is one of the reasons legal English seems so wordy. (Another is that lawyers were often paid by the word.)

  Chattels has some interesting linguistic relatives. The French word is a development from Latin capitalis, and this has given us the word capital. It has, less obviously, given us cattle. Today we think of cattle as cows, bulls, calves and other bovine animals. But until the 16th century it had a much more general sense. Any group of live animals held as property, or farmed for food or produce, could be called cattle. So we find the word being used for horses, sheep, goats, pigs, fowls (‘feathered cattle’) and even camels. ‘Take heed,’ says a writer in 1589, ‘thine own cattle sting thee not.’ He was talking about bees.