The Story of English in 100 Words

by David Crystal

  It’s not just the general word that attracts idioms. The individual coins and banknotes do too, reflecting the currency of the culture. So in American English people feel like a million dollars, make a fast buck, bet their bottom dollar and put their two cents worth into a conversation. Some, such as pass the buck, have become part of colloquial standard English everywhere. In other cases, the idiom is translated: in British English, we’re more likely to see feel like a million quid and put in their two pence worth.

  If there’s a change in the currency system, or in the value of money, it quickly affects the language (§86). Penny and pence have been really popular over the centuries, but many of these idiomatic expressions reflect an age when things cost a penny. In old publications we’ll find such expressions as penny dreadful, penny bun, penny bank, penny arcade, penny whistle and penny novelette. Some live on. Many people still say that cheap things are ten a penny, observe that something expensive is a pretty penny and offer others a penny for your thoughts. And, even in an age of new technology, people still say the penny dropped, from the 1930s, when people put a penny in a slot machine. Older people still use the euphemism about going to spend a penny, though the days when a public lavatory had a penny slot are long gone. Today it costs at least 20p, and more in some places. Maybe one day British English will get a new idiom: I have to spend a pound.

  7. The 19th-century Yorkshire Penny Bank building in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. The idea behind the name was that savings could be deposited as small as a penny – a practice that the larger banks did not condone.

  Music

  a spelling in evolution (14th century)

  How many possible ways are there to spell music? Today, just one. But over the history of English we see this word spelled in over forty ways. The word arrived from French in the 14th century, and early spellings reflected its origins. We find the French q in such forms as musiqe, musyque and musique. An English k makes its appearance in musyk, musik and musike. A few writers opted for c, producing musice and music.

  The uncertainty led to some strange combinations. In the 15th century we find musycque, mewsycke, musick, musicke and others. And in the 16th century some writers, evidently totally at a loss, decided to cover themselves by using all three consonants: musickque. The vowels too were variable, especially when people pronounced the word in different ways. We find moosick, mwsick, maisick, masic, meesic and misic.

  When Dr Johnson published his Dictionary, in 1755, most of these variations had disappeared, but the modern spelling had not yet arrived. Johnson had strong views about spelling, and was of the opinion that ‘The English never use c at the end of a word’. So in his dictionary we find musick, as well as comick, critick, physick, publickly and many others. But this is one of those occasions where Dr Johnson’s authority wasn’t enough. In the USA, Noah Webster and other dictionary writers began dropping the final k as part of the changes being introduced into American English. The change evidently had universal appeal, for within a few decades the final k had been dropped from these words in British English too.

  There is still a great deal of variation in the spelling of English words. Some of it is due to the differences between British and American English, such as colour and color or litre and liter. Some is due to different printing traditions, such as judgment and judgement or organise and organize. There is still a great deal of variation over whether to insert a hyphen or not in such words as washing machine and flower pot. And the situation remains fluid, with American spellings increasingly influencing British ones. Words such as encyclopaedia, paediatrics and archaeology are often now seen as encyclopedia, pediatrics and archeology on both sides of the Atlantic, and around the Pacific too. And probably we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The internet is likely to eliminate some of the irregular spellings that have crept into English over the centuries.

  When rhubarb came into English in the 14th century, it had no h: it had such spellings as rubarb and rewbarb. The h was added much later by writers who wanted to show the classical origins of the word. Today, people are voting with their fingers. Type rubarb into Google and you will get 80,000 hits (in 2011). And in fifty years’ time? Maybe rhubarb by then will seem as archaic as Ye Olde Tea Shoppe does now.

  Taffeta

  an early trade word (14th century)

  On 14 July 1724 a fleet of cargo ships arrived in England after the long journey from the East Indies, carrying goods on behalf of the United Company of Merchants. The cargo lists showed 1846 addaties, 1279 alliballies and 1997 baftaes, and the rest of the cargo included various numbers of carridarries, chillaes, cushtaes, doofooties, emerties, ginghams, lacowries, nillaes, romals and taffeties.

  How many of these words do you know? Most people recognise ginghams, and might be able to identify some of the others if they really know the history of fabrics. But for most of us, the terms have no reality other than to provide ammunition for word-guessing games such as Fictionary or Call My Bluff. In fact they are all types of cotton, linen or silk, with names reflecting local Indian usage, or sometimes the town of origin (as with cushtaes, from Kushtia in Bangladesh). A few names refer to types of product, such as romals, which were silk or cotton squares or handkerchiefs.

  We tend to underestimate the importance of words like these in the history of English vocabulary because they are so specialised. Few of them ever get into general dictionaries. But, for a language like English, in a country like Britain, tens of thousands of words have entered the language as a result of global trade. Many of them, such as calico, chintz and khaki, retain a distinctive spelling reflecting their exotic origins.

  Taffeta is first recorded in 1373. It appears in the list above as taffetie – one of many recorded spellings of the word before it settled down in its modern form. Its meaning has varied over the centuries, referring to various kinds of fabric, but its primary application has been to silk of a rich and lustrous quality. This led to taffeta being extended to non-fabric situations. Anything ornate or florid might be described in this way. Shakespeare has one of his characters, Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost (V.ii.406), say how he will never woo a lady in artificial ‘silken terms’. He calls them ‘taffeta phrases’.

  Taffeta is ultimately from Persian, a language we don’t normally think of as a source for English vocabulary; but over the years, either directly or indirectly, it has supplied English with a surprising number of words (§48). You are entering an originally Persian linguistic world if you ever find yourself sitting on a divan in a caravan, wearing a scarlet or lilac shawl, eating couscous, having been checkmated by a rook in chess and watching ‘The Day of the Jackal’. The shawl would have to be taffeta, of course.

  Information(s)

  (un)countable nouns (14th century)

  It’s one of the commonest errors heard when people are learning English as a foreign language. They say such things as ‘I want to buy some furnitures’, ‘I’d like some advices’ and ‘Do you have any informations about that?’ Or they use the singular form, and talk about a furniture, an advice, an information.

  Teachers know why such things happen. It’s often interference from the student’s mother tongue. In French, for example, information is used as a plural when it means ‘news’, so French learners assume the same thing happens in English. Teachers sort it out by getting learners to say a piece of information, and suchlike. And they draw attention to the important distinction between nouns that are countable in English (such as eggs, chairs and elephants) and those that aren’t – uncountable nouns such as information.

  However, we mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking that words like these can never vary. In fact, when information arrived in English from French in the 14th century, it was also used as a countable noun, with the meaning of ‘a charge’ or ‘accusation’. Someone might make informations about you. And in law, this countable usage remains today in various technical senses.

  It was used as a countable noun in everyday English too, in the sense
of ‘a piece of advice’ or ‘a piece of news’. Chaucer talks about wise informations and teachings. Coverdale’s Bible has informations and documents of wisdom. And usages such as reliable informations and latest informations can be found in print written by native speakers right up to the present day. At the same time as all this was going on, of course, information was developing its uncountable use, which is the most common use today in this information age.

  The message is plain. Words can be countable or uncountable depending on the sense we have in mind when we use them. Before the 20th century, tea and coffee were uncountable, apart from in specialist settings where types of tea or coffee were being identified. But in recent times we have seen the development from ‘Would you like tea/coffee?’ to ‘Would you like a cup of tea/coffee?’ to ‘Would you like a tea/coffee?’ and such usages as ‘Two teas/coffees, please’. We also say ‘I like tea/coffee’ and ‘Would you like some tea/coffee’. These words have two uses today.

  Many words switch in this way. We eat cake and a cake. We play piano and a piano. We hear noise and a noise. We turn on a light to let some light in. The process works the other way round too. Countable nouns can become uncountable. I can imagine a children’s story about a family of moths discussing what they’re going to have for lunch today. ‘I’m eating coat’, says one. ‘I tried some coat yesterday, and it wasn’t very nice’, says another, ‘I prefer hat, personally’. Well, why not?

  Gaggle

  a collective noun (15th century)

  I think it went something like this. A group of monks, wondering how to pass the time on a cold, dark winter’s evening in the 15th century, invent a word game. ‘Let’s think up words for groups of things’, says one. ‘What do we call a group of cows?’ ‘A herd.’ ‘A group of bees?’ ‘A swarm.’ ‘A group of geese?’ ‘A flock.’ Words like herd and swarm had been in the language since Anglo-Saxon times. There weren’t many of them, and the few that were available had been used for all kinds of things. People talked about a herd of cranes, wrens, deer, swans, gnats and more. The game must have palled after a while.

  Then someone had a bright idea. ‘Let’s think up better words. What would be a really clever way of talking about geese?’ ‘A cackle of geese, maybe?’ ‘Not bad, but that better suits hens. What about gaggle? It goes better with goose because of the g’s? What do you all think?’ ‘Agreed? Write it down, Brother John.’

  And Brother John did. Or maybe it was Dame Juliana. She was the prioress of Sopwell nunnery, near St Albans in Hertfordshire, and her name appears in a collection of material on hunting, heraldry and folklore that was printed in 1486, called The Book of St Albans. It’s one of the first English printed books, and it contains a list of some 200 collective nouns. Several are traditional expressions, such as herd. But many seem to be inventions. This is where we find a muster of peacocks, an unkindness of ravens, a watch of nightingales, a charm of goldfinches and dozens more. But the list goes well beyond animals. We find a diligence of messengers, a superfluity of nuns, a doctrine of doctors, a sentence of judges, a prudence of vicars and a non-patience of wives. And people tried out fresh combinations. ‘A gaggle of geese?’ ‘What about a gaggle of women?’ ‘Write that down, Brother John.’ He did. A gaggle of women is recorded in a book written around 1470. An early sexist joke.

  Why do I think this is the sort of thing that happened? Because this is a game people still happily play today, and human nature hasn’t changed that much in 500 years. A great deal of entertainment can be derived from thinking up the funniest way of describing a group of ‘X’ – where X can be anything from dog handlers to dentists. What’s the best collective noun for politicians, or undertakers, or linguists? Competitions have produced some fine examples. I made my own collection a few years ago, and found many that deserve prizes. Here’s a top ten:

  An absence of waiters

  A rash of dermatologists

  A shoulder of agony aunts

  A clutch of car mechanics

  A vat of chancellors

  A bout of estimates

  A lot of auctioneers

  A mass of priests

  A whored of prostitutes

  A depression of weather forecasters

  An exces’s of apostrophes

  And still they come. In recent times I’ve encountered a crash of software, an annoyance of mobile phones and a bond of British secret agents.

  Doable

  a mixing of languages (15th century)

  How many English words do you know? People tend to seriously underestimate the size of their personal vocabulary. They think that it’s only a few thousand words. But if you were to take a dictionary and work your way through, ticking the words you know, you’d be pleasantly surprised. The total would be at least 50,000.

  This figure seems less surprising when we reflect on how easy it is to make up new words. A single word can generate a whole family. Happy, happily, happiness, unhappy, unhappily, unhappiness, happy-go-lucky, happy-hour, happy-dust, happy-hearted, happy-clappy, trigger-happy, slap-happy … The prefixes (such as un-) and the suffixes (such as -ly and -ness) are especially important in building up our vocabulary. There are just over a hundred of them in everyday English, and at least one will be found in nearly half the words in the language. Most of them came in from Latin and French during the Middle Ages. That’s when we find a flood of new words beginning with such forms as con-, de-, dis and ex-, and ending with such forms as -ment, -tion, -ity and -able.

  The French suffix -able alone produced hundreds of words. It was immediately used not only with French loanwords, such as agreeable and changeable, but also with Old English words to produce such forms as knowable and doable. Doable, first recorded in the mid-1400s, is a good choice to represent the class. Do is one of the earliest known English verbs, found in some of the first Anglo-Saxon texts, and here it is happily being used with a French suffix. It shows that word-coiners are no respecter of origins.

  Another flood of creations began when un- started to be used with -able words, in the 14th century, so we get unknowable, unthinkable and many more. Then a remarkable thing happened. The -able was added to two-element verbs. We find get-at-able and come-atable, and then unget-at-able and uncome-at-able. Some writers went over the top. Ben Jonson coined un-inone-breath-utterable. But the basic pattern became very popular. Since the 12th century there have been hundreds of coinages, such as undryupable and unkeepoffable. Not all have achieved a permanent place in the language, but some, such as unputdownable, unswitchoffable and unwearoutable, are often used. And a few have developed their own linguistic families. What is the state or quality of ‘being get-at-able’? The 19th century provided the answer. Get-at-ability. Get-at-ableness.

  Matrix

  a word from Tyndale (16th century)

  Ask most young people what matrix means and they will tell you. It is the name of the computer-simulated reality which will imprison the minds of human beings in the not-so-distant future, and it has a capital M. They are thinking of the 1999 science-fiction action film starring Keanu Reeves. This is as far away from the Bible as it is possible to get, but the link is there, linguistically. For the first clear use of the word matrix is in an English translation of the Gospel of St Luke (2: 23) made in 1525 by William Tyndale.

  It’s often said that no single book has had greater influence on the vocabulary of the English language than the Bible. I don’t dispute that, as long as by ‘Bible’ we mean all the English translations that have been made, starting with John Wycliffe’s manuscript version in about 1382 and ending with the King James Bible of 1611. The King James text is usually cited as the main influence, and in a way it was, as its official status meant that it would be heard and read by more people in Britain than any previous translation. But its main role was to popularise. Most of the words and phrases that would become part of everyday English had already been introduced by earlier translations – and by Tyndale, in particular. Think of let there be light, am I my bro
ther’s keeper?, let my people go, the powers that be, the signs of the times and eat, drink and be merry. These are all Tyndale.

  In vocabulary he was extremely conservative, as were most Bible translators. He wanted his translation to be understood by the ordinary person rather than the theologian, so he went in for everyday words, and hardly ever coined words himself. Only 120 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary have a first recorded use attributed to him. They include several compound words, such as busybody, castaway, broken-hearted, long-suffering and stumbling-block, as well as childishness, excommunicate, ungodliness – and matrix.

  Matrix has had an interesting history. It originates in the Latin word for ‘mother’, mater. Tyndale uses it to mean a ‘womb’, which was one of its meanings in Latin. By the 16th century the sense had broadened to mean a place where something begins; by the 18th century, the structure or material in which something is embedded; and by the 19th century, the elements which make up that something, seen as a network. People started applying the term to social networks, talking about a political matrix, for example. And in the mid-20th century it started to be used in the business world: an organisation in which communication operates through a web of relationships was said to illustrate matrix management.