Radio Script #1167

Little Talks on Common Things
May 28, 1978

Let us begin this broadcast with another reference to one of my favorite subjects, the origin of English words. A few weeks ago I mentioned a dozen of Latin origin. Today let us notice a few that come from the Anglo- Saxon, that branch of the Germanic languages from which English is primarily derived.

The earliest known inhabitants of the British Isles were Celts, whose descendants are still found in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, though only in a minor degree today. In England itself, a powerful tribe of Celts was the Picts, but even they have left very few words from the ancient tongue that have carried over into modern English.

The basic language from which present-day English derives came with the Germanic invasions in the fifth century A.D. During the last half of that century, boatload after boatload came from the Frisian islands and parts of what is now Holland to the English coast. By the beginning of the sixth century they had taken complete possession of all England south of the Scottish border, had driven the Celts north into the Scottish highlands, west into the mountains of Wales, or across the stretch of sea into Ireland. So complete was their elimination of the Celtic population that a modified form of Germanic speech of what were called the low countries (Western Germany, Holland and Belgium) and especially the islands off those coasts, became the prevailing speech of England.

As centuries passed, that early speech of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes – the then dominant people of the Germanic migration – was greatly modified by two influences: the Latin of the Roman church, and even more by the Norman Conquest
of 1066 that brought a multitude of French words into England. With that brief historical survey out of the way, let us note some present-day words that go far back to the Anglo-Saxon origins of 1500 years ago.

The German word for dog is Rund. That of course gives us our word hound. The Anglo-Saxon starben (to die) gives us our word starve. Wife did not mean in Anglo-Saxqn the spouse of a man, but simply a woman, a female. Walk comes from walken, to go forward, to advance. Our word mood, meaning feeling or disposition comes from mod, which originally meant courage.

One tendency in word development is what is called specialization, making a general meaning more specific. In Anglo-Saxon the word doer meant any beast. It gives us our word deer, evidence that the particular animal must have been very common in England a thousand years ago. Tell, toll and tally all come from the same old verb, tellan, meaning to count. In their origin, those words all had to do with money. That is an example of generalization, just the opposite of specialization – from a specific to a more general meaning.

Long persisting belief in the location of heaven is revealed in the word’s origin, for the Anglo-Saxon herfon meant the sky. Swing once meant to strike. Rich is the German word Reich (power) as in the well-known phrase Deutche Reich, the German Realm or Power.

The word knight, the lowest of the many ranks of British nobility, had a very humble origin. It is allied to the modern German word knabe, a boy. Even more humble is the origin of steward. He was at first the ward, the keeper of his master’s pigs.

In modern English we have largely lost the old Anglo-Saxon practice of self-explaining, compounds. Of course we have many left, such as sawmill, gristmill, storehouse, handicraft, housewife, handbook, kneehigh, slowfooted and muddleheaded. But Anglo-Saxon was like modern German in making long self-explaining compounds. For instance, the German word Spatherbstnachmittag takes five English words to explain it: “An afternoon in late autumn.” It is a self-explaining compound because each part gives its own explanation, and when the four parts of the German word are put together, the entire explanation is apparent to anyone who knows the· meaning of each part. To get the explanation, l’ll begin at the last syllable and work backward. The last syllable of spatherbstnachmittag is ag, the word for day. Just before it is mtt, and we now have midday. Immediately before that is nach, after; so nachmittag meant after midday or afternoon. The preceding syllable is herbst, autumn. We now have autumn afternoon. The first syllable is spat, late. So the whole word becomes late autumn afternoon, an afternoon in late autumn.

These long winded self-explaining compounds are well known to people who follow grand opera, even on Saturday afternoon radio. They are quite aware that Gotterdamerung means Twilight of the Gods. Preachers have long told us from the pulpit that gospel in its origin simply meant good spell, good talk, or good news. It got its Christian meaning out of the pagan Anglo-Saxon word because the Christian message was considered good news.

The word had originally meant strong, as in our expression “fight hard.” The word play comes from an old verb meaning to move. Borrow is from borgan, to pledge or promise. The word sad has a long history. It was at first an adjective applied
to salted meat. Because that became with time tasteless and uninviting, people got tired of it. So sad came to mean tiresome, wearisome. From that the final step to general melancholy was easy.

The simple preposition with was at first equated with the Latin anti, against. That meaning survives in our words withhold and withstand. The expression widow’s weeds is a reminder that weed was once the word for any kind of garment. We still sometimes hear a person praised for his mother wit. In that sense the word wit has nothing to do with humor. The word originally meant knowledge. As late as Shakespeare’s time, a thousand years after the Germanic invasion, a common English expression was “I wit not,” meaning I don’t know. Another old expression, “the quick and the dead” reveals that the word quick once meant alive.

Finally, our simplest English one-syllable words of Anglo-Saxon origin, unaffected by the later Latin and French influences, good, bad, love, hate, life, death, smile, frown, are very old words. The same is true of the words that common people, not physicians, use for parts of the body – head, foot, arm, leg, toe, knee, lungs and heart.

In short, the fundamental core of the English language consists of words brought across the channel from the lowlands of Western Europe 1500 years ago.

When I was a college student, members of the Colby faculty were supposed to lead solemn, dignified lives. Of the Colby faculty of that time, only Prof. Clarence White, the teacher of Greek, was known to have a sense of humor. His keen wit was evident on many occasions. His colleague in the ancient classics, Professor Julian Taylor, teacher of Latin, was just the opposite. He was never known to smile, never cracked a joke, never lost his supreme dignity. It was many years after my graduation before I learned that Taylor also had a humorous streak in his august makeup that revealed itself in his letters preserved by some of the persons to whom he wrote.

In the early 1920’s both Professor Taylor and his long-time acquaintance, Henry S. Burrage, noted Baptist preacher and editor, as well as Colby trustee, were getting along in years. Here is the contents of a letter written by Taylor to Burrage 55 years ago in 1923. “lt is a pleasure to see your handwriting, though I did not expect to be able to read it. Many years ago I managed with some labor to decipher one of your scholarly sermons in which you disputed, with your knowledge of Greek, the customary translation of one of St. Paul’s statements. If there has been the same advance in your spirituality as in your hand writing, you are now prepared abundantly for your place in heaven.

“Well do I remember when I met you, as our new minister, in Mrs. Webb’s sitting room. No doubt you also recall the good lady, her admirable table, and her rather less admirable manner of addressing her good, but too weak husband, the deacon. lt was at a later date, when you were no longer with us, that Prof. Elder, Judge Stewart and I were her boarders. Arriving a little late one day, the Judge overhead the lady giving her husband a piece of her mind. Their much prized Jersey cow had produced a calf not of the gender desired, and the lady berated her husband, saying all he was good for was to produce bull calves.

“Is it an insult to you that, as the years pass, I remember not the general content of your excellent sermons, but only some of the very witty remarks you included in them? Do you recall saying, “When it rains, the wise man’s basin is always right side up?”

Another of Dr. Taylor’s traits is revealed in this same letter. He was by no means the cold, unfeeling individual many thought him to be. His sympathetic concern for others is shown by these words he wrote to Dr. Burrage. “You would not find many of your old friends now in Waterville, so many of them have passed on. One still living is Miss Florence Plaisted. She still occupies her old home on the corner of Main and Center streets, a victim for some years of a paralytic stroke. . She is confined to her chair for the most part, but in fine weather with the help of a nurse, moves out to a seat on the porch. I call upon her occasionally and find her mind not at all affected, but alert as ever. She passed her 80th birthday recently. Most of your old friends are now names on stones in the cemetery. There, indeed, lie all of the faculty of that time from Professor Smith to janitor Sam Osborne. Whether the rest of us ought not also to be there is an open question. While we flatter ourselves that we are as-good as ever, other people may think differently.”

And with this reminder that Colby professors long ago did have a sense of humor, we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1978