Crow

Why are there so many idioms and phrases including 'crow'? While crows, indeed all the corvid family, are known for their intelligence, it would seem more likely that these creatures are associated with all manner of myths and superstitions which has resulted in them being found in so many idioms.

Eat crow is an American phrase used to suggest one should put up with it. This is born of the idea that the flesh of the bird is edible, albeit probably not desirable. The phrase is found from the 1870s, and in the early years as often seen as ‘eat boiled crow’.

Crow’s feet, the lines at corner of the eye, have been described as such since 1385 when they appear in the writings of no less a literary giant than Chaucer.

To crow, as in to boast, today is seen as the sound made by a rooster, but originally this referred to the sound of a crow and continued to do so until at least the 16th century.

Scarecrows, the name self-explanatory, have been known as such since the 1550s but then it was an actual human employed to do the job. The straw figure came into use around the end of the 16th century. Earlier the same figure was referred to as a ‘shewel’, also found are fray-boggard, skerel, and shoy-hoy.

Crowsnest, the look-out high on a mast of a ship, is not found until 1818 – probably used beforehand but beware history authors putting them into their works set in the 18th century and earlier.

Pilcrow is a now obsolete term, but will be found in documents used to refer to a paragraph mark or an asterisk.

Crowbars have been named as such since at least 1748, although prior to that it was simply known as a crow.

As mentioned the amount of folklore associated with the crow family is remarkable. Magpies carry a drop of the devil’s blood under their tongue; a crow over a house foretells a death within that home; three magpies seen together is seen as unlucky (or death); five crows together promises sickness; crows in a churchyard are a bad omen; two crows flying from the left is bad luck (just face the other way!); the French once believed evil priests became crows and bad nuns were turned into magpies; Go to crows was used instead of Go to hell by the Greeks; I have a bone to pick with you used to be I have a crow to pick with you; the Irish expression ‘You’ll follow the crows for it’ meant a person would miss something when it’s gone; in Somerset folk would carry an onion to ward off the ills of crows and magpies; in Wales it was unlucky to have a crow cross your path; and when crows were quiet during their summer moult, it was believed they were preparing their plumage to meet the devil.

Going Underground: Birmingham

Thanks to Robert Deloyde roving around with his camera, I am able to add more to the information contained in the book. I am indebted to Robert for the information.

Near to the corner of Hill St and Station St was a Gentlemen's Toilet, it was just below the roadway, at some point it was closed down and filled in, when New St Station had a refurb, guess what was uncovered?

Robert was surprised I did not mention the Bus/Coach station that was built but never used under Birmingham's former Central Library.

Robert also pointed me in the direction of the service area of the Big Top, (entrance is opposite Moor St Station). This not built with articulated lorry's in mind in the 1950s, with the exit in New St. Never built because of the cost.

Woolworths in New St had it own service area in Stephenson Street. A loading bay had spaces for the managers cars, the area dark and dingy. Possibly you can still see the slope to the loading bay from Stephenson Street next door to two large lifts still visible in Stephenson Street that go down one floor to an underground car park with room for about twenty cars.

When Rackhams was a going concern at the top of the slope there was a turntable so that you could drive onto the turntable and push the van/lorry around so that you could back onto a loading bay, but what used to happen was that van/lorry's would hit the turntable at speed causing it to turn around until the driver would reverse to the loading bay, thereby stopping the rotation. This turntable lifted many years ago when the vehicles grew too big.

In the book I spoke of working in Digbeth and the problems when the River Rea flooded. Just before the Ironmonger's closed for the last time (Gregory Pank's) after trading for some five decades - Robert took a few shots inside the shop, and with their permission I took a few in their cellar. Full of stuff, including boxes, a table and, in one corner, a pump used to empty the cellar when the river flooded it. Previously this had been a baker and also a pub. The only light into the cellar from a number of glass panes in the ceiling.

Tramways still have some rails in situ, never having been raised.

When work started of HS2 in Curzon Street, on removing the concrete and soil, now covered over, this brick work was revealed and Robert wonders if it belonged to the earlier railway buildings.

Greetings

I have never been one to use slang terms of greeting, prefer more formal greetings. Not that I’m against such, it just isn’t ‘me’. But that doesn’t stop the etymologist in me wondering when 'Hi' and other greetings became popular as a greeting, and examining the origins.

Hello, as a greeting, dates from 1848 and began in the US of A; although the term was used much earlier (albeit seen as hallo, holla, hollo) from at least the 14th century when used simply to attract attention. The rise in popularity, from around 1880, corresponds to the spread of the telephone – this cannot be coincidental.

Hi, the earliest record is from 1862 in the written speech of a Native American from Kansas. This is not to say it was anything but English and is almost certainly from Middle English hy. Hiya is simply an extended form, seen since the 1940s.

Good morning is seen from the early 15th century, prior to that it was ‘Good morrow’.

Good afternoon has been recorded since the early 14th century, rather surprising to find it earlier than the morning version.

Good evening is even earlier still and has been around since the Saxon era.

How do you do – is a formal greeting from 1632.

How’s it going – a more casual greeting seen since the early 17th century.

How are you – is first seen in print in 1666, courtesy of William Killigrew’s play Selindra: A Tragy-Comedy

Hey has been around since the early 13th century when, rather than a greeting, was used to indicate anger, derision, or a challenge.

What’s up – has appeared in fictional works since the early 20th century, although it was never really used in general conversation until it became the catchphrase of Bugs Bunny as ‘What’s up, Doc?’

Howdy appears in print from 1720 as ‘howdy’ee.

G’day is the abbreviated version, often associated with Australians, of goodday, seen since the early 12th century.

Long time no see is seen for the first time in print in 1843 in James Campbell’s Excursions, Adventures, and Field-Sports in Ceylon - although it was not used as a greeting for at least another fifty years.

What’s new – popularized by the song composed in 1939, but a form of greeting since the early 19th century.

What’s happening has been used as a greeting from around the 1920s.

Yo is a greeting used by sailors since the early 15th century.

And we should also mention the non-verbal greetings. The nod, the smile, both fairly obvious – but what about the raised eyebrows? Eyebrows as a form of communication are particularly eloquent; surely they would have conveyed messages and moods at least as early language developed – and it is tempting to think they may even have pre-dated same.

A Whole Lot of Nothing

Subtract one from one and you get nothing. Or do you? For a number representing nothing there are a lot of synonyms. If nothing is nothing - you can't touch it, hold it, or see it – then why are there so many words meaning the same thing?

Roman numerals did not represent zero in any way; were they right? Is the zero represented in every other language and culture? I wondered whether an etymologists look at the many synonyms could unravel this puzzle. Read on …….

Zero came to English from Old French, earlier found in Medieval Latin zephirum, and from Arabic sifr and Sanskrit sunya-m ‘empty place, desert’.

Nil is, as many will know, abbreviated Latin and has only been used in English since 1833. Correctly nihil or nihilum meaning ‘nothing, not at all, in vain’; it comes from the negative of hilum meaning ‘small thing, trifle’.

Nought is from Old English nowiht ‘nothing’, and onlt used to mean ‘zero’ since the 15th century.

Naught is from Old English nawiht and literally means ‘no wiht’ ‘no thing, no creature’. Again, not until the 15th century did it come into use as the a synonym for ‘zero’.

Nothing is from Old English ‘no thing’, and has been around since Saxon times.

Null is another of Latin derivation, French nul and Latin nullus, and ultimately Proto-Indo-European from ne unus ‘not one’.

None is from Middle English non, Old English nan, and from Germanic ne ‘no’.

Nada is an American slang word gaining in popularity in the UK, it is Spanish for ‘nothing’ and was introduced as a slang word by the writings of Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place published in 1933.

Zip dates from 1900, US student slang for a grade scoring zero. It gained more general popularity in the 1970s when used to refer to a sporting defeat without scoring.

Zilch initially, from 1933, was always capitalized and used to refer to an insignificant person. This was inspired by the satirical magazine Ballyhoo, which featured a character named Elmer Zilch who gave an insight into advertising and the consumer culture. A contemporary of Elmer was Joe Zilch, a fictional vaudeville performer represented what we might today call ‘Joe Public’. Not until 1957 is there any record of it meaning ‘zero’.

Cipher may most often be seen as a synonym for ‘code’ these days, but it first came to English from Old French cifre it meant ‘zero’. Also seen in Spanish and Italian as cifra, all these can be traced to Arabic sifr and ultimately a loan-word from Sanskrit sunya-s ‘empty’.

Sweet Fanny Adams also meant nothing. The story is a sad one and begins with a young girl named Fanny Adams who was murdered in 1867 in Alton, Hampshire, England. The phrase became associated with the idea of something worthless or nonexistent, possibly due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Fanny Adams's death. While the exact circumstances of its usage in the military and its widespread adoption are not fully documented, it's clear that "Sweet Fanny Adams" became a popular slang term for "nothing" over time.

In tennis the term ‘love’ is used to represent zero. This is an Anglicised l’oeuf as ‘the egg’ was said to be likened to the 0.

And not only the Romans failed to have a zero, the Greeks (although they had a word for it), nor the Babylonians didn’t either. Indeed, the concept of ‘zero’ is actually quite recent compared to other numbers. Fibonacci is credited with bringing zero to Europe in the early 13th century – the concept was clearly already in use, but not in a mathematical sense. The Chinese used an image to represent zero, but that image was simply a space. The concept of zero before decimals was introduced in the 3rd century AD in India. In the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas, such as the Mayans, the zero was included – and to get into a discussion of where they got it from is not something I’m going to attempt. Like 1 to 9, 0 is considered a cardinal number and you can also have negative 0.

Does this answer the question of why there are so many versions of zero? Maybe.

Proto-Indo European

In many of my posts on etymology I have spoken about Proto-Indo European, the language from the end of the last Ice Age which has given rise to almost all the tongues across Europe, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. I thought it about time I posted an image of the language family tree with Proto-Indo-European at the hub. I say an image, because having tried to explain it in writing several times, the visual image is undoubtedly much easier to understand. Actually a number of images, because the complexity requires a number of different angles on that tree.

That covers the spoken word, but it is worthwhile mentioning the written word, especially as Proto-Indo-European had no written form. The oldest written language, with the earliest known records, is generally considered to be Sumerian, a language spoken in Mesopotamia around 3500 BC. While Sumerian is no longer spoken, its written form is the earliest evidence of a language system in existence. Other contenders for the title of oldest language, including those still spoken today, include Egyptian and Tamil, which also have documented histories dating back thousands of years.

Digraphs

The combining of two letters to produce a single sound, such as PH to produce the F sound, are known as ‘digraphs’. The term first recorded in 1788. Diagraphs split into two distinct groups: consonant digraphs and vowel digraphs.

Taking the consonants first, there are six of these:

sh is first seen in Old English when appearing in words such as ‘fish’; however the earliest words used the sound but used the spelling ‘fc’ more often until Middle English.

kn also appears in Old English but the pronunciation was rather different, indeed ‘knee’ and ‘knife’ were pronounced ‘ker-nee’ and ‘ker-nife’ until the 17th century and hung on regionally after that.

ch makes its first appearance in Latin and Greek around the 2nd century, slowly influencing English pronunciation over several centuries.

ph is recorded in Greek centuries before Old English ever came into existence, the use in English coming in slowly and almost with individual words.

wr appears in English for the first time in the 9th century. Originally the ‘w’ element was pronounced, but disappeared by the 16th century.

ck is first seen in the Dark Ages, when Old English and Old Scandinavian words of similar spelling united.

ss is seen for the first time in a manuscript featuring a poem by Wolfdietrch around the end of the 13th century.

Vowels are a little more numerous, the eight examples being:

ea is seen in English from the early 16th century.

oa is seen from the earliest times of the development of Old English.

ee is also found from the earliest examples of Old English.

oo appears rather late in the development of Modern English, seen for the first time in Middle English around the 16th century.

ai is found from around the later years of Old English, prior to this ‘ay’ was more common.

au is seen from the late Old English era, but even today as different vowel sounds – as seen in ‘laugh’ and ‘taut’.

ow is also seen in two different forms, as in blow and owl, both found from the late Old English period.

ou makes its debut in the early Middle English period.

There are also examples of trigraphs – tch, igh, ear, eer, dge, ere – all of which are mere extensions and therefore rather later developments.

And finally, why do we say….. ?

Curiosity killed the cat – a warning not to be nosey – appears in an Irish newspaper in 1868, although some sources cite 16th works by William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson.

One bad apple – doesn’t take many to ruin something – is certainly in use in the 18th century, but is also found as ‘a rotten apple quickly infects its neighbour’ as early as 1340.

Come rain or shine – to succeed no matter what - is certainly in use in 1905, but there are variations on the theme dating back to the 17th century.

A penny for your thoughts – what are you thinking – is from the 16th century, popularized by John Heywood in 1547 in The Proverbs and Epigrams of John Heywood, but first appearing in 1522 and Sir Thomas More’s Four Last Things.

Add insult to injury – something adding to the punishment, an unnecessarily – derives from the fables of Phaerus in the first century.

Don’t give up your day job – you’re not very good at this – originated in the theatre, where would-be actors tried their hand during evening performances.

Birds of a feather flock together – those with similar likes tend to gather – comes from William Turner’s 1545 satire The Rescuing of Romish Fox.

Comparing apples to oranges – making unfair comparisons – began in 1670 with John Ray’s proverb collection, although the term then was ‘apples and oysters’.

Cold feet – exhibiting a significant change of opinion – appears in English for the first time in 1878 with the translation of the German novel Seedtime and Harvest when a character’s luck at the poker table takes a significant downturn and he leaves the game.

Kill two birds with one stone – get two jobs done with one action – does appear in 1656 in the works of Thomas Hobbes, but almost certainly came from the Greek tale of Daedalus and Icarus.