The Letter H

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with The Letter H. The eighth letter of the English alphabet has the distinction of being the first letter to have its own listing in the dictionary, doing so many years before the second. Look up 'H' and discover the recommended pronunciation is 'aitch' although the dictionary concedes the increased use of 'haitch' is an alternative. Hear, too, how the letter came to English, of its changing usage throughout history and just how the letter's upper case rugby posts-like image and corresponding lower case form came about. Yet this is not just a talk about a single letter but a look at the development, changing usage and beginnings of our all-too familiar alphabet.

The letter ‘H’, the eighth letter of the alphabet, is also listed in the OED under the first letter of the alphabet – ie ‘A’. This is because the letter ‘H’ is unique as it is the only letter in the OED to be listed as a word. Why on earth would this be I hear you cry – well no, I don’t but you’re finding out anyway. It is because of the plural, a plural found in the phrase (sadly not used anywhere near enough these days) “to drop one’s aitches”.

Now dropping one’s aitches is the reason why some refer not to AITCH but to HAITCH. Remember Parker the chauffeur in Thunderbirds? He was your archetypal cockney, his speech saw him drop the aitch at the beginning of words such as ‘appy, ‘elp, ‘erring, and ‘enry, but include an erroneous ‘h’ at the beginning of words such as h’easter, h’avenue, h’artist, and h’England. Now somewhere along the way someone thought the letter ‘aitch’ began with an ‘aitch’ when it doesn’t but it does end in an ‘aitch’

Now the OED base their rules very much on usage. Thus the more people get it wrong and say HAITCH the more likely it will be that HAITCH will lose its listing under ‘A’. Indeed the OED already recognise both forms, so the rot has probably already set in so far it is impossible to reverse

Not only do we add an ‘h’ at the beginning when none is present, but we also pronounce the ‘h’ at the beginning of words where the ‘h’ is present but accepted pronunciation is without. Perhaps the best known of these is ‘hotel’ which, being of French derivation, should be said to be ‘otel and thus we should say ‘an hotel’ not ‘a hotel’. There are others: such as ‘hour’, ‘heir’ and ‘honest’ which have also come to English from French.

We also need to look at the origin of the letter for, like all letters and symbols, they were not simply invented but developed. To do so it is probably easier to work back from the present era rather than forward from the beginning of writing. During the last thousand years the letter has become harsher in languages such as Portuguese and Spanish; while Romance languages, such as Romanian, had lost the sound completely until re-borrowed from neighbouring Slavic languages. All these come from Etruscan ‘H’ and this comes, in turn, from archaic Greek alphabets the letter became a long vowel, borrowed directly from the earliest known form as a letter. While the Greek version is eta early forms give this as heta, itself also seen in the Phoenician heth. The Phoenician alphabet had two forms, one clearly very similar to a modern capital ‘H’ and the other related to Old Semitic which appears as the ‘H’ but with a bar at both top and bottom. This in turn clearly represents a part of the Egyptian hieroglyph known as ‘fence’. Both of these are referred to as a ‘voiceless pharyngeal fricative’ and undoubtedly stood for a fence or posts.

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Gobbledegook

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Gobbledegook. Gobbledegook describes speech which is not clear and a term coined around the 16th century when said to be imitative of the turkey. Gobbledegook from yesteryear is not readily seen for the terminology has become ingrained in the English language. Those featured may not be realised as having been created to describe something in an unusual way. The focus is on those words we are less likely to understand, the modern terms coined to be 'buzz words' and the so-called 'new speak' featured in offices across the country.

Balderdash – first seen in the 1590s the origin is officially said to be ‘unknown’. This early use was quite different in referring to ‘a jumbled mix of liquors’ and not until the 1670s was the modern meaning first seen.

Hogwash – first seen in the middle of the 15th century as two Middle English words hogges and wash. At the time it referred to slops fed to pigs, be it refuse from the kitchen or from a brewery. By 1712 this referred to ‘cheap alcoholic drink’ and fifty years later to ‘inferior writing’. At the time the term was coined, ‘hog’ referred to a castrated male, hence one reared for slaughter and encouraged to eat anything it could to fatten it up; while ‘wash’ was used here to refer more to that skimmed off, such as the cuttings from vegetables or the waste left over from brewing.

Poppycock – is seen as so very twee isn’t it? Almost has to be followed by some chinless wonder asking “anyone for tennis?” Yet the origin is anything but innocent. It comes from the Dutch dialect pappekak where pappe means ‘soft food’ and kak ‘dung’.

Tosh – as British slang it meant ‘rubbish, nonsense’ and there is no known earlier form and thus the origins are unknown. However, it could be a loan word for there is also an earlier Scottish word ‘tosh’ from 1776 and used to mean ‘neat, clean, trim’. We also find another English use dating from 1852 and slang used very much in the capital from 1852 to speak of, somewhat extraordinarily, ‘valuables collected from drains’.

Mullet – now nobody uses mullet-head any more, even though the Beastie Boys recorded Mullet Head – of which we all recall the wonderful lyric “Number one on the side and don’t touch the back; number six on the top and don’t cut it wack, Jack.” However the insult ‘mullet-head’ existed from 1866 (130 years before the haircut) and even nine years before the fish is first recorded (although doubtless the name was in use at least at the same time and probably before). Hence ‘mullet’ originally meant something or someone stupid.

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Foreign Words in English

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Foreign Words in English. English has more words than any other language. This is, in part, due to the once vast British Empire and the many languages spoken in the outposts. Yet there are at least as many words which have been borrowed from other tongues. Often these loan words have retained the original meaning, but others have changed completely. While Latin and even French phrases are easily recognised, here we concentrate on the less obvious and the words more ingrained in English. Learn how words such as 'trek', 'yacht', 'beige', 'bandanna', 'bangle' and 'bungalow' were never truly English.

Bete noire – (French) a person or thing one particularly dislikes (literally ‘black beast’)

Cosa Nostra – (Italian) a US criminal organization related to the Mafia (literally ‘our thing’)

Doppelganger – (German) an apparition or double of a living person (literally ‘literally double-goer’)

Ex officio – (Latin) by virtue of one’s position or status (literally ‘out of duty’)

Katzenjammer – (German) a hangover or a severe headache accompanying a hangover (literally ‘cat’s wailing’)

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Etymology of Unusual Surnames

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Etymology of Unusual Surnames. The concept of the hereditary surname came to Britain with the Normans. As people were less likely to move about, and there were less of them, given names were followed by a point of origin, a paternal name, a trade or a nickname. The same is true today although, as we now take the names of our parent or parents, the meaning and the reason they were chosen are not altogether so obvious. So where does your name originate? Does it reveal anything about your ancestors? Who else shares or once shared your name? And why are names such as Cholmondley and Featherstonehaugh pronounced so oddly?

Cholmondley is a Cheshire place name - this the reason why it has become pronounced ‘chum-lee’. It is ‘the woodland clearing of a man named Ceolmund’.

Snodgrass - another place name, it stands – at a bend of the River Garnock at Irvine, Ayrshire and comes from Old English snod graesse or ‘smooth grass’. Here ‘smooth’ doubtless refers to the level land rather than the grass itself.

When it comes to the most common names in English, and I’m discounting imported names such as ‘Singh’ and ‘Khan’ on the basis they aren’t from our shores and this is an English etymological talk, Smith is still the most common but only at 1.15% of the population; Jones amounts to 0.94%, Williams at 0.66%, and Taylor at 0.53%

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Etymology of Transport

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Etymology of Transport. Not so much a history of transport in an engineering sense but a look at the terminology and how the names developed. See how the names of the 'car', 'bus', 'train', 'cycle', 'boat' and others. And it is not only the transport but learn how the distance between the rails for both the railways and the trams came about. Hear how quite familiar terms have the most surprising origins, and discover some quite extraordinary facts and figures for the modes of transport with which we are so familiar. There is a PowerPoint presentation to accompany this talk if required.

When associated with the transport of goods we use ‘cart’, today as a verb as well as the original noun. It comes from the same root as ‘chariot’ and also gave us ‘crate’. This last word is worthwhile examining further, for the original carts and chariots were made to contain goods and were produced with a body made of wickerwork, this can still be seen in the Dutch words crate ‘woven mat, hamper’ and krat ‘a basket’

Coach is named from the place where it was first produced, the village of Kocs in Hungary. Today the Hungarian word for ‘car’ is kosci

Truck shares an origin with ‘truckle’, although not used in the vehicle sense until 1610s. The term ‘truckle’ spoke of the ‘small wheel’, it derived Proto-Indo-European dhregh ‘to run’.

Glider is the name of the motorless aircraft seen from 1898, this agent noun from ‘glide’ itself changed little over several millennia until Proto-Germanic gave us a number of words from the same root but with different meanings such as ‘glide’, ‘shining’ and also ‘joyful’ – these are all based on the Proto-Indo-European ghel ‘to shine’ and the general idea is a smooth and reflective surface.

Thought it might be of interest to add a different mode of transport – and thus let’s look at the humble ski. Now the modern ski is misleading, for it smacks of MODERN in large and very loud letters. This is only some 150 years of history, while the history of the ski goes back at least 10,000 years and is one of the earliest man-made modes of transport. Today we skid along on skis, historically they were used mostly as a snow-shoe, to spread the weight of the wearer and prevent singing into the snow. This is why the Old Norse word of skith not only gave us ‘ski’ but also ‘skid’ but was originally coined to describe ‘a stick of wood’. Taking it further back we find Proto-Germanic skid meaning ‘to divide, split’ and also seen in Proto-Indo-European skei ‘also meaning ‘to cut, split’ and clearly how the original skis were produced, by driving pegs into a log along the grain and using that to splinter off a piece which would naturally be quite flat. It is thought the idea of may have developed twice – for some use of a ski in the eastern European regions required the user to have a bigger ski and would lie prone upon it and scoot up closer to seals and other prey on the ice and thus get a clearer shot with harpoon or bow and arrow. As an unrelated addition note this Proto-Indo-European skei ‘split’ is also the basis for the prefix of ‘schizophrenic’, which came to us through Greek; it is also the root of Old Church Slavonic cediti ‘to strain’; Old Irish sceid ‘to vomit’ or ‘spit’; and Old Norse skita ‘to shit’

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Etymology of Railways

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Etymology of Railways. Not the normal look at railways past or present. Here we look at the engineering but through the eyes of the etymologist. Discover how an engine became known as such. Hear how the boiler, the gasket, the valve, the station and even the train have origins further back in history than you could ever imagine - and with rather different meanings

Gasket – in modern times this is a rather antiquated item, although this piece of equipment is by no means obsolete. A gasket is essentially a seal, one which originally would have provided the seal between two castings and one which, when oiled and crushed between the two halves, created a seal which was essentially both air-tight and water-tight. The early gasket was little more than a length of oiled rope, Flexible enough to be adjusted to fit whatever shape was required, the use meant these were not going to be overly thick pieces and also not very long. The approximate length likened to pieces of rope already in use, these were used to secure the furled sails on sailing ships, giving them the instantly recognisable curves of the sail. These pieces of rope were also known as gaskets, derived from a term which was originally the feminine form of the French garcon ‘boy’. However it did not refer to just any girl, but to a girl who wore her hair in a plait, a plait coming from the side of the head and secured with a short length of rope – another gasket. However, just as a chain around the ankle once signified something here, this also marked out a lady of the night. Several completely different uses and yet all marked by a short length of rope.

Train – the verb, meaning ‘to instruct’, came from the noun. Originally looking at the ‘drawing out’ of a trailing part of a skirt, gown or cloak. This is all from the Latin tragere ‘to pull’ and shares a root with ‘tract’.

Station – seen in a railway sense from 1830, the noun had existed in English since the 13th century in the sense ‘place normally occupied’ and is related to the Latin stare ‘to stand’, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sta ‘to stand, make firm’.

Express – the railway noun is from the early use of the noun (1610s) to mean ‘a special messenger’ – one assumes no special messenger would be slower or the same speed as an ordinary messenger. Now the use of ‘express’ to mean ‘state explicitly’ is derived from the ‘rapid’ and is easier to see as ‘ex-press’, two words suggesting something seen having been pressed and that is how the word developed. These, and other senses, are all from the Latin premere meaning ‘to press, push’ and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European per ‘to strike’.

If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.

Medals and Awards

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Medals and Awards. For most the list of awards making the headlines at New Year and the King’s Birthday List are simply a list of people, many of whom we have never heard of and probably will never hear of again. Those awarded medals in times of conflict are more likely to be remembered, if only because the recipients have become a part of history. As numismatists - those associated with coins as well as medals - will confirm, medals and awards all have a beginning, were created for a specific reason. While we often hear the narrative of the recipient, we rarely if ever hear of the story behind the award itself. Here is a talk giving a different historical view. An examination of the award, its beginnings and event the recipients, albeit a rather different look.

Order of the Garter – or correctly the Most Noble Order of the Garter was founded in 1348 by Edward II, it is limited to just 24 members at any one time, effectively 23 as the monarch is automatically one, and is made at the reigning monarch’s pleasure. New appointments are always made on St George’s Day, although there is no reason to believe this was the date of its inception, this is merely a much later idea of nationalist pride and not a true ‘tradition’. The emblem’s motto is famously Honi soit qui mal y pense or ‘Shame on him who thinks evil of it. Now nobody really knows why Edward III started this but there is a story and we should cover same. It seems the Countess of Salisbury was dancing at court in Calais when a garter slipped from her leg, to save her blushes and put a stop to the giggles from courtiers, the kind slipped it on his own leg and uttered the immortal words Honi soit qui mal y pense. This is simply the most popular of the stories. Another speaks of King Richard I who, while on the crusade to the Holy Land, ordered his knights to tie garters around their legs and when they won Edward III subsequently marked this with the order of the garter. The motto actually refers to Edward’s claim to the French throne, the order created to help pursue this claim. ETYMOLOGICALLY the four words have rather different roots giving a somewhat different meaning if we see Order as ‘to fit together’, which seems quite logical; ‘of’ was originally ‘off, away’; ‘the’ confusingly used to be ‘this,that’; and ‘garter’ is derived from an unknown root leading to the Old Welsh garr ‘leg’ and Old French jartier ‘bend of the knee’.

Order of the Bath – this began as the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath and was founded by George I on May 18th 1725. Its name comes from the elaborate ceremony involving bathing of a knight when appointed to this order of chivalry – the bath symbolised purification. It is often said George I revived the Order of the Bath but this is not possible as it never existed prior to then. It is awarded for service and is at the monarch’s pleasure. The award bears two mottos: TRIA IUNCTA IN UNO Latin for ‘THREE JOINED IN ONE’ and the German ICH DIEN ‘I serve’. ETYMOLOGICALLY the four words have rather different roots giving a somewhat different meaning if we see Order as ‘to fit together’, which seems quite logical; ‘of’ was originally ‘off, away’; ‘the’ confusingly used to be ‘this,that’; and ‘bath’ or ‘to warm’, is a little easier to see for no one wants to be immersed in cold water.

Distinguished Service Cross – renamed from the earlier Conspicuous Service Cross in October 1914, it was awarded to those of the British Armed Forces, Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and British Merchant Navy for “…gallantry during active operations against the enemy.” ETYMOLOGICALLY ‘distinguished’ is used in the ‘celebratory’ sense from 1714, coming to English through French from Latin where disinguere literally means ‘to separate between’ and is ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root ‘to push, thrust’; ‘service’ in a military sense is seen from the end of the 13th century, this from ‘serve’ and originally meant ‘to be a slave’; ‘cross’ is a strange word and may well have two quite separate etymologies, although no proof of same has ever been found - for the sense of the ‘X’ image, the religious image, and even the ‘irate’ sense, all seem to stem from a root meaning ‘thwart, hinder, oppose’ and quite literally as ‘cross purposes’, while there is undoubtedly a quite different sense in the Germanic languages epitomised by the Saxon ‘cross’ which was simply a marker and did not even have a cross piece until Christianity arrived in Britain.