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.

Homonyms, Etymologically Speaking: B

Many words have two meanings, sometimes more, which are often very different. Such words have identical spelling and pronunciation, they are known as homonyms. Here I continue an A to Z list of such words and look at how that word came to have two different meanings.

B is for band and also for bat. Taking 'band' first, clearly the earliest usage would have been as in the sense 'a flat strip, that which binds'. This word is seen in Old English bend, Old Scandinavian band, and Old French bande, and all with identical meanings. Clearly this monosyllabic word has been around a long time, and we can trace it back to the root word bhendh, meaning 'to bind' in Proto-Indo-European.

The second use of 'band' is as in the sense 'an organised group', particularly used when speaking of an armed group of men. It is not difficult to see how the 'binding' of a flat strip has been transferred to the 'binding together' of a group of individuals. This is also why a group of musicians are known as a 'band', and has been since at least 1660.

An examination of 'bat' looks at both the flying mammal and that used to hit a ball (or similar) in sporting contests. Taking the latter first, Old English batt was used to refer to a cudgel, and was a loan word from Irish bat and Gaelic bata, both having identical meanings. These come from the Proto-Indo-European bhat 'to strike'. Note the Middle English use referred to a 'lump, piece, chunk', the term surviving in terms such as 'brickbat'.

When it comes to the mammal, the creature was known in Middle English as bakke, this related to Old Swedish natbakka 'night bat', and Old Norse ledrblaka which might be used to mean 'bat' but literally translates as 'leather flapper'. This is also seen in the Proto-Indo-European bhlag 'to strike', this also the origin of words such as 'flagellate'. Old English hreremus was also used to refer to a bat, this from hreran 'to shake'.