Not the Normal Paranormal

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 Not the Normal Paranormal.

Here the hour or so sees how I was introduced to the subject and began to write about same, how I research the stories, and my own experiences. A snippet or two from each of my paranormal books ends with the tale of the oddest of telephone calls (which I still don't understand) and then questions from the audience.

Perhaps one of my favourite stories comes from Birmingham and the Old Crown at Deritend. It is claimed to be the oldest pub in Birmingham, it has not always been a pub but is the licensed premises occupying the oldest building in the Second City. There are numerous ghostly reports from this place, but one stands out.

Today the pub offers a room for the night, but owing to building restrictions there are a couple of things which the Old Crown was unable to provide at the time. First there are no en suites in any of the rooms; next the shutters on the windows do not exclude all the light from the busy High Street outside; and finally there are no locks on the doors but a peg is inserted in the latch when inside the room. I mention these three key points as they are all relevant to the story.

A couple of thirty-somethings – we’ll call the Dick and Jane - opted for a weekend in Birmingham to liven up their marriage. After a meal and few drinks in the city centre, they returned to the Old Crown for drinks and an early night. Upstairs in their room, with shutters drawn and peg inserted in the latch, they did what comes naturally to couples in love. (That’s sex, if you don’t know or can’t remember.)

In the early hours of the morning Dick awoke and found he had to answer a call of nature. He tried to ignore it, having no en suite, but eventually had fold back the quilt, slide out of bed, slip on his trousers and, having removed the peg, managed to slip out of the room and pad quietly along the corridor to the visit the facilities.

Minutes later, suitably relieved, he padded back to the room but stopped when reaching the door which he had left ajar. Standing outside he could not believe his ears. From inside the room came noises, sounds he was very familiar with, and sounds he had heard earlier in the evening from Jane. Indeed, they were very recognizably from Jane.

Dick jumped to the conclusion that someone had taken his place in the bed. But for reasons I have never understood, decided to wait outside until the intruder emerged (the door being his only avenue of escape) instead of rushing in and coming to Jane’s rescue. But this plan fell through when, despite the ‘action’ inside the room clearly having reaching a conclusion, nobody emerged.

In rushed Dick (perhaps I should have chosen a different name) to gallantly defend Jane’s honour, only to find she was lying in bed exactly as he had left her and the bedclothes just as he had left them. Perplexed, Dick removed his trousers, slid into bed and, just as he pulled the quilt across, Jane turned over, three an arm and a leg over him and announced “That was the best EVER!”

Dick later told me he has never had the nerve to tell her he wasn’t in the room at the time.

Having related this story when giving this talk, I have been asked several times the room number and I can reveal this to be …… well you will have to read the book or book me for the talk to find out.

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

Etymologies and Homonyms

Whilst I am always interested in learning new words, it is the never so much the meaning as the origins which intrigue me. Previously I looked at homonyms, a word with two meanings and I looked at the etymologies of these words. Were there two completely different origins and the identical spelling is pure coincidence or has the word simply been used to mean two different things?

Here are another selection and, having done A to F before, now continue with a selection of others:

gill - not the shortened version of the female name Gillian (the name Jill is simply a late alternate spelling), where one of the earliest references is from 1630 in the term 'gill-flirt' referring to 'a giddy young woman'. Here the two meanings are somewhat uncertain, probably owing to the very different meanings of the same word. However the noun describing the breathing organ in fishes likely came to English from Norse tongues, such as Old Danish gaeln and thought to have originated in the Proto-Indo-European ghel-una meaning 'jaw'. The Greek word kheilos or 'lip' has similar beginnings and does tend to support this idea. The term is also used to mean a liquid measure, coming to England from the Old French gille, used in measuring wine, and derived from Latin gillo 'earthenware jar'. The trail becomes blurred here but seems to share an origin with 'gallon', which also originally would describe the vessel used to hold a liquid rather than the volume of liquid it held.

grave - is another where the two most commonest uses are through each having very different origins. Most often associated with death, it came from Old English graef meaning 'ditch', 'trench' and 'cave' as well as somewhere to place a body. This can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European ghrebh meaning 'to dig, scratch, scrape'. This also brought us the third rarely used use. While we tend to use 'engrave' today, originally 'grave' would have been the norm and the 'scratch, scrape' meaning is easy to see in 'engrave'. We also use 'grave' to mean 'weighty, important' and in this case the word came to English rather later from the Old French greve 'terrible, dreadful', itself from Latin gravis or 'heavy, ponderous, burdensome, loaded' and even 'pregnant'. Considering I am writing this on Father's Day to link a word suggesting 'children' with an alternative meaning of 'terrible, dreadful' might be rather bad timing. Yet this sense is undoubtedly the origin as it is also seen in Greek baros 'weight', Sanskrit guruh 'heavy', and from Proto-Indo-European gwere 'heavy'.

groom - here the origins of the meanings are much more closely related, this mainly through the much later beginnings. As a noun in the 12th century grome simply referred to a 'male child'. However within a hundred years it had come to mean 'a youth, young man' and also spoke of a 'male servant, attendeant, minor officer, a knight's squire'. Here the term is thought to be from Germanic growan meaning 'to grow'. As a reference to one who tends horses it clearly came from associations with a knight's squire, by the 19th century having the more general meaning of 'to tend for', and a century later 'prepare for office or succession'. Not until 1600 do we see this used as an abbreviation for 'bridegroom', where Old English brydguma may have been used to mean 'suitor' but is clearly a combination of bryd 'bride' and gruma 'man'. Note the term 'bride' comes from the Proto-Indo-European root bru meaning 'to cook, brew, make broth' - again unlikely to be the most popular revelation on Father's Day.

gross - in these metric times the idea of a dozen dozen, once the most common use, has been replaced by the 'to disgust' and yet the latter use is unknown prior to 1971. The earlier quantity is simply from the Old French gross douzaine or 'a large dozen' by the 16th century and had earlier been used for a weight equal to one-eighth of a dram'. While 'gross' is rarely used to mean 'large, thick' today, it was once used when speaking of the coarseness and quality of cloth. Here the German gross 'large' can still be seen, as can the Latin grossus 'thick, coarse' and used to refer to both food and a person.

hail - as a greeting is from Old Scandinavian heill 'health, prosperity, good luck' and related to Old English waes haeil, itself still used as 'wassail'. Of course we British will associate this more with the weather phenomenon, where the Proto-Indo-European kaghlo 'pebble' is still fairly easily seen in the Greek kakhlex also meaning 'pebble'.

horn - the two meanings are still very much in use, if not the very old joke "Why do cows wear bells? - Because their horns don't work" would have died out years ago. Horn, when speaking of that used on a car, comes from the wind instrument, itself so named as the first were indeed made from animal horns. That part of the animal can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European ker used to mean 'horn, head, uppermost part of the body'. Before anyone writes and points out there is a third use, the sexual usage is acknowledged and has a most interesting etymology. Since at least the 15th century (and possibly since the heyday of the Greeks) the horn has been used to symbolise cuckoldry, perhaps the victim would be seen to grow such on his head, and thus 'horny' in the sense 'aroused' comes from 'horn' being used to mean 'cuckold' - not a nice thing to be but, to my mind, a delightful word.