WRONG ASSOCIATION
The buttery is not so named from butter, but from bottles. It is for butlery, as chancery (see p. [88]) is for chancelry. It is not, of course, now limited to bottles, any more than the pantry to bread or the larder to bacon, Fr. lard, Lat. laridum. The spence, aphetic for dispense, is now known only in dialect—
"I am gaun to eat my dinner quietly in the spence."
(Old Mortality, Ch. 3.)
but has given us the name Spencer. The still-room maid is not extinct, but I doubt whether the distilling of strong waters is now carried on in the region over which she presides. A journeyman has nothing to do with journeys in the modern sense of the word, but works à la journée, by the day. Cf. Fr. journalier, "a journey man; one that workes by the day" (Cotgrave), and Ger. Tagelöhner, literally "day-wager." On the other hand, a day-woman (Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2) is an explanatory pleonasm (cf. greyhound, p. [135]) for the old word day, servant, milkmaid, etc., whence the common surname Day and the derivative dairy.
A briar pipe is made, not from briar, but from the root of heather, Fr. bruyère, of Celtic origin. A catchpole did not catch polls, i.e. heads, nor did he catch people with a pole, although a very ingenious implement, exhibited in the Tower of London Armoury, is catalogued as a catchpole. The word corresponds to a French compound chasse-poule, catch-hen, in Picard cache-pole, the official's chief duty being to collect dues, or, in default, poultry. For pole, from Fr. poule, cf. polecat, also an enemy of fowls. The companion-ladder on ship-board is a product of folk-etymology. It leads to the kampanje, the Dutch for cabin. This may belong, like cabin, to a late Lat. capanna, hut, which has a very numerous progeny. Kajuit, another Dutch word for cabin, earlier kajute, has given us cuddy.
A carousal is now regarded as a carouse, but the two are quite separate, or, rather, there are two distinct words carousal. One of them is from Fr. carrousel, a word of Italian origin, meaning a pageant or carnival with chariot races and tilting. This word, obsolete in this sense, is sometimes spelt el and accented on the last syllable—
"Before the crystal palace, where he dwells,
The armed angels hold their carousels."
(Andrew Marvell, Lachrymæ Musarum.)
Ger. Karussell means a roundabout at a fair. Our carousal, if it is the same word, has been affected in sound and meaning by carouse. This comes, probably through French, from Ger. garaus, quite out, in the phrase garaus trinken, i.e., to drink bumpers—