These examples show that respect for Ménage need not prevent his work from being a source of innocent merriment. But the above epigram loses some of its point for modern philologists, to whom equations that look equally fantastic, e.g. Eng. wheel and Gk. κύκλος,[149] are matters of elementary knowledge. On the other hand, a close resemblance between words of languages that are not nearly related is proof presumptive, and almost positive, that the words are quite unconnected. The resemblance between Eng. nut and Ger. Nuss is the resemblance of first cousins, but the resemblance of both to Lat. nux is accidental. Even in the case of languages that are near akin, it is not safe to jump to conclusions. The Greek cousin of Lat. deus is not θεός, God, but Ζεύς, Jupiter.
ANECDOTIC ETYMOLOGY
An etymology that has anything to do with a person or an anecdote is to be regarded with suspicion. For both we want contemporary evidence, and, in the case of an anecdote, we never, to the best of my knowledge, get it. In [Chapter III.] are a number of instances of words formed according to authentic evidence from names of persons. But the old-fashioned etymologist will not be denied his little story. Thus, in explanation of spencer (p. [40]), I find in a manual of popular information of the last century,[150] that—
"His Lordship, when Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, being out a-hunting, had, in the act of leaping a fence, the misfortune to have one of the skirts of his coat torn off; upon which his lordship tore off the other, observing, that to have but one left was like a pig with one ear! Some inventive genius took the hint, and having made some of these half-coats, out of compliment to his lordship, gave them the significant cognomen of Spencer!"
This is what Pooh-Bah calls "corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative." From the same authority we learn that—
"Hurly-burly[151] is said to owe its origin to Hurleigh and Burleigh, two neighbouring families, that filled the country around them with contest and violence."
and that—
"The word boh! used to frighten children, was the name of Boh, a great general, the son of Odin, whose very appellation struck immediate panic in his enemies."[152]
The history of chouse exemplifies the same tendency. There is no doubt that it comes from a Turkish word meaning interpreter, spelt chaus in Hakluyt and chiaus by Ben Jonson. The borrowing is parallel to that of cozen (p. [110]), interpreters having a reputation little superior to that of horse-dealers. But a century and a half after the introduction of the word we come across a circumstantial story of a Turkish chiaus who swindled some London merchants of a large sum in 1609, the year before Jonson used the word in the Alchemist. "Corroborative detail" again. The story may be true, but there is not an atom of evidence for it, and Skinner, who suggests the correct derivation in his Etymologicon (1671), does not mention it. Until contemporary evidence is adduced, the story must be regarded as one of those fables which have been invented in dozens by early etymologists, and which are perpetuated in popular works of reference. It is an article of faith in Yorkshire that the coarse material called mungo owes its name to the inventor of the machine used in its fabrication, who, when it stuck at a first trial, exclaimed with resolution, "It mun go."