A sound etymology must fulfil three conditions. It must not violate the recognised laws of sound change. The development of meaning must be clearly traced. This must start from the earliest or fundamental sense of the word. It goes without saying that in modern corruptions we are sometimes faced by cases which it would be difficult to explain phonetically (see p. [136]). There are, in fact, besides the general phonetic and semantic laws, a number of obscure and accidental influences at work which are not yet codified. As we have seen (p. [188]), complete apparent dissimilarity of sound and sense need not prevent two words from being originally one[156]; but we have to trace them both back until dissimilarity becomes first similarity and then identity.
The word peruse meant originally to wear out, Old Fr. par-user. In the 16th century it means to sort or sift, especially herbs, and hence to scrutinise a document, etc. But between the earliest meaning and that of sifting there is a gap which no ingenuity can bridge, and, until this is done, we are not justified in regarding the modern peruse as identical with the earlier.[157]
The maxim of Jakob Grimm, "von den Wörtern zu den Sachen," is too often neglected. In dealing with the etymology of a word which is the name of an object or of an action, we must first find out exactly what the original object looked like or how the original action was performed. The etymologist must either be an antiquary or must know where to go for sound antiquarian information. I will illustrate this by three words denoting objects used by medieval or Elizabethan fighting men.
A fencing foil is sometimes vaguely referred to the verb foil, to baffle, with which it has no connection. The Fr. feuille, leaf, is also invoked, and compared with Fr. fleuret, a foil, the idea being that the name was given to the "button" at the point. Now the earliest foils and fleurets were not buttoned; first, because they were pointless, and secondly, because the point was not used in early fencing. It was not until gunpowder began to bring about the disuse of heavy armour that anybody ever dreamt of thrusting. The earliest fencing was hacking with sword and buckler, and the early foil was a rough sword-blade quite unlike the implement we now use. Fleuret meant in Old French a sword-blade not yet polished and hilted, and we find it used, as we do Eng. foil, of an apology for a sword carried by a gallant very much down at heel. As late as Cotgrave we find floret, "a foile; a sword with the edge rebated." Therefore foil is the same as Fr. feuille,[158] which in Old French meant sword-blade, and is still used for the blade of a saw; but the name has nothing to do with what did not adorn the tip. It is natural that Fr. feuille should be applied, like Eng. leaf, blade, to anything flat (cf. Ger. Blatt, leaf), and we find in 16th-century Dutch the borrowed word folie, used in the three senses of leaf, metal plate, broadsword, which is conclusive.
PETRONEL
We find frequent allusions in the 16th and 17th centuries to a weapon called a petronel, a flint-lock fire-arm intermediate in size between an arquebus and a pistol. It occurs several times in Scott—
"'Twas then I fired my petronel,
And Mortham, steed and rider, fell."
(Rokeby, i. 19.)
On the strength of a French form, poitrinal, it has been connected with Fr. poitrine, chest, and various explanations are given. The earliest is that of the famous Huguenot surgeon Ambroise Paré, who speaks of the "mousquets poitrinals, que l'on ne couche en joue, à cause de leur calibre gros et court, mais qui se tirent de la poitrine." I cannot help thinking that, if the learned author had attempted this method of discharging an early fire-arm, his anatomical experience, wide as it was, would have been considerably enlarged. Minsheu (1617) describes a petronell as "a horseman's peece first used in the Pyrenean mountaines, which hanged them alwayes at their breast, readie to shoote, as they doe now at the horse's breast." This information is derived from Claude Fauchet, whose interesting Antiquités françoises et gauloises was published in 1579. Phillips, in his New World of Words (1678) tells us that this "kind of harquebuse, or horseman's piece, is so called, because it is to aim at a horse's brest, as it were poictronel." When we turn from fiction to fact, we find that the oldest French name was pétrinal, explained by Cotgrave as "a petronell, or horse-man's peece." It was occasionally corrupted, perhaps owing to the way in which the weapon was slung, into poitrinal. This corruption would be facilitated by the 16th-century pronunciation of oi (peitrine). The French word is borrowed either from Ital. petronello, pietronello, "a petronell" (Florio), or from Span. pedreñal, "a petronall, a horse-man's peece, ita dict. quod silice petra incenditur" (Minsheu, Spanish Dictionary, 1623). Thus Minsheu knew the origin of the word, though he had put the fiction in his earlier work. We find other forms in Italian and Spanish, but they all go back to Ital. pietra, petra, or Span. piedra, pedra, stone, flint. The usual Spanish word for flint is pedernal. Our word, as its form shows, came direct from Italian.[159] The new weapon was named from its chief feature; cf. Ger. Flinte, "a light gun, a hand-gun, pop-gun, arquebuss, fire-arm, fusil or fusee"[160] (Ludwig). The substitution of the flint-lock for the old match-lock brought about a re-naming of European fire-arms, and, as this substitution was first effected in the cavalry, petronel acquired the special meaning of horse-pistol. It is curious that, while we find practically all the French and Italian fire-arm names in 17th-century German, a natural result of the Thirty Years' War, petronel does not appear to be recorded. The reason is probably that the Germans had their own name, viz., Schnapphahn, snap-cock, the English form of which, snaphaunce, seems also to have prevailed over petronel. Cotgrave has arquebuse à fusil, "a snaphaunce," and explains fusil as "a fire-steele for a tinder-box." This is medieval Lat. focile, from focus, fire, etc.