[149] That is, they are both descended from the same Indo-Germanic original. Voltaire was thus, superficially, right when he described etymology as a science in which the vowels do not count at all and the consonants very little.
[150] Pulleyn's Etymological Compendium, 3rd ed., revised and improved by M. A. Thoms (Tegg & Co., 1853).
[151] Cf. Fr. hurluberlu, which occurs in Rabelais, and in Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.
[152] Tit-Bits, which honoured the Romance of Words with a notice (8th June 1912), approvingly quoted these three "etymologies" as being seriously propounded by the author. This is dramatic justice.
[153] The following explanation, given in Miège's French Dictionary (1688), is perhaps not far wrong: "C'est ainsi qu'on appelle par dérision les Yeomen of the Guard dans la cour d'Angleterre, qui sont des gardes à peu près comme les cent Suisses en France. Et on leur donne ce nom-là, parce qu' à la cour ils ne vivent que de bœuf: par opposition à ces collèges d'Angleterre, où les écoliers ne mangent que du mouton."
[154] An acrostic of this kind would have no point if it resulted in a meaningless word. In the same way the Old Fr. Fauvel, whence our curry favour (see p. [131]), has a medieval explanation of the acrostic kind. It is supposed to be formed from the initial letters of the vices Flatterie, Avarice, Vilenie, Variété, Envie, Lâcheté.
[155] There is also a word cadge, explained in the glossary to a book on falconry (1615) as a kind of frame on which an itinerant vendor of hawks carried his birds. But it is unrecorded in literature and labours under the suspicion of being a ghost-word. Its first occurrence, outside the dictionaries, is, I believe, in Mr Maurice Hewlett's Song of Renny—"the nominal service of a pair of gerfalcons yearly, in golden hoods, upon a golden cadge" (Ch. 1).
[156] This seems to have been realised by the author of the Etymological Compendium (see p. [188], [n. 2]), who tells us that the "term swallow is derived from the French hirondelle, signifying indiscriminately voracious, literally a marshy place, that absorbs or swallows what comes within its vortex."
[157] It is much more likely that it originated as a misunderstanding of pervise, to survey, look through, earlier printed peruise. We have a similar misunderstanding in the name Alured, for Alvred, i.e. Alfred. The influence of spelling upon sound is, especially in the case of words which are more often read than heard, greater than is generally realized. Most English people pronounce a z in names like Dalziel, Mackenzie, Menzies, etc., whereas this z is really a modern printer's substitution for an old symbol which had nearly the sound y (Dalyell, etc.).
[158] And therefore identical with the foil of tinfoil, counterfoil, etc.