History in English words

by Owen Barfield

When we hear a golfer use this word, when we hear a Scotch person ask for an aschet, instead of a dish, or see the queer expression petticoat-tales on a tin of Edinburgh shortbread, we are taken back to the close connection between the French and Scottish Courts which existed in the days of Mary Stuart. For caddie is a corruption of the French “cadet” (younger son), whence also modern English cad and cadet; aschet is a form of the French ‘assiette’; and petticoat-tales a corruption of ‘petits gateaux’ (little cakes).

Another phenomenon of history which is very faithfully preserved in the English language is our long-standing and not always creditable nautical relations with the Dutch. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century Dutch sea words continued to trickle into the language, the fourteenth seeing the arrival of bowsprit and skipper, the fifteenth of freight, hoy, keel, lighter, pink, pump, scout, marline, and buoy, the sixteenth of aloof, belay, dock, mesh, reef, rover, and flyboat, while the seventeenth century, when Van Tromp nailed his broom to the mast, the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway, and William of Orange sat upon the English throne, gave us avast, bow, boom, cruise, cruiser, gybe, and keelhaul. Besides these maritime words English possesses certain military memories of the Dutch. Freebooter goes back to the war with Spain in the reign of Elizabeth, and cashier, domineer, drill, furlough, and onslaught are also among the words brought back from the Low Countries by English soldiers. A particularly freakish Dutch borrowing is the apparently English forlorn hope, which is in reality a popular corruption of the Flemish ‘verloren hoop’, a phrase that has nothing to do with hope and means a ‘lost expedition’.

The Spanish words in the English language, like the Dutch, are few in number, but often full of history. Those which came originally from Arabic—the most interesting of all—will be dealt with in [another chapter]. We received them for the most part through the French. Alligator,[18] chocolate, cocoa, and tomato, which come through Spanish from Mexican, commemorate the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and the poetic breeze is a sixteenth-century adaptation of the Spanish ‘briza’, a name for the north-east trade wind in the Spanish Main. Of the other words which come to us through Spanish cannibal, hammock, hurricane, maize, and savannah are Caribbean, while canoe, potato, and tobacco are South American. Cannibal, like the names West Indies and Indian (meaning ‘aboriginal inhabitant of America’), hides a more detailed history. It was brought back by Christopher Columbus, who believed, when he reached the islands of the Caribbean Sea, that he had sailed right round the world, back to the east coast of India. The name ‘Caniba’—a variant of ‘Carib’ or ‘Caribes’—he took as a proof that the inhabitants were subjects of the Grand Khan of Tartary.

We can see, then, how the new impulse towards travel and exploration which followed the Renaissance left behind, when it ebbed, many exotic and exotic-sounding words whose etymologies can tell us not a little of the nationality of those adventurous mariners who led the way to the East and to the new world. The Spaniards were not the only explorers. The Indian words coolie and curry come to us through Portuguese; banana and negro reached us from Africa, possibly by the same route; and cocoanut is from the Portuguese ‘coco’, a bugbear or bogy—alluding to the nut’s monkey-like face. Drub—once used only of the bastinado—is thought to be an Arabic word brought back by suffering Christians from the Barbary States. Amuck, bamboo, and cockatoo, come from Malayan through Portuguese, and caddy (the receptacle) from Malayan direct. Moccasin, tomahawk, and hickory are among the words sent back to us by the seventeenth-century English settlers in North America. Taboo, tattoo, and kangaroo came home with Captain Cook from the Pacific.

Meanwhile, the civil and political history of England has been growing steadily. Political, politics, politician, and parliamentary first appear in the sixteenth century, and Cabinet Council seems to have been introduced at the accession of Charles I. Cabal, one of the few Hebrew words in the English language, probably owes its familiarity to two historical events. It was applied in Charles II’s reign to a small committee of the Privy Council, also known as the “Committee for Foreign Affairs”, which afterwards became the Cabinet; moreover, a little later on it happened that the names of the five Ministers who signed the Treaty of Alliance with France against Holland were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Their initials thus arranged spell the word cabal, which was humorously used to describe them. Another far commoner expression which dates back to the Civil War is the phrase ‘the army.’ It reminds us that we had no standing army until after the foundation of the Parliamentary Forces. Cavalier and Roundhead are words which carry their history, so to speak, on their sleeves. They were both coined as terms of abuse, and among other uncivil relics of the Civil War which have found a more extended application, fanatic and Puritan were invented by the Royalists and malignant by the Roundheads. Independent and independence are also Puritan words, and the useful demagogue first appeared in the Eikon Basilike, the famous pamphlet in defence of the Crown, which Milton answered with his Eikonoklastes. The expression to send to Coventry is probably a gift from the rebellious citizens of Birmingham, who, according to Clarendon, frequently “rose upon small parties of the King’s” and either killed them or sent them, as prisoners, to Coventry, which was a Parliamentary stronghold.

Spite, which always loves a rich vocabulary, is also the father of those venerable labels tory and whig. The old Celtic word tory was first applied in the seventeenth century to the unfortunate Irish Catholics, dispossessed by Cromwell, who became savage outlaws living chiefly upon plunder; after that it was used for some time of bandits in general, and at the close of James II’s reign the “Exclusioners” found it a conveniently offensive nickname for those who favoured the succession of the Roman Catholic James, Duke of York. Thus, when William of Orange finally succeeded in reaching the throne, it became the approved name of one of the two great political parties in Great Britain. Whig is a shortened form of whiggamore, a name given to certain Scotchmen from the word whiggam, which they used in driving their horses. It was first used of the rebellious Scottish Covenanters who marched to Edinburgh in 1648; then of the Exclusioners, who were opposed to the accession of James; and finally, from 1689 onwards, of the other great political party or one of its adherents.

That the seventeenth century saw the true genesis of many of our commercial and financial institutions is suggested by the fact that their names first appear at this time. Such are capital, which is a doublet of cattle—the very oldest Aryan form of wealth[19]—commercial, discount, dividend, insurance, investment, and lastly the modern meaning of bank, which, like the names of so many protective and responsible institutions—the Assizes, the Bench, the Consulate, the Council, the Chair at a public meeting, a Seat in Parliament, and the Throne—is based etymologically on what we may call one of the oldest and safest of human occupations. The old Teutonic word which subsequently became modern English bench was adopted into Italian, probably from the Teutonic Lombards of northern Italy, in the form ‘banco’. It soon acquired the special sense of a moneychanger’s ‘bench’ or table and found its way, together with the object it represents, into most of the countries of Europe. Thus, like the name Lombard Street, the little word carries us back with it to the origin of banking in northern Italy and to Edward I’s substitution of Italian bankers for Jewish moneylenders. Bankruptcy, currency, and remittance appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century, and in the second bonus, capitalist, consols, and finance. The history of finance is again interesting. The word goes right back to the Latin ‘finis’ (end). When it first appeared in English, it had the sense of a ‘fine’ or forfeit, but its modern significance was developed in eighteenth-century France among the tax-farmers or ‘financiers’, as they were called, to whom the king delegated the duty of collecting his taxes. As time went on, these shrewd individuals amalgamated into a sort of limited company, which, by a judicious application of the principles of usury, gradually gained more and more control over the revenue, until “toutes les finances du royaume”, as Voltaire says, “dépendirent d’une compagnie de commerce”. In England the phrase Bank of England first appears in 1694, describing a body of individuals associated for the purpose of lending money to the Government; and about thirty years later this still (1925) outstanding loan began to be known as the National Debt.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century commercial and financial considerations seem to have played a steadily increasing part in determining the nation’s policy. Horace Walpole is the first person known to have used speculation in the sense of buying and selling stocks and shares; and budget (a little bag or pocket) may owe its modern political meaning to a pamphlet sarcastically entitled The Budget Opened, in which his brother Robert’s financial policy received some severe handling. Prime Minister also takes us back to Sir Robert Walpole, to whom it was applied with derisive innuendo, for it had in those days more the sense of ‘Grand Vizier’ or despot’s tool. In the old-fashioned nabob, as a synonym for ‘plutocrat’, we have a memory of the latter days of the East India Company when the squandering of large sums of money in London often rounded off a life of empire-building in Bombay or Calcutta. The dictionary suggests, however, that later generations of Anglo-Indians preferred to bring back with them less questionable impedimenta, such as pyjamas and shampoo.

The phrase, the Rights of Man, takes us back to the American Declaration of Independence. The borrowing of aristocrat and democrat from French, the French word guillotine, and the appearance in English of revolutionize and terrorize are enduring relics of the French Revolution, and the word sectional, which came in in the nineteenth century, is closely bound up with the history of France, for it is derived (together with the geographical use of section) from the division of France into electoral sections under the Directory. The military meaning of conscription goes back to the France of the same period. To the campaigns in the Soudan we owe zareeba, and to the Boer War the Dutch words kopje and spoor. It is too early yet to say what verbal legacy the European War has left us, but the anonymous stunt and gadget (small mechanical contrivance), and the French camouflage seem to have taken a fairly firm hold, while the expressions eyewash, to scrounge (meaning to ‘steal’), to get the wind up, to go west, and possibly to swing the lead (to be idle at somebody else’s expense), are idioms which show no signs of departing from us yet. President Wilson’s self-determination has probably been added to half the languages of the world.

A list of new words like anaesthetic, galvanometer, morse, railroad, telephone, turbine, ... which appeared in the nineteenth century, would tell a full and fairly accurate story of its extraordinarily sudden mechanical and scientific development, but such a list has yet to be compiled. More interesting in many ways are the appearance of new metaphors and idioms, such as to peter out, to pan out (from mining), to blow off or get up steam, and to go off the rails from the steam engine, and many electrical metaphors such as those mentioned in [Chapter I]. For new ways of doing are bound up with new ways of knowing and thinking, and the true story of the nineteenth century, as of every other century, is the story of its mental and emotional outlook. To this long and intricate story the rest of this book is devoted, but before passing on to it a few aspects of our subject, with which there is not space to deal fully, may perhaps be mentioned.