The derivation of the word tragedy has been a fruitful field of controversy. It is undoubtedly the case that this class of drama was originally of anything but a mournful and pathetic character, and was a remnant of the winter festival in honor of the god Dionysus. The word is coined from the Greek tragos, a goat; but various reasons have been assigned for this connection. Some assert that a goat was the prize awarded to the best extempore poem in honor of the god; others, that the first actors were dressed like satyrs, in goat-skins. A more likely explanation is that a goat was sacrificed at the singing of the song.
It is curious to remark how many names applied to persons, in allusion either to their characters or occupations, can be traced to some custom of other days. The very word person is an example of this class of derivatives. It was first applied to the masks which it was customary for actors to wear. These covered the whole head, with an opening for the mouth, that the voice might sound through (Latin personare). The transition was easy from the disguise of the actor to the character which he represented, and the word was ultimately extended beyond the scenic language to denote the human being who has a part to play in the world. Sycophant is compounded of two Greek words (sycon, phantēs), signifying literally a “fig-shewer,” that is, one who brings figs to light by shaking the tree. It has been conjectured, also, that “fig-shewer” perhaps referred to one who informed against persons exporting figs from Attica, or plundering sacred fig-trees. Sycophant meant originally a common informer, and hence a slanderer; but it was never used in the modern sense of a flatterer. Another word of somewhat similar meaning, parasite, sprung from no such contemptible trade. The original bearers of the name were a class of priests who probably had their meals in common (Latin parasiteo, to sit beside). But very early with the Greeks the term came to be applied to one who lives at the expense of the great, gaining this position by adulation and servility. Also of Greek origin is pedagogue (paidagōgos), signifying, first, rather the slave who conducted the child’s steps to the place of instruction, than, as now, the master who guides his mind in the way of knowledge. In later times, a chancellor gained his name from the place which it was customary for him to occupy near the lattice-work screen (cancellus) which fenced off the judgment-seat from the body of the court. The same Latin derivation gives us the chancel of a church, from the fact of its being screened off, and what is more remarkable, the verb to cancel, that is, to strike out anything which is written by making cross-lines over it.
Several of the names of different trades will at once occur to our readers. Thus, a stationer is one who had a “station” or stand in the market-place for the sale of books, in order to attract the passers-by as customers. An upholsterer, originally upholdster, was, it would seem, an auctioneer, who “held up” his wares in order to show them off. The double -er in this word is superfluous, as in poulter-er. A haberdasher was so called from his selling a stuff called hapertas in old French, which is supposed to be from a Scandinavian word meaning pedlars’ wares, from the haversack in which they were carried.
Two military terms have curious origins. Sentinel has been traced through Italian to the Latin sentina, the hold of a ship, and is thus equivalent to the Latin sentinator, the man who pumps bilge-water out of a ship. It is curious to mark how the name of a naval official of whom constant vigilance was required has been wholly transferred to a post requiring equal watchfulness in the sister service. The other term to which we would call attention is hussar, a Hungarian word signifying “twentieth.” In explanation of this derivation, it is related that when Matthias Corvinus ascended the Hungarian throne in 1458, the dread of imminent foreign invasion caused him to command an immediate levy of troops. The cavalry he raised by a decree ordering that one man should be enrolled out of “twenty” in every village, who should provide among themselves for his subsistence and pay.
We may pass now to some words of the same nature of less honorable significance. Assassin remains in our language as the dread memorial of the domination of an odious sect in Palestine which flourished in the thirteenth century, the Hashishin (drinkers of hashish, an intoxicating drink or decoction of the Cannabis indica, a kind of hemp). The “Old Man of the Mountain” roused his followers’ spirits by help of this drink, and sent them to stab his enemies, especially the leading Crusaders. The emissaries of this body waged for two hundred years a treacherous warfare alike against Jew, Christian, and orthodox Mohammedan. Among the distinguished men who fell victims to their murderous daggers were the Marquis of Monteferrat in 1192, Louis of Bavaria in 1213, and the Kahn of Tartary some forty years later. The buccaneers, who at a later date were hardly less dreaded, derived their name from the boucan or gridiron on which the original settlers at Hayti were accustomed to broil or smoke for future consumption the flesh of the animals they had killed for their skins. The word is said to be Caribbean, and to mean “a place where meat is smoke-dried.”
Some of the contemptuous terms in our language have been attributed to remarkable origins. In scamp, we have a deserter from the field of battle (Latin ex, and campus), a parallel word to decamp; and in scoundrel, “a loathsome fellow,” “one to scunner or be disgusted at.” The old word scunner, still used as a term of strong dislike in Lowland Scotch, meant also “to shrink through fear,” so that scunner-el is equivalent to one who shrinks, a coward. Poltroon is “one who lies in bed,” instead of bestirring himself.
Several words have passed from a literal to a figurative sense, and have thus become much wider in signification. Thus, villain originally meant merely a farm-servant; pagan, a dweller in a village; knave, a boy; idiot, a private person; heathen, a dweller on a heath; gazette, a small coin; and brat, a rag or clout, especially a child’s bib or apron. Treacle meant an antidote against the bites of serpents; intoxicate, to drug or poison; coward, a bob-tailed hare; and butcher, a slaughterer merely of he-goats. Brand and stigmatise still mean to mark with infamy, although the practical significance of the words is now chiefly a matter of history. Under the Romans, a slave who had proved dishonest, or had attempted to run away from his master, was branded with the three letters F U R, a thief or rascal; while it may not be generally known that in England the custom of branding the cheek of a felon with an F was only abolished by statute some sixty years ago.
These examples of a class of words denoting traces of customs of other days, might easily be largely multiplied; but enough has been said to remind our readers of one aspect of the historical value of our language—that is, the impress of the thoughts and practices of past generations stamped upon the words which are used in the familiar intercourse of life.—Chambers’s Journal.