Another mistake

The absence of a Celtic or Germanic name for the cherry indicates that the tree was not native to north-west Europe; the Old English word ciris or cirse, found only in compounds like cirisbeam, meaning ‘cherry tree’, was replaced in Middle English by cherie, adopted from the Anglo-Norman and Old French cherise.  It is thought that cherie was constructed as a singular from the mistaken idea that cherise was plural.

from Discovering Words in the Kitchen.

Oh dear

For today's students from Southampton Solent University, I hesitate to put this into the public domain; but as I said I would, I’ve extended it:

Pcqueoughe

Silent ‘p’, as in trousers (the old ones are the best)

Acquire

Plaque

Slough

Pipe

Providing ‘mnolkep’.  Enjoy.

Tipping the lion

More on the Mohocks (I’m interested in the way that street gangs were taking their names from what were perceived to be violent Americans at this early date – another London gang 1711-14 called themselves Hawkubites, derived from the name of another American Indian tribe).  Further research regarding the 'fish-hook through the cheek outrage' mentioned by Gay in The Mohocks (1712), indicates that the other traceable mention of this offence appears in An Argument, proving from History, Reason, and Scripture, that the present Race of Mohocks and Hawke-bites are the Gog and Magog mentioned in the Revelations; and therefore that this vain and transitory World will shortly be brought to its final Dissolution.  Written by a Reverend Divine, who turns out to be John Gay, writing in 1712.  

But, lest anyone should think this is trivialising the whole business (which many felt at the time was being whipped up by the two political parties to discredit their opponents), it must be remembered that the panic that kept Londoners indoors was brought about by some very real physical assaults.  One offence perpetrated by the Mohocks was ‘tipping the lion’, found in The Spectator, No 324, 12 March 1712 and in Gay’s The Mohocks.  Jonathan Green’s new Slang Dictionary (2011) gives references for the phrase from between 1785 and 1823, but Hotten (1865) does not include it at all, so it may have gone by then.  Francis Grose in The Vulgar Tongue (1785) interpreted ‘tipping the lion’ as ‘to flatten a man’s nose with the thumb, and at the same time to extend his mouth with the fingers, thereby giving him a sort of lion-like countenance’.  Not pleasant at all, and none too safe for the perpetrator, who would be likely to have his fingers savaged.  Richard Steele, writing in March 1712, gave a definition of a much more aggressive action – ‘Some are celebrated for a happy Dexterity in tipping the Lion upon them; which is performed by squeezing the Nose flat to the Face, and boring out the Eyes with their Fingers’.  The editors of the OED were evidently so affected by this phrase that they used it as an illustration both for ‘tip’ and ‘bore’, the only occasion I have found where a quotation is used for more than one word. 

While I can see that the act described in Grose may give the impression of a lion’s face, something about it does not ring true.  Daniel Statt (The Case of the Mohocks: rake violence in Augustan London, Social History, Vol 20 No 2, 1995) examines the extreme physical violence, with fists and feet rather than weapons, used by the Mohocks against women rather than men, and points out that the few men indicted for Mohock violence had recent military combat experience; but he does not mention ‘tipping the lion’ or whether it was carried out against men or women.  In Gay’s The Mohocks, while the captured watchmen are being paraded before the justices by the Mohocks pretending to be watchmen, the phrase is ‘tip the lion upon five several of her Majesty’s true-born subjects’, similar to the way Steele uses it.  ‘Tip’ here was used in the sense of ‘give’ – ‘tipping the lion’ would mean ‘giving someone [the characteristics of] a lion’.  Poking someone’s eyes while squashing the nose would inevitably produce a screwed up face, raised upper lip and a roar of pain.

Despite the moral outrage of the government and city authorities very few of the Mohocks were indicted, tried or found guilty.  For four of those wealthy gentlemen who were found guilty of assault and riot, the punishments were modest fines, in one case of three shillings and four pence; the fines were, as Statt points out, given ‘at the same session in which [the court] was meting out penalties of a day in the pillory and whipping at the tail of a cart to women and men who had committed petty property offences.’   Statt points to this as evidence of one level of punishment for offences against the person and another for offences against property, as well as a sense of certain classes of society being above the law. 

Perhaps not unlike some recent discrepancies in sentencing.

Arrowheads and prisoners' uniforms

Though the broad-arrowhead mark has been used on government property since the reign of Henry VIII, it was used to denote prison uniform only from 1870 until 1922.  However there is an earlier association between this mark and prisons:

Ludgate had for centuries a debtors’ prison on its upper floor, above the gate’s arch, and one fifteenth-century inmate was an ironmonger, Stephen Forster.  Debtors were allowed to beg behind a gate at street level, and Forster was fortunate to attract the attention of a rich widow, who asked how much his release fee was.  ‘Twenty pounds’, he replied, equivalent to several thousand in current money.  She paid it, employed him, eventually married him, and agreed with him to make his former prison more comfortable for inmates. 

This story is related in Thornbury’s London Past & Present (1875), with quotations from Maitland (1739) and Strype (1720).  Stow (1598) clearly had little time for the story of Forster begging: ‘some vpon a light occasion (as a maidens heade in a glasse window) had fabled him to bee a Mercer, and to haue begged there at Ludgate.’  But he did ensure that when Ludgate was rebuilt in 1586 the plaque was restored, along with another bearing Forster’s coat of arms showing ‘three broad Arrow heades.’

Bibs and bobs

These were submitted as blog entries for the Evolving English exhibition at the British Library; as most of them have now been removed I take leave to repost them here, in slightly altered form:

Ctailing words

I was very pleased to read in the Metro (Weds 17^th November 2010) in Siobhan Murphy’s review of George W Bush’s memoirs, the spelling of ‘freem’ and ‘moxy’ to transcribe that gentleman’s pronunciation of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.  This especially as I am currently reading Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, in which ‘ministry’ and ‘archbishop’ become ‘mincery’ and ‘ardship’.  English has dropped bits of words over the centuries – ‘chancery’ is described by the OED as a ‘worn-down’ form of ‘chancelry’ or ‘chancelery’, and ‘cheat’ used to be ‘escheat’.  How long before we become the British Libry?

Further to words losing bits, they can also add bits.  ‘Mischievous’ spawned its variant ‘mischievious’ in the sixteenth century, but is still ‘non-standard’ according to the OED.

Words for the Boys

We had a suggestion form a mixed-gender London sixth-form on the first day of the Evolving English workshops that certain words are more used by boys than girls.  ‘Skeen’ and ‘random’ are boy’s words.  ‘Skeen’ is also more likely to be heard in London and the South than further north.  They are both very passé now, at least in London.

Changing Voice

One of the first groups in for a workshop was a sixth-form from south-west London. We were discussing accents - one of the girls said that she speaks with a south-east accent at school but at home uses the accent from her family, who come from near Glasgow. Not just her accent, her vocabulary changes too, so that she goes shopping with her friends, but with her family she goes to get her messages.  Babies greet at home, but cry away from home; at home she says ‘heid’ and ‘wa’er’, and at school ‘head’ and ‘water’.  She says she switches automatically, and her friends confirmed this.  What happened if she hit her thumb with a hammer, I asked; what came out, south-east or Scots?  ‘It depends where I am’, she said.

Stop

The Riot Act has been read.  This eighteenth-century poster has provoked a lot of discussion, particularly the full-stop.  How often do you see a full-stop in a poster?  In workshops our interpretation of this has generally been that it means ‘end of’, that it acts as a marker of the fulfilling of legal and moral responsibility – basically saying ‘shutup and go away’.  Curiously, it means almost the same in current text messaging.  If at the end of a text conversation you get a message ‘ok’, that’s fine.  But ‘ok.’ is different – it means ‘ok, and now shutup’.  One girl said, ‘my Mum uses full stops at the end of text messages all the time.  I hate it.’

We are used to teenagers being the movers and shakers in language change, but maybe weren’t expecting it with punctuation.

Fecking Mohocks

One of the delights of the Evolving English exhibition at the British Library last year was the ‘swearing corner’, a display of material including a copy of Viz and Lady Chatterley’s Lover which we could either judiciously avoid or enthusiastically explore.  Of course we explored it to the full, like the lady who found the rude words in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary.  "Fek" was there, or was in the ether thereabouts, and made its way into my Evolving English Explored.

I had not looked into the origin of "feck", and “feckin’”, which I had always assumed were Irish dialect for "f*ck", the spelling driven by the pronunciation, and thus providing an acceptable substitute to "f*ck".  But this is quite erroneous, and what has disabused me is the expression “I’fackins”, which I came across last night while reading John Gay’s play The Mohocks, a silly ‘Tragi-comical Farce’ written to comment on the topical riotous and violent behaviour of a gang of aristocratic thugs who terrorised London in early 1712. 

There’s a curious thing that seems to have happened with the use of this text as a social document.  Either Gay was actually writing about things that happened, or he reflected the panic in the popular press, or his satirical exaggeration (for that is clearly what it is) has been taken as for real.  In the second scene, where the local watchmen are discussing the awful deeds of the Mohocks, Starlight describes them cutting off people’s noses (one of the most often-noted acts of the Mohocks), till ‘all the ground [was] covered with noses – as thick as ‘tis with hail-stones after a storm.’  Another watchman, Frost, beats this with ‘I saw them hook a man as cleverly as a fisherman would a great fish – and play him up and down from Charing Cross to Temple Bar – they cut off his ears and eat them up, …’  Starling counters this with ‘Poh – poh! – that’s nothing at all – I saw them cut off a fellow’s legs, and if the poor man had not run hard for it, they had cut off his head into the bargain.’  And with that we know we are in the territory of the boast competition (of which my favourite is Dylan Thomas’s story of going to school armed with the boast that will finally silence his fellows - that he can fly).  The play also mentions women being strung up by their ankles, but interestingly compares them to press-gangs, the recruiting gangs which kidnapped able men for enforced labour in the navy.

Swift in his Letters to Stella mentions the Mohocks’ acts of cutting people’s faces, notes one occasion that a sword was run through a sedan chair (and states that he will not take a sedan as he feels he will be more at risk), notes that one person charged with being a Mohock was a baronet, but also puts much of the brouhaha down to Grub Street invention.  The Spectator from No 324 also kept up a contemporary commentary on the Mohocks: quoted in John Timbs’ Club Life of London (1866), the journal describes the particular activities of the Mohocks, which would probably now come under the heading of ‘assault’ rather than ‘grievous bodily harm’ – pricking people’s bottoms with swords, tripping people up with swords, poking people’s eyes, and forcing people into barrels and rolling them downhill (but for this last Timbs’ reference is Gay).  Certainly some incidents of gratuitous and extreme violence against individuals did occur – in one case a servant was cut about the face for no reason when seeing a visitor out.  Certainly the culture of street gangs was endemic to London by this time, but equally one can imagine the story being whipped up by bored rich kids wanting to toy with the fears of the bourgeois, and no doubt in the panic random acts of violence were labelled with the name Mohock.  Issue No 324 of the Spectator intelligently proposed that ‘some thoughtless Youngsters, out of a false Notion of Bravery, and an immoderate Fondness to be distinguished for Fellows of Fire, are insensibly hurry'd into this senseless scandalous Project’.  By Issue No 347 The Spectator was doubting the whole story, suggesting that the Mohocks were either a case of mass-hysteria or a story deliberately put out by men to stop their wives from going out to have fun together.

So, in the absence of impartial evidence Gay’s satire appears to have become the source for, or at least to have supported the evidence for some of the crimes credited to the Mohocks, and given the fact that the play was published in the same year as the outbreak, maybe it was John Gay who actually invented the story of the ‘fishing’, which does appear on one website as a reported fact.

But back to "fek".  ‘He must have good luck, i’fackins that ties a woman’s tongue’, states Joan Cloudy in Scene 2 of The Mohocks.  J C Hotten’s Slang Dictionary (1865) doesn’t help on this, but the OED traces "feck", "fags", "faikins", "feggings", "fackins", and "feckins" back to distortions of "fay" and "faith".  So “i’fackins” is not different from the Shakespearean “i’faith”.  The "-kin" part is a frequent diminutive to lessen the shock-horror of direct reference to God etc., by pushing the reference on from one subject to something related to it.  Thus "by our Lady" becomes "by our Lady’s kin", shortened apparently to "blinking". "In faith" becomes the improbable "in faith’s kin" shortened to "i’fackins", which gradually shrinks to "fac" and "feck" – and all that remains of "kin" in "feck" is the "k" sound; but I’m conscious that the closeness to "f*ck" (I know we can now say it but I’m not sure of the propriety of writing it) probably strengthens "feck".  But if a proportion of the "–king" in "fecking" comes from ‘kin’, it would be brave to suggest that a greater proportion does not come from analogy with "f*cking". 

So, the long and the short of it is that "feck" is at heart a thoroughly commendable religious affirmation, and thus entirely appropriate to ecclesiastical folks like Father Ted.     

And all the trimmings

The lights have gone on for the last time, the turkey bones have gone out, the box is out ready for the decorations to be packed away.  A moment to reconsider the verbal traditions of Christmas that take their unquestioned places like the once-a-year china and the dangerously oversized wine-glasses. 

While looking in J C Hotten’s 1865 Slang Dictionary for ‘tosher’ (another story, and it wasn’t there anyway) I saw on the opposite page ‘trimmings’, as in ‘turkey and all the trimmings’, which Hotten defines as ‘the necessary adjuncts to a cooked leg of mutton, as turnips, bread, beer, salt, etc.  Bets are frequently made for a leg of mutton and trimmings.  Or one person will forfeit the mutton if another will “stand the trimmings”.  It is generally a supper feast, held in a public house, and the rule is for the landlord to charge as trimmings everything, except the mutton, placed on the table previous to the removal of the cloth.’

Hotten’s extended definitions are always enjoyable – you get the sense of him wanting to describe something he’s witnessed or experienced, to build up a rounded picture of the usage.

I had always assumed that the trimmings were bits cut off the turkey and served alongside – I’m not sure what, but maybe the neck or some weird offal that only great-uncles would know to appreciate.  Clearly ‘trimmings’ are ‘additions’, while my experience of ‘to trim’ was in the sense of ‘to cut off’ – a ‘trim’ being what you had at the barber’s.  Certainly I was aware of the use of ‘trim’ to mean ‘equipped’, as in ‘a trim ship’, and ‘to trim a hat, or a vessel’; but would we ever use ‘to trim’ now in any sense other than ‘to cut’?

How often do we change the meanings of words so that they swing round 180 degrees?  Probably more often than we think – think of the infamous ‘awful’ and ‘terrible’, and ‘sad’ and ‘silly’.  Apart from the specific nautical and aeronautical usages of adjusting navigational steering devices, all the post 1960 quotations in the OED entry for ‘to trim’ imply cutting.  We trim our expenses, our hair, our word counts.  There is a sense of doing this because they are too long, we do it to conserve strength, to encourage growth; the underlying idea perhaps is of judicious ‘pruning’.  Warily treading into the area of the ‘etymological fallacy’ (that the root of the word is its ‘true’ meaning), I note from Partridge that the root is Middle English trimen, ‘to make strong’, from the Old English trum, meaning ‘strong, firm’. 

In confirmation of the etymological fallacy, trimming my hair didn’t make it stronger.