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By Anatoly Liberman

On seeing the second line of the title, some experts in Shakespeare’s diction may have jumped to the conclusion that they are in for another essay on a scurrilous topic. Not quite, unless the subject English spelling is considered obscene by definition. How is it possible for a single vowel letter to have so many values? “Elementary, my dear Watkins,” as Sherlock Holmes did not say in any tale told by Conan Doyle. (Supposedly, the phrase was first used in 1915 by P.G. Wodenhouse in his novel Psmith Journalist. In Conan Doyle, the exchange between Watson and Holmes runs as follows: “’Excellent!’” I cried. “’Elementary’,” said he”. Those famous familiar quotations that everybody knows! They are like the proverbs of Alfred and the sayings of King Solomon. Dozens of works on word history open with Voltaire’s witticism that in etymology vowels count for nothing and consonants for very little. Yet it does not turn up in any of his written works.)

Unless counterbalanced by drastic reforms, long tradition usually makes spelling appear at best antiquated and at worst irrational. “This happens in all languages. For example, let us take English,” to quote a linguist of my acquaintance. We will follow his advice and “take” the letter o. Consider the following list:
bosom, Boleyn, woman;
love, dove, above, come, done;
move, prove;
on, gone;
one, none;
so, toe, nose.
On and nose (the short and the long of it) are taken for granted (so and toe are, in partly like nose), but the others?

I’ll begin with woman. The Old English for woman was wifman. Its long i designated a sound comparable with Modern Engl. ee in wee. Later that vowel underwent shortening, so that the word’s pronunciation began to resemble Modern Engl. wifman, rather than weefman, whereupon f was assimilated to its neighbor and wifman first turned into wimman (with regard to assimilation, compare lem’me go from let me go and leman “lover” from leofman) and then into wiman, for, as time went on, English lost long consonants. Contrary to professors of elocution, “common people” mispronounce words, slur as much as they can, and in general do not care about their delivery. Otherwise they would not have allowed wifman to degenerate into wimman. But they did not stop there. To articulate w, speakers protrude their lips and are not always in a hurry to spread them again. The result of this laziness was that Old Engl. widu “wood,” for instance, yielded wudu. Likewise, wiman became wuman. In the Middle English period, scribes disliked the sequences wu, um, mu, un, nu, and uv (because of too many vertical strokes the letters were hard to separate in reading, the more so as the usual signs for v and w were u and uu respectively) and substituted o for u. This is how uuuman became uuoman, that is, woman. Present day English has no words spelled with initial wu-. The few exceptions are dialectal forms recorded by linguists centuries after the phonetic processes mentioned here had been completed, and the only one most of us know is wuther, thanks to Emily Bronte’s title Wuthering Heights. In the early modern period, short u, except in the north of England, changed to the vowel of Standard English one now hears in shut up. Hence love, dove, above, come, and others. The story of done is more complicated: the change from long o (as in the modern paw or pore) to long u (as in the modern school), the shortening of that u, and the last step to the vocalic value of u in shut up. Womb and woman, which also have o contiguous to w, are still pronounced with the vowel of wuther. The original sound remained intact under the influence of w-.

The lips are active not only in the production of w but also in the production of p and b, and this is why pull and bull are pronounced the way they are. However, sometimes p- and b- could not save the following vowel from change, and alongside put, pull, and bull we have putty, pulp, and bulb. Unfortunately, the pernicious habit of designating the vowel in words like womb with the letter o resulted in the modern spelling bosom. The long stressed vowel of Old Engl. bosom (again as in Modern Engl. paw, pore) changed to long u (the equivalent of Modern Engl. oo), underwent shortening, and has been preserved. Boozom, boozam, or buzom would have made sense. Bosom reminds us of the word’s image that has not existed for at least half a millennium, and this is its only virtue. Anne Boleyn’s name was also spelled Bullen, but the unnatural variant has triumphed. When a word of Modern English is spelled with oo, we may assume that in the past it had a long vowel, regardless of whether its today’s reflex is long (as in food, mood) or short (as in good, hood). But the vowel of wood hardly ever was long. It is often said that conservative English spelling comes students in good stead, for it provides a window to the history of the language. It does, but those who look out of that window should be warned that the glass distorts the picture more than once.

It is now clear why prove and proof are spelled differently. The digraph oo in proof causes no surprise. Prove joined the words with v after o. The difference between prove, move and love, dove is that in the first group the vowel has remained long. Had love and dove withstood shortening, the four words would have rhymed, as they probably did in Shakespeare’s days. Today love/move is a so-called rhyme to the eye—a fact of no importance, since rhyming poetry is all but dead.

Old Engl. an “one” (with long a, as in Modern Engl. father) should have developed like stan, which is now stone, and it did, judging by the pronunciation of only (from anlic) and alone (a fusion of two words). In Middle English, an became on (on as in today’s awning). The rest is less clear. At that time, long vowels and diphthongs behaved similarly in that they could be pronounced with stress on the beginning and on the end, and this is why leosan, for instance, existed in two variants: leosan and leosan. As a consequence of this alternation, Standard Engl. lose, the reflex of leosan, has a dialectal variant lease, which continues leosan. This is also the reason show has a competing spelling shew (among the greats G.B. Shaw used only shew). If choose had sheared the fate of lose, today we would be asked “to cheese/chease our cheese.” Apparently, Middle Engl. on, that is, oon could be oon or oon, depending on the rhythm of the sentence. The variant oon was pronounced uon and won, rhyming with on. Several other dialectal variants of the same type have also been attested. Won became wun and later won, indistinguishable from the past tense of win. The pronunciation wonly was already known in 1570. As is usual with phonetic novelties, educated people first rejected the “vulgar” pronunciation of one with initial w- but were overwhelmed. The result is that today one is not a homophone of own. Most language historians trace the novelty described here (from oon to wun and won) to the British southwest, but it is hard to understand why the local pronunciation of such an important word should have been adopted by the Standard. Perhaps the forms with w- developed in the London area in the “allegro speech” of the capital (a great melting pot at all times) or under the influence of the “lower classes.” Once and none have aligned themselves with one. Spelling passed this tempest by.

The conclusion is obvious: the letter o has so many values because spelling has not caught up with the history of English sounds. Language retaliates sluggishness by producing spelling pronunciations. The fairly recent innovations often and fore-head are not the only examples of this type. Those who know about Coventry only from books sometimes pronounce Cov- as in cover. And indeed, who won’t be lost among Coventry ~ cover ~ over? Other people think that the name of the poet Donne, a homophone of done and dun, should be pronounced with the vowel of on. We can pity the naïve foreigner who missed the difference between worsted, the past tense of the verb worst, and worsted, the fabric, but sad is the lot of a native speaker who so often feels like a foreigner at home.

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By Anatoly Liberman

The adjective paltry gives little trouble to etymologists. It came to 16th-century English from the continent, most likely, from Low (that is, northern) German. There was also paltry “trash, rubbish,” but final -y made its passage from noun to adjective easy. A similar fate, from noun to adjective, befell its synonym trumpery “fraud, trickery,” a word of French descent: it soon acquired the meaning “trashy.” Low German paltrig “ragged, torn” is related to palter- in palterlumpen “rags.” This palterlumpen is a curious formation because its first element (palter-) also means “rag(s).” At one time, I became aware of the existence of compounds in which both parts have the same or nearly the same meaning, as in courtyard (“yard-yard” or “court-court”). Once detected, such words began crossing my path with surprising frequency. I had known them for years but never paid attention to their makeup. Compare downhill, literally “hill-hill” and Wealhtheow, the name of the queen in Beowulf, literally, as I think, “slave-slave.” A palterlumpen must have been a prodigiously ragged rag.

Despite its undignified background, palt- (as in palter) is an ancient word, though it occurs more often with its vowel a and consonant l in reverse order. Middle Dutch and Middle Low German had plet “rag,” from the assumed form platja. Danish pjalt, with cognates in Swedish and Norwegian, means the same. In Danish and Norwegian words, j is a typical insertion, used to express the speaker’s contempt of the object of discussion: pjalt turns out to be a despicable rag, a rag-rag indeed In the 4th century, plat “patch” was used in the text of the Gothic Bible (below, the word corresponding to it in the Authorized Version is italicized: “No one puts a piece of new garment upon an old,” L V: 36, Mk II: 21). Also in Russian, plat means “a piece of cloth,” but it remains unclear whether Gothic plat is its cognate or whether one language borrowed from another. Perhaps we are dealing with a so-called migratory, or culture, word (whatever its origin), current from north to south, like the names of tools that travel over half the world with the people who use them. Engl. plot “a piece of land” looks like plat ~ palt, but no consensus has been reached about possible ties between them (and even if all researchers had agreed on the etymology of plot, jubilation would have been premature, for consensus and truth are different things).

The most enigmatic noun in this series is paletot “loose outer garment; overcoat.” English dictionaries record it, but it is an obsolete or obsolescent loanword from Modern French, formerly often applied to a child’s coat. However, in French it is a living word. The initial form of paletot was palletoc. In England, from the 14th to the 16th century, paltock ~ paltok designated a kind of doublet or cloak with sleeves. Strangely, this word appeared in written English before it surfaced in French sources. This chronology does not necessarily mean that the word was coined in England, but it casts doubt on its French origin. Paletot produces the impression of a double diminutive: pal-et-ot (pal- means “pall; a cloak; mantle,” from Latin pallium “coverlet”), assuming that the word is Romance. However, paltok, with its final -k, needs an explanation, and here, too, a Germanic connection has been offered. When a transparent word like pal-et-ot coexists with an opaque one like paltok, the transparent form raises the suspicion of being the product of folk etymology, since it is more natural for people to change a word lacking associations in their language into something making sense than to do the opposite. We can understand how asparagus became sparrow grass, but who would “corrupt” (a favorite verb of older philologists) sparrow grass into the outwardly meaningless asparagus?

A 17th-century lexicographer defined our article of clothing so: “A long and thick pelt, or cassock, a garment like a short cloak with sleeves, or such a one as the most of our modern pages are attired in.” But in France it was first worn by peasants and therefore could not be a fancy cloak. If paltock is an English rather than a French word, perhaps it contains the by now familiar root palt-, followed by the diminutive suffix -ock, as in bullock, hillock, and so forth. A similar etymology turned up in the literature more than a hundred years ago but found no supporters, because the suggested suffix was Welsh, and indeed, why produce a hybrid when a purebred is a possibility? It would be better for my etymology if we knew exactly in which country paltock was coined and who made paltocks, but then its origin would have not baffled scholars so long. My only (weak) consolation is that the existing etymologies of paltock are hardly more convincing that mine.

When Marxism was at its peak among the German 19th-century social democrats, revisionists appeared (no religion without a heresy), whose slogan, with regard to workers’ struggle for their rights, was: “The goal is nothing, movement is everything.” Etymologists cannot occasionally help thinking of this slogan. Yet their goal exists, even if they seldom reach it. Our movement in the present essay has not been useless. The existence of the word palt ~ plat has been ascertained beyond reasonable doubt. It was probably a culture name for “a piece of cloth,” frequently degenerating into “rag.” Some such rags showed particularly strong traces of wear and tear (palterlumpen, for example); other pieces may have been solid enough to be made into cloaks. Ragged things were called paltry in northern Germany and the adjacent lands. Paltry made its way to England and is still with us, though we remember only its figurative sense.

The verb palter (“to talk in a confused manner, babble”) also exists It is anybody’s guess whether this verb has anything to do with palter- “rag” (did palter mean “to deal in rags; to trifle”? Skeat’s suggestion) or with its distant synonym falter (no one has compared them), or with neither.

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By Anatoly Liberman

The word fiasco reached the European languages in the 19th century: in Germany Heine introduced it from French (1837); in Sweden it appeared ten years later; in England in 1854, and so on. Although an Italian word meaning “bottle,” fiasco, along with its cognates in the other Romance languages, is, most probably, of Germanic origin, so that Engl. flask and German Flasche may be native (by contrast, flagon, from flacon, from some form like flascon, originated in France and went to England from there). The reasons fiasco keeps baffling etymologists need not cause surprise: it emerged as slang, and the sources of slang are usually hard to trace.

Three moments complicate the search. First, despite the fact that fiasco is, undoubtedly, Italian, the phrase far fiasco spread to other languages from French. (In texts, the phrase far fiasco turned up before the bare noun fiasco “mistake.”) Second, if far fiasco means “to make a bottle,” with a later change to “make a mistake and fail,” it is unclear why fiasco “bottle” has no article. Third, as far as we can judge, the phrase was first used only with reference to actors’ bad performance, a fact that leaves us wondering where bottles come in: bad eggs and rotten tomatoes would be more in place.

Far fiasco has no medieval roots. Therefore, occasional mentions of Roman customs, failed conspiracies (the hero of one of them was Count Giovanni L. Fiesco, 1547), and the like need not bother us. Only one of the more reasonable guesses, from Stainer and Barrett’s Dictionary of Musical Terms, may be quoted for completeness’ sake: “The fistula pastoricia was blown by the Romans to signify their dissatisfaction and it is possible that the present term arose from the similarity between the shape of a flageolet (flaschinet), and a flask.”

The literature on the origin of fiasco is not vast, but not negligible either: entries in the explanatory and etymological dictionaries of most European languages and about a dozen notes and articles. Some conjectures are copied from book to book, but all authors hasten to say that no definitive solution exists. Fiasco aligns itself with the words I have discussed in the recent past: their meaning is so discouraging (the posts were devoted to charade and charlatan) that etymological frustration should be taken for granted: these words “have a reputation to live up to.” As a rule, fiasco is referred to the production of Venetian glass. Allegedly, when a glassblower spoiled some beautiful object, it was made into a common bottle. Or when an apprentice ruined his assignment and ended up with a pitiful bottle instead of what he had hoped to produce, the outcome was a fiasco. Or a stupid tourist would witness the work of professional glassblowers and decide that the process was easy. He would be allowed to use the tube, but the result would be only nondescript pear-shaped bottles, much to the merriment of the bystanders, who would shout fiasco! at every new attempt. No evidence supports the idea that the phrase far fiasco originated in Venice. Unlike sports and art, glass blowing is a field whose professional secrets mainly interests only those involved, and a technical phrase known to insiders would be unlikely to travel far and wide. Nor has it been documented that workers ever turned spoiled objects into primitive bottles or destroyed them.

Another line of inquiry emphasizes the fact that the verb far does not have to mean “do, make”: it can be a substitute for some more concrete verb. This is true enough. To make one’s bed does not mean to produce it. To make head against something “resist an obstacle successfully” does not involve the manufacturing of a head. Make can even be a kind of link verb (for example, I made bold to mention this fact). The phrase appiccare un fiasco “to hang a bottle round someone’s neck” (appiccare “attach, fasten”) was a legal formula, and a substantial body of material has been produced to show that in the Middle Ages and later various objects—including bottles—were hung around miscreants’ necks. However, “to inflict a penalty” and “impose a punishment” are hardly synonyms for “fail as the result of a mistake.” At first sight, more promising seems to be the consideration that the names of hollow objects are often used as metaphors for “an empty head” and “fool.” Both German Flasche and French bouteille can mean “dummy,” but Italian fiasco cannot, so that this path also leads nowhere.

As pointed out above, fiasco became known in Italy and other lands as slang current in theaters. It may have originated elsewhere, but the stage was the center from which it spread through the languages of Europe. An ingenious reconstruction refers to the period in the 18th century when Italian comedians performed in France and became bitter rivals of native actors. This approach purports to explain how the now obsolete French expression faire une bouteille “make a mistake” became far fiasco and why the Italian phrase appeared in France before the Italians began to use it. Even if this is how the events developed, the problem of the indefinite article remains unsolved. Although far un fiasco and far il fiasco have been recorded, they have never been the main variants of the idiom and look like later rationalizations of far fiasco. Bottle is a countable noun, and it remains a puzzle why, in translating faire une bouteille, une was left out. Similar cases, with articles missing after faire ~ make, exist, but they are not many. The French idiom faire face a, roughly synonymous with make head against, had some currency in English guise (make face to); for example, Washington Irving used it. Here neither language needs the indefinite article before face, which is typical: compare save face. One can understand how face acquired an abstract meaning or how the same process affected way (make way), sail (make sail = hoist sail), and penny (at one time, the phrases make penny of something or make a penny of something enjoyed some popularity). But bottle? To us fiasco is abstract (“failure; disaster),” but nothing can be more concrete than Italian fiasco “bottle.” And this circumstance brings me to a last (surely, not the last) hypothesis on the origin of this intractable word.

Perhaps fiasco is connected with bottles less directly than is usually believed. In southern French dialects, the phrase faire flist “to lose courage” occurs. Flist, flast, and so forth are sound imitative words, and the phrase in question means approximately “to go flop.” One can imagine that for fun actors reshaped some French word like flast into Italian fiasco. This hypothesis is not unknown, but etymologists, in the rare cases they touch on it, do so in passing and with great diffidence, for too many missing links invite caution. In the world of words, old age (and flask has been around “forever”) is no proof against an onomatopoeic origin; the opposite is true. Since Germanic f- goes back to earlier p-, the protoform of flask must have begun with plas- or plos-, a typical sound imitative complex: compare Engl. plash ~ splash-. Perhaps the type of bottle called “flask” got its name for the sound the liquid it contained went plas-plas or plos-plos. Bottle (originally a wine sack or a leather flask?) is a Romance word and may be related to Engl. body and other nouns denoting “swelling.” B-d and b-t words are also sound imitative. Latin ampulla “bottle” was frequently used to designate inflated and noisy objects. If flask arose as an onomatopoeic word in antiquity, it could cross the path of another onomatopoeia centuries later. All this is interesting but rather fruitless guesswork.

However slippery our ground may be, research has shed some light on the derivation of fiasco. Contrary to what popular books keep telling us, the word did not arise in the lingo of Venetian glassblowers. It probably owes nothing to the barbarous punishments of the Middle Ages and beyond. Despite the obvious Italian connection, it has French roots (not to be confused with a French root). Other than that, the bottle refuses to be cracked.

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By Anatoly Liberman

English and Japanese spelling. In one of the comments on spelling reform, my brief statement on English versus Japanese was criticized. A month ago, in the previous set of “gleanings,” I responded to someone’s remark asserting that the complexity of spelling and the level of literacy are not connected, as the experience of Japanese allegedly shows: Japanese spelling is hard to master, but the Japanese, as we hear, are overwhelmingly literate. I suggested that the two systems should not be compared, for hieroglyphs are different from letters. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

Two opposite forces act on the brain of someone who sets out to trace the origin of a word. Everything may seem obvious. To cite the most famous cases, coward is supposedly a “corruption” of cow herd and sirloin came into being when an English king dubbed an edible loin at table (Sir Loin). Such fantasies have tremendous appeal, for they show that the homegrown linguist, unlike some simple-minded observer of facts, will not be deceived by appearances. But folk etymology also enjoys creating problems where there are none. Here perhaps a well-known example is the attempt to prove that beef eater is not an eater of beef but beaufetier ~ buffetier in disguise. One cannot know in advance when naiveté should be recommended (a beef eater is a beef eater, and that’s all there is to it) and when sophistication is the best policy (stop deriving coward from cowherd!), but research usually clarifies matters. Etymological games with honeymoon resemble those with beefeater. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

Hubba-hubba is dated slang, a word remembered even less then groovy and bobby-soxer. To my surprise, even my computer does not know it. And yet it was all over the place sixty and fifty years ago. Its origin attracted a good deal of attention soon after World War II and then again in the eighties. (more…)

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I’ve just updated Aussiereviews with thirteen new reviews, all children’s and young adult books. Probably my favourite in this batch was Dragon Moon, by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog), the final title in the Dragonkeeper trilogy. I was at the launch of the first title at the CBCA conference in Hobart in 2004, and remember Gary Crew singing its praises. He said something along the lines that the