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A BRIEF ­­HISTORY OF THE WORDS AGAIN AND AGAINST,
WITH AMIDST, ACROSSED, AND WHILST BEING THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE

By Anatoly Liberman

There are two questions here.  First, why does again rhyme with den, fen, ten rather than gain?  Second, where did -t in against come from?  I’ll begin with against.

Old English had a ramified system of endings.  The most common ending of the genitive was -s, which also occurred as a suffix of adverbs, or in words that, by definition, had no case forms at all (adverbs are not declined!).  It is easy to detect the traces of the adverbial -s in such modern words as always, (must) needs, and nowadays, and its obscure origin will not interest us here.  Some adverbs ending in -s were used with the preposition to before them, for example, togegnes “against” (read both g’s as y) and tomiddes “amid.”  They competed with similar and synonymous adverbs having no endings: ongegn and onmiddan.  As a result, the hybrid forms emerged with -s at the end and a “wrong” prefix: ageines and amides.  Initial a- in them is the continuation of on-; hence our modern forms against and amidst.  So far, everything is clear.  The tricky part is final t.

Obviously, this -t has no justification in the early history of either against or amidst.  According to the usual explanation, both words so often preceded the definite article the that -sth- was simplified (“assimilated”) to st.  This explanation is plausible.  By way of analogy, it may be added that a similar process has been postulated for the verb hoist.  It surfaced in English texts in the 16^th century in the form hoise, and all its native predecessors and cognates elsewhere in Germanic look like it.  Perhaps the infinitive was changed under the influence of the preterit and the past participle (as in the now proverbial to be hoist with one’s own petard), but, not inconceivably, in the phrase hoise the flag the same process occurred as in ageines the/amides the.  (I have seen the conjecture that -st goes back to the superlative degree of adjectives.  This reconstruction is fanciful.)

However, t also developed in words that did not always precede the definite article.  Thus, earnest “pledge money,” a noun with a long an intricate history, was first attested in the form erles.  Here the influence of the all-important adjective earnest, from Old Engl. earnost, should not be ruled out.  Tapestry is another borrowing from French (tapisserie; compare Engl. on the tapis, literally, “on the table cloth,” a calque of French sur la tapis: tapis and tapestry are of course related).  The inserted t in tapestry is called a parasitic sound that developed between s and r—not much of an explanation, even though it is possibly true.  Whilst is from whiles, which, like against, had no historical -t.  Both words seem to have developed along similar lines, but the troublesome consonant may be �

Have you ever had a manuscript gain an unsightly number of pages, so much so that you cringe at the cost of printing it out?

I am usually a short writer. When I started college, I trembled at the thought of ten page papers. Ten pages? Who am I, Charles Dickens?

When I wrote my dissertation and managed a whole 250 (including 25 pages of bibliography and tables), I was flabbergasted. I'd maxed out. That was for sure. Never would I write anything longer. Ever.

And I didn't.

Until...

I started my present WIP. It's about a boy and a dolphin set in late 19th century New Zealand, and I even got to go to New Zealand last November for on-sight research. At that point, the ms was still a manageable 285 pgs.

Over the last year, I think my WIP secretly gorged on adverbs, Anne of Green Gables poetical monologues, and New Zealand scenery because it grew to a whopping 420 pages. A real full figured dame.

Given another era, another economy, another stage of existence in the publishing industry, and it might have been fine. Dickensian (or Botticelli) full, but fine. But it's a hard sell in today's market.

After a lot of thought, and talking with other authors, and speaking with agents, and pretty much hashing until I had come to terms with the inevitable, I put my ms on a diet. A serious diet. No liposuction here. I mean serious, word-counting, shave-off-the-excess pagery reduction.

I started three weeks ago. Being the slightly obssessive compulsive neurotic writer that I am, I'm keeping a "diet" journal. At the end of each day of revisions, I weigh in. The rule is that the ms word count cannot be any higher than where it was at the beginning of the day. I strive to make it a lot less. So far, it's been working. I have successfully shaved 11,000 words off, and I'm only through the first 120 pages.

Oh sweet success. I can almost taste the adverbs.

No, No! Bad writer. Stay away from the adverbs!

See how hard ms reduction is?

Sigh.

Please keep your fingers crossed. Pray to any and all writing muses. Send me parsimonic vibes. My ideal ms weight: 70-75,000 words (285 ms pgs), and I want to reach that by Winter Break. Which means, no adverbs on the side. No waxing poetically about scenery. Cut. Cut. Cut. Snip. Snip. Snip.

And, every once in a while, celebrate the hard won successes.

By Anatoly Liberman

As always, many thanks for comments, questions, additions, and corrections. I keep eating my way through a mountain of questions I have received since June, but something will be left over for October. My mail contains many traditional queries, that is, people ask the same questions over and over again. Let me refer our correspondents to this blog for some information on who versus whom, kitty/catty corner, and hunky-dory (separate posts were devoted to them). With regards to tomfoolery, see my book Word Origins…, in which the use of the proper name Tom is discussed at some length. However, I will return briefly to one old problem. Our correspondent writes that she hates hearing drive safe instead of drive safely. Some time in the past I wrote on “the death of the adverb,” and the essay provoked numerous comments, which I need not reproduce here. I only want to provide some comfort to the defenders of the beleaguered part of speech (and by the same token to myself, for I am one of them). My advice is to treat the change philosophically. The drive safe construction has been gaining ground for centuries, and in German it has won. For the benefit of English speakers here is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128. In this sonnet, the poet begrudges the luck the virginal of his beloved enjoys: the keys (“jacks”) of the musical instrument kiss her fingers, while his lips are not invited to do any work: “How oft…/ do I envy those jacks that nimble leap/ To kiss the tender inward of thy hand.…” Obviously, nimble here means nimbly, and what is good for Shakespeare is good enough for us. Right? No, but I promised to provide comfort, not a justification for safe driving under the influence (of the Bard).

Big questions. 1. How does one expand one’s vocabulary? The usual answer is: “By voracious reading.” The answer is correct but insufficient, especially if one wants to expand one’s active vocabulary. The only way to learn words is to learn them, that is, to treat one’s native language as one treats foreign languages. Read good books, write out the words new to you, look them up in a dictionary to make sure that you did not misunderstand their meaning, and learn them together with the context in which they occurred. One word a day will go a long way. 2. On several occasions I mentioned the fact that American English, being a colonial language, is more conservative than the language of the metropolis. How does this fact tally with the readiness of American English to adopt countless foreign words? Conservative refers to the phonetic and the grammatical structure of language. American English has retained the pronunciation and some forms that were current four and three centuries ago, while British English has often modified them.

Separate words. In (the) hospital. Why do British and American English differ in the use of the definite article? English-speakers who have not studied the history of their language (that is, 99, 999% of the population) believe that the use of articles is natural and stable. However, it is not and changes from century to century and from one part of the English speaking world to another. Note the vacillation even in Modern American English: in the future ~ in future (the second variant seems to be winning out; German has a similar alternation: in Zukunft ~ in der Zukunft). The definite article disappeared in such adverbial phrases as go to bed, at school, in prison, at work, and even in that time of year. In hospital marks the triumph of “adverbialization”; by contrast, in the hospital remains a free combination of a preposition and a noun. Aluminum versus aluminium. This pair is another famous example of the difference between American and British English, second perhaps only to fall ~ autumn, truck ~ lorry, and sidewalk ~ pavement. Sir Humphrey Davy called his invention (1812) aluminum, but in England i was later added to it on the analogy of chemical substances like sodium. American English preserves the earliest form. What is the origin of Sardoudledom? I am quoting from the OED, a most useful book for learning etymology: “[From] blend of the name Victorien Sardou (1831-1908). French dramatist + DOODLE + -DOM. A fanciful word used to describe well-wrought, but trivial or morally objectionable, plays considered collectively; the characteristic milieu in which such work is admired.”

Pleaded versus pled. Pled, which is being used more and more often, is an analogical form: plead ~ pled, as lead ~ led and read (infinitive) ~ read (preterit). How did savings end up being a singular form? I think most people avoid saying a savings of $20 (though a saving of $20 is not the most elegant phrase either), but his savings is will shock few. Words ending in -s, like digs, Boots (the name of a servant at a hotel), or Sniffers (the name of a guinea pig), often become singulars. We have means (a means to an end) and works “factory” (a chemical works is situated not far from where we live). In a relatively recent edition of Little Red Riding Hood, it is written that the girl lived near a woods. This usage seems odd to me (and to my spellchecker), but apparently, not to everybody. Thus, savings joined the words whose plural ending does not prevent them from being looked upon as singulars.

Sam Hill. My timid refusal to connect Hill with hell (unless it is a taboo form) impressed no one. I hasten to repeat that I have no clue to the origin of the idiom but would like to know where, regardless of Hill ~ hell, Sam came from. Hill, even if etymologized convincingly, is only half of the problem. Cottage cheese: Is it derived from ricotta? I am sure it is not. If it were, it would, most likely, not have been “folk etymologized” so drastically. Compare German Schmierkase (literally “smear cheese”), which in American English became smear-case! (See it in the OED.) Cottage cheese is also an “Americanism” and seems to mean what it says. The name of this dairy product often consists of two words: a noun meaning “cheese” and some attribute (so, for instance, in French: fromage blanc or fromage frais). The similarity between cottage and ricotta is coincidental. Ricotta means “recooked” (tt in -cotta goes back to ct: the Latin root of this word can be seen in Engl. concoct); compare Italian biscotto “twice cooked,” that is biscuit. Cottage cheese is often called in unpredictable ways. Curds is a word of unknown origin despite the existence of look-alikes in Celtic. German Quark is a borrowing from Slavic, where it means “product,” while Scandinavian ost has a respectable Indo-European descent.

What is the preferred spelling of czar? It is czar, though tsar (not czar) reflects the pronunciation of the Russian word much better. “The spelling cz-, which is non-Slavonic, is due to Herberstein, ‘Rerum Muscovitarum Commentarii’ [A Commentary on the Deeds of the Muscovites], 1549, the chief early authority on Russia in Western Europe” (The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology). What happened to -ce- in Worcestershire? It was shed, and not only in this place name. Compare Leicestershire and Gloucestershire, pronounced Lester-, Gloster-. Place names drop middle syllables with dire regularity. Worcester goes back to Old Engl. Wigraceaster (the second element -ceaster, like -caster in Lancaster, is the Latin word for “camp”). In today’s pronunciation only Wuster is left, though the archaic spelling has preserved some traces of the original form. American speakers should be warned not to rhyme -shire, when it occurs as the second part of place names, with hire, mire, wire: it should be a homophone of sheer.

As noted, I still have some unanswered questions on file. I’ll take care of them on the last Wednesday of October.

I had a great time at MAIN STREET BOOKS in St. Charles, Missouri today, signing copies of HAMSTER HOLIDAYS as well as DOGGIE DAY CAMP, KITTY KERPLUNKING (also from the Pet Grammar Parade series) and GIFTS FROM GOD as well.

Anyone want an adverb? I have thousands of them in Theatre. In fact take out the adverbs and the wee book adds up to about 40,000 words.

I also have two other words that you can borrow if you want:

THE END

Heidi Strawser, an E-book reviewer for the Schoolhouse Store and a Marketing Assistant for Old Schoolhouse magazine and a homeschooling mom, had this to say about DOGGIE DAY CAMP at Take Root and Write-- Reviews by, Heidi:

Doggie Day Camp: Verb and Adverb Adventures is part of a series of books that Cynthia is writing called "Pet Grammar Parade". This book not only contains a cute little story about a dog named Bubba, but it's also a very educational book. As a homeschooling mother, these are the types of books I enjoy!
At the beginning of Doggy Day Camp, Cynthia explains what verbs and adverbs are. Verbs are explained in blue and adverbs in red. Then, throughout the book, every time a verb or adverb is used, it is written in that same color, for easy recognition and identification. Kids won't even realize that they are learning, but their brain will be putting the colors together with the parts of speech, and they'll be learning in a fun way!
After the story, there is more explanation (a "study guide") on verbs and adverbs and their usage.The book also contains 6 worksheet-style activities (such as word search, fill-in-the-blank, and scrambled words). And, the best part for parents - the answer key!

To read all of the review, click here.

I love them hugely, deeply, widely, vastly, cortohumeringisously!¹

1. I’m also fond of hideously bad neologisms.

Into the FBI's Citizens' Academy! It starts November 1.

From the FBI website:
Want to find out first hand how the FBI works? Hear how the Bureau tracks down spies and terrorists? Learn how to collect and preserve evidence? See what it is like to fire a weapon and put yourself in the shoes of a Special Agent making a split-second, life-or-death decision?

If you are a leader in your community, you just might be able to do that and more––through an FBI Citizens’ Academy, open for business in all 56 of our field offices.

Who attends? Business, civic, and religious leaders, each nominated by a Bureau employee or a previous Academy graduate. You must be at least 21 years old (with no prior felony convictions) and must live and work in the area covered by the field office sponsoring the academy. Please note: Because classified techniques used in criminal and national security cases are discussed, nominees must undergo a background check and get an interim security clearance.

Who teaches? Special Agents in Charge of that field office, their senior managers and senior agent experts.

The curriculum? Fascinating!
- Practical problems involving evidence collection and preservation.
- FBI jurisdiction and congressional oversight.
- Structure and operation of FBI field offices and satellite agencies.
- Fingerprint, forensic, technology, training, and other services
- Policies and issues: ethics, discipline, communications, drug enforcement, civil rights, and future criminal trends.
- Firearms training.

[Full disclosure: Some of my references got a little freaked out when the FBI contacted them.]

The Portland Division of the FBI has a Citizen’s Academy twice a year. I’m applying to go. I’ll learn about cyber crimes, international and domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and the use of force policy. I’ll also get to participate in “live fire training exercises.” Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Wish me luck.





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On July 26, 1908 Attorney General Charles Bonaparte hired the first 34 FBI employees, 99 years later the Bureau employs over 30,000 people. To be honest, most of what I know about the FBI I learned from movies, so I went to Oxford Reference Online and found the entry excerpted below from A Dictionary of Contemporary World History. Love them, or hate them, the FBI’s goal is to protect the citizens of the United States and OUP wishes them a very happy birthday!

(more…)

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