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By Anatoly Liberman

A word, some scholars say, can have several etymologies. This is a misleading formulation. Various factors contribute to a word’s meaning and form. All of them should be taken into account and become part of the piece of information we call etymology, because words are like human beings. Someone we know had two parents and inherited their traits, along with those of many generations of his ancestors, then grew up in an environment that partly reinforced and partly suppressed those traits, changed his habits under the influence of his domineering wife, and took her last name, to spite his parents. He has recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Words too come from a certain source, begin to interact with their neighbors (some mean nearly the same, and the newcomer either tries to stay away from them or drives them out of existence; others sound like it, and their closeness affects its meaning or stylistic coloring), grow old and dull or join a disreputable gang, and perhaps die. Each event deserves the attention of a language historian, but it is better not to speak of the multiple etymologies of one word.

In other cases, two or three sources look like a word’s probable etymons. Only one of them was its true parent, but we have no way of recognizing it. Both situations seem to be relevant to the history of akimbo. Among the conjectures about its origin some are reasonable. It is also possible that, regardless of the real etymon of akimbo, the word may have succumbed to the lures of folk etymology, a process that usually obliterates ancestral traits. This is the reason the most cautious dictionaries say “origin unknown.” But theirs is not the ignorance born of the lack of evidence. It is akin to the dilemma that faced Buridan’s ass, which, being placed between two equally appetizing stacks of hay, starved to death, unable to choose the best one. Those who can visualize the position called “with hands (or arms) akimbo” will agree that invoking the image of that unhappy animal could not be more apt.

There is the Italian phrase a sghembo “awry, aslope,” and it has been proposed as the etymon of the English word. Several factors weaken this idea. Someone who suggests borrowing should show in what circumstances the lending language shared its resources and why people from another country decided to accept the gift. If these conditions are not met, the hypothesis has no merit. We know why English took over a multitude of musical terms from Italian, but why akimbo? Were Italians famous for having their “hands on the hips and the elbows turned outward,” to quote an admirable dictionary definition? The worst thing about this etymology is that the Italian phrase has nothing to do with the position of the arms. Consequently, the English are supposed to have borrowed a sghembo and endowed it with a sense remote from the original one. As we will see, this argument will also prove deadly for another attempt to trace akimbo to a foreign source. An etymology killed with such heavy artillery may not need a few additional bullets, but we cannot help observing that Italian gh designates “hard g” (as in Engl. get), whereas akimbo has k. The parallel form a schembo (sch = sk), was dialectal, so that its popularity among English-speakers could not have been significant at any time.

Akimbo surfaced as in kenebowe (1400). More than two centuries later the variants a kenbol(l) ~ a kenbold appeared. For their sake, and perhaps not without some regrets, we will leave Italy for Scandinavia. The Icelandic words kimbill, kimpill, and kimbli “bundle of hay; hillock,” once compared with akimbo, exist. According to some old dictionaries, they mean “the handle of a pot or jug,” but they do not. Their root is related to Engl. comb and was used in Germanic for coining the names of fastenings, barrel staves, and so forth. However, similar words (kimble, kemmel, and many others), designating various vessels (not handles), are current in modern British English and Swedish dialects. For this reason, Ernest Weekley set up Middle Engl. kimbo “pot ear, pitcher handle.” The metaphor, from a pitcher with two handles to a person with hands akimbo, is perfect and widespread. In kenebowe may have been a conscious translation of the French phrase en anses “on the handles,” as Weekley says, but why is it so different from present day Engl. akimbo, especially if we remember that Middle Engl. kimbo has been reconstructed rather than recorded and that 17th century authors knew kembol(l). What happened to final -l? Weekley did not provide an answer to those questions. Akembol could not develop from in kenebowe in a natural way. More likely, it was a product of folk etymology, perhaps indeed under the influence of the names of pots and jugs.

A third putative source of akimbo is Gaelic cam “bent, crooked”; the English adverb kim-kam “all awry, all askew” has been attested. Since -bowe in kenebowe means “bend” and is identical with -bow in elbow and rainbow, kimbo, from ken-bow ~ kin-bow ~ kinbo, emerges in this reconstruction as “bent bend,” a tautological compound (both of its parts mean the same), like many others in the Indo-European languages. Compare Engl. courtyard, pathway, etc. and numerous place names, which, when deciphered, yield “white white water,” “hill-hill,” and so forth. While reading the entry akimbo in Skeat’s dictionary, I discovered, much to my surprise, his passing statement on the popularity of such compounds, as though this fact were the most obvious thing in the world. It is not, and few researchers are aware of them. The suggestion that just one component of akimbo is Celtic has little to recommend it. In sum, akimbo would be easy to explain, if its earliest form were not kenebowe. Lost among Italian, Gaelic, Icelandic, and English, we will return to Scandinavia.

Another form that allegedly might generate akimbo is Icelandic kengboginn “bent into a crook.” British dialectal kingbow looks like a variant of it. This etymology is given in most dictionaries as final. A late 14th century English word could have been borrowed from Scandinavian, but Italian a sghembo hastens to take its revenge. Kengboginn never meant “akimbo,” and a change from “bent, crooked” to such a highly specific meaning (“with one’s hands on the hips”) is suspect. Also, keng- in kengboginn, like kimble, bears little resemblance to kene- (-bowe, is not incompatible with -boginn, however). Once again we wish there were no kenebowe.

At first blush, kene- in kenebowe is the adjective keen. If so, in kenebowe must be understood as “in keen bow,” that is, “in a sharp bend, at an acute angle, presenting a sharp elbow” (such are the glosses in The Century Dictionary). In Middle English, keen “sharp-pointed” “was in common use as applied to the point of a spear, pike, dagger, goad, thorn, hook, anchor, etc., or to the edge of a knife, sword, ax, etc.… In its earliest use, and often later, the term connotes a bold or defiant attitude, involving, perhaps, an allusion to keen in its other common Middle English sense of ‘bold’,” The quotation is from the same dictionary, which calls all the previous explanations erroneous.

Skeat defended the kengboginn etymology and kept repeating that Middle Engl. kene was not used to denote “sharp” in such a context. He never elaborated on his phrase in such a context. Despite Skeat’s objection, the etymology of kenebowe defended in The Century Dictionary seems to be the least implausible of all, assuming that the first vowel of kenebowe was long; the vowel in keen undoubtedly was. This is not too bold an assumption, for kene- with short e has no meaning. Later, this e must have been shortened (a usual process in trisyllabic words, to which we owe short o in holiday, as opposed to long o in holy, for example), and the change destroyed the tie between kene- and keen. The second e was shed—another common process in Middle English. The new form (let us spell it kenbow) began to resemble words for vessels with two handles and in kennebowe became akingbow, akingbo, akimbo, and so forth. In the disguised compound akimbow, the idea of a bow also disappeared (even an association with elbow did not save it); hence the spelling -bo. The influence of Gaelic cam need not be invoked in the history of akimbo.

Faced with many hypotheses, none of which should be dismissed as untenable, we are still not quite sure where akimbo came from, but “origin unknown” would be an unnecessarily harsh verdict. In 1909, the first edition of Webster’s New International opted for keen-, the second (in 1934) cited kingboginn, and the third (1961) gave the earliest form (kenebowe) and stopped. This is what I call the progress of the science of etymology.

On this day in history, October 14, 1066, the Battle of Hastings was fought between William the Conqueror and King Harold. To help us learn more about one of history’s most infamous battles I turned to Oxford Reference Online. From there I was led The Oxford Companion to Military History which had the entry below by Matthew Strickland on the battle.  I hope your 14th is peaceful in comparison.

Hastings, battle of (1066)
Fought on 14 October 1066, between the forces of William ‘the Conqueror’, Duke of Normandy and King Harold (Godwinson) II of England, Hastings was one of the most decisive battles in the history of western Europe. William had a claim to the English throne and Harold expected him to invade, but William fortuitously landed on the Sussex coast when Harold was preoccupied with an invasion in the north. On hearing of William’s arrival, Harold immediately began a forced march south from York, refusing to wait in London for reinforcements, and arriving in the vicinity of Hastings on the night of 13 October. Less than three weeks earlier, at Stamford Bridge, he had defeated the army of Norwegian King Haraldr Harðraða, which he had caught completely by surprise. Now he hoped to repeat this successful strategy against William, but the latter was forewarned by his scouts and attacked Harold’s force before a third of it was drawn up, forcing him into a strong but confined defensive position on Senlac ridge. Harold, moreover, had lost some of his best men in the earlier battles of Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge on 20 and 25 September .

The Norman archers, supported by heavy infantry, began the battle, but made little headway against the close infantry formations of the Anglo-Saxons, so densely arrayed, noted Duke William’s biographer William of Poitiers, that the dead could not even fall. Assaults by the Norman cavalry initially fared little better, and the well-equipped housecarls did terrible execution with their great two-handed axes. William’s left, comprised of Bretons, broke in panic amidst rumours that the duke was slain, and William narrowly avoided catastrophe by rallying his fleeing men and removing his helmet to show he was still alive. Launching a counter-attack, the Normans cut down those Saxons who had broken ranks in pursuit, and, exploiting the efficacy of this manoeuvre, they executed several ‘feigned flights’ with considerable success. Renewed assaults by Norman archers and knights gradually thinned the remaining English formation, which lacked sufficient archers to neutralize the Norman missilemen. Harold’s death effectively ended the battle; wounded first in the eye by an arrow, he was then cut down by Norman knights.

Hastings was by no means the inevitable triumph of feudal heavy cavalry over ‘outmoded’ Germanic infantry; the battle raged from dawn to dusk, the Normans came close to complete disaster, and it was chance alone that Harold, not William, was slain. Contemporaries regarded the battle as so closely fought that only divine intervention could explain William’s eventual victory.

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By Anatoly Liberman

All words must have been coined by individuals. This statement surprises and embarrasses not only the uninitiated but also some language historians. We are used to thinking that “people” created ancient language and art, but what is people? (This question, though in another guise, will recur below.) A group of activists working together and producing in chorus meaningful sound complexes like big ~ bag ~ bug ~ bog? Or a committee like those on which we sit, organs of collective wisdom? As a rule, every novelty that does not die “without issue” passes through a predictable cycle: someone has something to offer, a small group of enthusiasts surrounding the inventor adopts it, more adherents show their support, the novelty becomes common property, and (not necessarily) the originator is forgotten. We have no way of tracing the beginning of the oldest words, and even some neologisms remain etymological puzzles, but the names of some “wordsmiths” have not been lost. For instance, Lilliputian was coined by Jonathan Swift, gas by J.B. van Helmont, and jeep (which later became Jeep) by E.C. Segar. As a rule, inventors use the material at hand. Swift seems to have combined lil, the colloquial pronunciation of little and put(t) “blockhead,” a slang word common in the 18^th century. Van Helmont was probably inspired by the Dutch pronunciation of chaos. Jeep is sound imitative, like peep. In similar fashion, we have no doubt about the structure of the noun folklore (folk + lore), but the story of its emergence is worth telling.

William John Thoms (1802-1885) began his literary career as an expert editor of old tales and prose romances. He also investigated customs and superstitions. Especially interesting are his studies of popular lore in Shakespeare: elves, fairies, Puck, Queen Mab, and others. They were published in the forties, the decade in which he met his star hour. Special works on Thoms are extremely few (the main one dates to 1946), and the archival documents pertaining to him remain untapped, but he related some events of his life himself. It was not by chance that California Folklore Quarterly printed an article about him (“’Folklore’: William John Thoms” by Duncan Emrich, volume 5, pp. 155-374) in 1946. A hundred years earlier a letter signed by Ambrose Merton appeared in the London-based journal The Athenaeum. Those who have leafed through its huge folio volumes probably could not help wondering how the subscribers managed to find their way through such an enormous mass of heterogeneous materials. Yet that weekly had a devoted readership, and its voice reached far.

The 1846 letter is available in two modern anthologies, but outside the professional circle of folklorists hardly anyone has read it, so that I will quote its beginning and end. “Your pages have so often given evidence of the interest which you take in what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities, or Popular Literature (though by-the-by it is more a Lore than a literature, and would be most aptly described by a good Saxon compound, Folklore,—the Lore of the People)—that I am not without hopes of enlisting your aid in garnering the few ears which are remaining, scattered over that field from which our forefathers might have gathered a goodly crop. No one who has made the manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc., of the olden time his study, but must have arrived at two conclusions:—the first how much that is curious and interesting in those matters is now entirely lost—the second, how much may yet be rescued by timely exertion…. It is only honest that I should tell you I have long been contemplating a work upon our “Folklore” (under that title, mind Messes. A, B, and C,—so do not try to forestall me);—and I am personally interested in the success of the experiment which I have, in this letter, albeit imperfectly, urged you to undertake.” Not only did the editor of The Athenaeum welcome the letter. He opened a special rubric for “folk-lore,” and “Ambrose Merton” (this was Thoms of course) became its editor.

The letter was followed by an injunction, part of which is so much to the point that it must be reproduced here: “We have taken some time to weigh the suggestion of our correspondent—desirous to satisfy ourselves that any good of the kind which he proposes could be effected in such space as we are able to spare from the many other demands upon our columns; and have before our eyes the fear of that shower of trivial communication which a notice in conformity with his suggestion is likely to bring. We have finally decided that, if our antiquarian correspondents be earnest and well-informed and subject their communications to the condition of having something to communicate, we may… be the means of effecting some valuable salvage for the future historian of old customs and feelings…. With these views, however, we must announce to our future contributors under the above head, that their communications will be subjected to a careful sifting—both as regards value, authenticity, and novelty; and that they will save both themselves and us much unnecessary trouble if they will refrain from offering any facts and speculations which at once need recording and deserve it.”

Thoms may have regretted the fact that he wrote his letter to The Athenaeum under a pseudonym, for a year later, in another letter to the same journal, he disclosed his identity. He more than once reminded his readers that it was he who launched the word folklore. From time to time somebody would derive folklore from German or Danish. As long as he lived, Thoms kept refuting such unworthy rumors (he also suffered from the neglect of his Shakespeare scholarship); after his death others defended him. The word found acceptance both in the English speaking world and abroad. German, Austrian, and Swiss scholars eventually borrowed it with its original spelling (Folklore), though the German for folk is Volk. By the end of the eighties folklore had become an accepted term in Scandinavia, as well as in the Romance and Slavic speaking countries. The British Folklore Society, which was also formed largely thanks to Thoms’s efforts, adopted the title Folk-Lore Record for its journal (now it is called simply Folklore), and Thoms was elected the Society’s director. In the introduction to the first volume he noted, perhaps not without a touch of irony, that the word he had coined would make him better known than the rest of his professional activities.

As we have seen, the “Saxon” term folklore was applied to the vanishing “manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc.” Thoms did not realize how ambiguous his agenda was. For more than 150 years, researchers have been arguing over whether the subject of folklore is only “survivals” (does modern folklore exist?), who are the people, the “folk” to be approached, and whether folklore is the name of the treasures to be collected and described or of the science (“the lore”) devoted to them. Today folklore is often understood as a study of verbal art, but not less often it passes off as a branch of cultural anthropology. In 1846 folk meant “peasantry,” which excluded urban culture. One also spoke vaguely of common people, of story tellers nearly untouched by the advance of civilization, and of the working people in the “byeways of England” (the phrase, spelling and all, is from The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1885). Railways were the main bugaboo of those who watched the rural landscape disappear under the wheels of the devil, the steam engine. Being run over by a train became a literary motif.

In 1849 an event of great importance happened in Thoms’s life: he began publishing his own weekly that, after rejecting many titles and ignoring the advice of some well-wishers, he decided to call Notes and Queries. His old appeal to the readers to send ballads, tales, proverbs, descriptions of customs, and so forth brought many responses, and Thoms was loath to start a rival periodical, for fear of undermining The Athenaeum, but he received the editor’s blessing. The new journal turned into a main forum for letters that Thoms had invited correspondents to send to The Athenaeum. The rubric on “folk-lore” in both periodicals made the term familiar, and later the derivatives (folklorist and folkloric) emerged. Before resigning as editor, Thoms told the story of his magazine in a series of short essays and published them in Notes and Queries for 1871 and 1872. In 1848 Dombey and Son appeared. One of the novel’s most endearing characters is the one-armed Captain Cuttle. Like so many other personages brought to life by Dickens, the good captain has a tag: he likes to repeat the maxim “When found, make a note of.” Thoms used this catchphrase as a motto for his journal, and it was printed on the title page of each issue.

I have already written about the value and the worldwide success of Notes and Queries. This magazine is one of a kind. Personally, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to it, for suggestions on word origins were (and still are) common in Notes and Queries, and I have nearly 8000 of them in my database. Some words have been discussed only in its pages, and some first-rate specialists sought no better exposure of their ideas. The man who invented the word folklore and founded Notes and Queries deserves to be remembered, and I am sorry that no one has written a book about him. The reason may be that he was neither a professor nor a madman. Perfectly sane and of humble origin, he was survived by his wife and nine children.

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Can’t stop searching for words in Safire’s Political Dictionary? Neither can I. But I have found another great way to see Safire’s genius in action, the youtube video below and his Daily Show appearance. So plug in your headphones and get ready to expand your political vocabulary.

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