Mayday! M'aidez!

I was reminded last night that the distress call Mayday is merely an Englished spelling of the French m'aidez, which means Help me.

While I'm here, I should, perhaps, point out that SOS doesn't stand for anything. It's simply very easy to transmit in Morse Code. When SOS was thought up, there was an alternative suggestion that the signal should be CQD, standing for Come Quickly, Distress, but it was too hard to transmit.

The Villain in the Villa

Once upon a time, there were Romans who had lovely villas in the countryside and the word is still with us today, even if the villas now tend to be rather suburban things. A Roman villa was not suburban it was usually attached to a farm and would therefore be one of a group of buildings. These buildings constituted the villaticum. Somehow, over the centuries a G got in there and the Old French referred to these buildings as un village and we as a village, with the villa bit still intact in there.

It's well known that people who live in villages are rustic, rural uneducated, illiterate peasants. That was the original meaning of villain. Because villains have none of the noble thoughts that fill the minds of educated city-dwellers, but are prey to their basest bucolic instincts - the word shifted meaning and started to refer to anybody who was evil, and that is where we get our modern villains from.

All this etymology makes Hamlet's words much more sensible:


O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:

Because if I had a nice villa in Denmark I'd probably smile.

Finally, when not smiling and following their baser instincts, village villains often like to write rustic poetry with a peculiar rhyme scheme. And that's where we get the villanelle from. A villanelle is a poem of six stanzas. The first five stanzas have three lines and the last has four. The whole thing rhymes ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA, which would be impossibly hard were it not that the first line of the first stanza is repeated as the third line of the second fourth and sixth stanzas and the third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third fifth and sixth stanzas. Got that?

No?

Well here's an example that Dylan Thomas wrote for his dying father, which is so beautiful that you should buy it from Amazon.


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.


Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And here's Auden, which is also so beautiful that you should buy it from Amazon.


Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Finally, village idiot is only recorded from 1907.

Villains!

Goodbye, Adios, Adieu

Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.

Says Hamlet in a phrase that sounds terribly significant but doesn't actually go anywhere. Mind you, I've always had a private theory that the lines:


O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Might be adieu and not a dew. But all this is beside my etymological point. Adieu is a contraction of the old French parting A dieu vous commmant, which means I commend you to God. It's a kind sentiment, but French people weren't very kind and couldn't be bothered to say the whole thing. Spaniards were similarly lazy and A dios vos acomiendo became simply Adios.

But English people are the unkindest and laziest of all. Once upon a time we used to say God be with you. By about 1590 when Shakespeare wrote Love's Labour's Lost we had dropped the th in with, so Costard says

I thanke your worship, God be wy you.

By the time he had got round to writing Othello in the first decade of the seventeenth century, it was printed as God b'uy, I ha done - although my Arden Edition expands this to a full God be with you to make up the iambic pentameter.

These days we just say Goodbye, or even just bye.

Whinner-Neb

A whinner-neb is defined is Grose's Provincial Glossary (1787) as:

A meagre, thin-faced man, with a sharp nose.

It amused me to find this word in a dictionary because, at the time, I was sitting in the British Library and it was the perfect description of the chap sitting opposite me. I rather wanted to lean over and hiss the words "Whinner-Neb!", just to see his reaction. But I felt much too sorry for him. And anyway, I sometimes fear I'm a whinner-neb myself.

Grose speculates that the term is "Perhaps from some bird that feeds or is bred among whins", where whins is another word for gorse.

The Etymologicon in the Americas

Dear American and Canadian readers, The Etymologicon is now out in your continent, wearing a ten gallon hat and heading westward across the vast untamed prairies. It's even got a brand new jacket suitable for the tastes of your young and vigorous countries. 

Just to prove that I'm not making this up, here's an interview with me in the Chicago Tribune, and a mention in the New York Times, and an extract in the Huffington Post. It's published by Berkley Penguin. Penguins being biologically from Antarctica, and etymologically from Wales*. 

Pen is the Welsh word for head, thus Penzance in Cornwall is the Holy Headland. Gwyn is the Welsh word for white, as in Gwendolyn, which just means white in the same where that Candida does in Latin. So when Welsh sailors first saw the Newfoundland Auk, with a white patch on his head, they decided to call it a whitehead or penguin. 

The Newfoundland Auk promptly became extinct. The name would have died with it, were it not for the fact that the auk looks very like the unnamed birds that were pottering around at the south end of the planet. That picture on the left is an auk, so you can see the similarity. 

Thus the Welsh for white head managed to make it to the other side of the world. Berkley, on the other hand, means clearing in a birch forest - leah was the old English for clearing, and beorc was birch. So Berkley Penguin is, etymologically speaking, a great auk standing in a birch forest.

I've searched, but can find no illustration for this. 

Anyway, run to the shops and order your copy now. Or click on this link and buy it from Amazon.com. 

So stylish

*The following is all best theory, but sometimes disputed.

Britishisms

Just a link today to this fascinating article on the BBC website about how Britishisms are invading America, with Harry Potter as the main mode of transport. I for one had no idea that Americans didn't chat each other up.

Meanwhile, I'm going to jump on a train for Lichfield Literature festival where I'm giving a talk at 3:45.

Lichfield and The Horologicon

I'm going to be talking at the Lichfield Literature Festival on Wednesday at 3:45 - lots more details here. Also, by a strange quirk of chronology it will be the first place in Britain that you'll be able to buy The Horologicon, my lovely new book about strange words and phrases hidden in the dictionary. The rest of the nation will have to wait another four weeks, but in the home town of Dr Johnson time runs faster.

I shall do my best in my hour-long talk to cause oscitancy, which Johnson defined as "yawning or unusual sleepiness". There'll be lots of other words from The Horologicon including micher which Johnson called "A lazy loiterer, who skulks about in corners and by-places, and keeps out of sight; a hedge creeper", and describes me perfectly.

Click here for more details.

A harmless drudge.