The Story of English in 100 Words (10 page)

a legal word (13th century)

It must have been quite hard, being a lawyer in the Middle Ages in England. Originally, all your law books would have been in Latin. Then, in the 13th century, they start being written in French. Then along comes English. Lawyers had a problem. When they wanted to talk about a legal issue, which words should they use? Should they describe the issue using an English word or opt for the equivalent word in French or Latin? And would the words be equivalent anyway? There might be subtle differences of meaning between an English word and a French one which could make all the difference in a court of law.

How to choose? If someone decided to leave all his property and possessions to a relative, should the
legal document talk about his
goods
, using the Old English word, or his
chattels
, using the Old French word? The lawyers thought up an ingenious solution. They would use both. If the document said
goods and chattels
, they would be covered against all eventualities. So that’s what they did. And the phrase
goods and chattels
is still used in legal English.

A large number of legal doublets were created in this way, and some of them became so widely known that they entered everyday English. Every time we say
fit and proper
or
wrack and ruin
we are recalling a legal mix of English and French.
Peace and quiet
combines French and Latin.
Will and testament
combines English and Latin.

The pattern caught on. After a while, lawyers began to bring together pairs of words from the
same
language. To avoid a dispute over whether
cease
meant the same as
desist
(both words are from French), they simply said that someone should
cease and desist
. That’s also why we talk about a situation being
null and void
or someone being
aided and abetted
. English words were combined too – hence
have and hold
,
each and every
and
let or hindrance
. Lawyers sometimes went in for even longer sequences, such as
give, devise and bequeath
. This is one of the reasons legal English seems so wordy. (Another is that lawyers were often paid by the word.)

Chattels
has some interesting linguistic relatives. The French word is a development from Latin
capitalis
, and this has given us the word
capital
. It has, less
obviously, given us
cattle
. Today we think of cattle as cows, bulls, calves and other bovine animals. But until the 16th century it had a much more general sense. Any group of live animals held as property, or farmed for food or produce, could be called
cattle
. So we find the word being used for horses, sheep, goats, pigs, fowls (‘feathered cattle’) and even camels. ‘Take heed,’ says a writer in 1589, ‘thine own cattle sting thee not.’ He was talking about bees.

Dame

a form of address (13th century)

People are very sensitive about how others address them. The reason is that there are several choices, and each choice carries a nuance. We could guess a great deal about the relationship between the parties if we heard:

Hello, Mrs Jones
Hello, Jane
Hello, Janey
Hello, Mrs J
Hello, chick
Hello, Didi

Very few people know that Jane was called Didi by her family when she was little.

Our preference for using – or not using – titles can alter over quite short periods of time. Young people these days are much readier to use first names on initial acquaintance than are their seniors, and don’t so often get irritated when a cold-caller greets them over the phone with a breezy intimacy. It’s hardly surprising, then, to find that the use of titles has changed over the course of centuries. But few have had such a chequered history as
Dame
.

Today, the use of
Dame
is very restricted. It’s the female equivalent of a knight of an order of chivalry, in the British honours system, and people notice it when someone well known receives it, such as Dame Judi Dench. It also has a limited use elsewhere. Lady baronets and some retired female judges can be called
Dame
. These are the last vestiges of a title which was originally widespread in English society.

When
dame
arrived from French in the 13th century, it was immediately used for ladies of high rank, and for any woman in charge of a community, such as an abbess or prioress. But it quickly went downmarket. By the 16th century, any woman married to a person with social standing, even if relatively low in rank (such as a squire or a yeoman), could be called
Dame
.

At the same time, the word was being used in a general way to describe ‘the lady of the house’ – a housewife. From there it was a short step to find it used for any mother, whatever her social position. And in the 14th century, a
mother tongue
was often referred to as a
dame’s tongue
.

The original vowel in
dame
, coming from French,
was pronounced more like the one we hear in modern English
dam
, and this spelling, along with
damme
, was soon used. But
dam
, perceived to be a different word, began to attract negative connotations. It was used for female animals as well, and when used for a human mother it usually had a tone of ridicule or contempt. The emergence of the phrase the
devil and his dam
didn’t help.

In the early 20th century
dame
went further downmarket, especially in the United States, where it became the usual slang word for a woman. ‘There is nothin’ like a dame’ went the refrain (in
South Pacific
). Then a most curious development took place in Britain. In pantomimes it came to be used for a comic middle-aged female character, traditionally played by a man. And the comic overtones spilled over into other comic roles, as in the famous case of Dame Edna Everage (aka Barry Humphries). This is as far away from the upper strata of society as it’s possible to imagine.

The higher up the social scale we go, the more strictly the address rules are imposed. At the highest levels, whole books have been devoted to how we should address a prince, a duke, a baroness, a president, a professor, a cardinal, a judge, a mayor … It can get very complicated, especially in Britain. Is a duke called
Your Grace
or
My Lord
? What about an earl, a marquess or a baron? Most people would have to look up the answer. (All are
My Lord
, except the duke.) Is the sovereign’s son called
Your Royal Highness
? Yes. What about the sovereign’s son’s son? Yes. And the sovereign’s son’s son’s son? No. Getting it wrong would be a terrible
faux pas
, in some circles.

Skirt

a word doublet (13th century)

When two cultures come together, the words of their languages compete for survival. We can see the process taking place early on in the history of English, following the Danish invasions of Britain. The Danes spoke a language known as Old Norse, and this had many words that had a related form in Old English. What would people end up saying? Would the Danish settlers adopt the Old English words? Or would the Anglo-Saxons adopt the Old Norse ones?

In the event, people went in both directions. During the Middle English period we find Norse
egg
and
sister
ousting Old English
ey
and
sweoster
. And Old English
path
and
swell
ousted
reike
and
bolnen
. But there was a third solution: the Old English and Old Norse words both survived, because people gave them different meanings. This is what happened to
skirt
and
shirt
.

Shirt
is found occasionally in late Old English (spelled
scyrte
), with the meaning of a short garment worn by both men and women.
Skirt
, from Old Norse, is known from the 1300s, and seems to have
been used chiefly for the female garment – the lower part of a dress or gown. But the word could also be used for the lower part of a man’s robe or coat too. And it is this notion of ‘lower part of something’ which led to the later sense of
skirt
meaning an edge or boundary – hence such words as
outskirts
and
skirting board
.

Shirt
and
skirt
went different ways during the Middle English period.
Shirt
became increasingly used only for the male garment, and
skirt
for the female. But the distinction has never been complete. Today, women’s fashion includes shirts, and skirts are normal wear for men in many countries (though, kilts aside, rarely encountered in Western culture). Clothing such as the
T-shirt
is gender-neutral. And most of the idioms using
shirt
are too. Both men and women can
bet their shirt
, give away
the shirt off their back
and
keep their shirt on
.

Cases like
shirt
/
skirt
, where both words survive, are known as
doublets
, and there are many of them in English. From the Danish period, we find Old Norse
dike
alongside Old English
ditch
, and similarly
hale
and
whole
,
scrub
and
shrub
,
sick
and
ill
and many more. There are even more in regional dialects, where the Old English word has become the standard form and the Old Norse word remains local, as in
church
vs
kirk
,
yard
vs
garth
,
write
vs
scrive
and – of especial interest because of its widespread dialect use –
no
vs
nay
.

Jail

competing words (13th century)

One of the most noticeable features of English vocabulary is the large number of words that entered the language as borrowings from French, especially in the period after the Norman invasion of 1066. Some of them are illustrated by the cooking and legal terms that form part of the story of
pork
and
chattels
(§
§17
,
18
). The vast majority of French loans were borrowed just once – which is what one would expect. But on a few occasions, a word got borrowed twice.

Why borrow a word twice? If English speakers were already using it, what would be the point? The answer lies in the fact that the people who introduced these words had different social and linguistic backgrounds. In the early part of the period, they were usually speakers of the dialect of French spoken in Normandy; in the later part, they were people who had learned the French of Paris – the ‘posh’ dialect that was becoming the standard. Several words had different forms in these two dialects. The Norman version was borrowed first; a Parisian version came along later. And English sometimes kept both of them.