The Story of English in 100 Words (12 page)

The story of
count
and
countess
is suggestive too. These aristocratic titles were brought over from France when the Normans arrived. But although
countess
was immediately adopted – there are examples recorded from the 12th century –
count
was not. Instead, the Anglo-Saxon word
earl
continued in use. The likely explanation is that
count
was being avoided because its pronunciation reminded people of
cunt
. The vowel in
count
would have been short (as shown by the early Old French spelling
cunte
). By the 16th century, though, things had changed:
count
was evidently being pronounced in a sufficiently different way for people to use it without causing a snigger, and the title becomes frequent thereafter. We find
Count Orsino
,
Count Claudio
and other
Counts
in Shakespeare.

On the other hand, the word evidently didn’t have the same taboo force in the early Middle Ages that it has today. It turns up in various medical textbooks of the period, as a routine part of a description of female anatomy. It appears within surnames, such as
John Fillecunt
and
Bele Wydecunthe
. And there are some famous street names, such as
Gropecuntlane
, which suggest that the word was in common parlance. We won’t find such names today. The old street names have long been replaced by more innocent versions. However, if you find yourself walking down a
Grope Street
or a
Grape Street
, it may well have once been a prostitution thoroughfare.

It took longer for the word to be used as a term of abuse. There are occasional signs in the 1500s of people using it when they were calling each other names, but the really forceful insulting use (
you cunt!
) isn’t recorded until the early 20th century – first with reference to women, then to men as well – and chiefly in Britain. It’s difficult to be sure when this usage began. Once
cunt
had achieved really strong taboo force, it became rare in writing, so we don’t have any records. Dictionaries would generally exclude it. And when a few writers did dare to use it, it would usually be printed with a dash or asterisks.

Today, most dictionaries include it. But newspapers still vary in their practice. If a footballer calls a referee a cunt, which seems to happen quite often, we might see all three versions in different papers:
c---
,
c***
and
cunt
. Seeing the word in print at all is a major change compared with fifty years ago. But newspapers no longer dictate norms. If you want to see it used some 20 million or so times, all you have to do is call it up on the internet.

Wicked

a radical alteration (13th century)

When a word changes its meaning, it can sometimes take people by surprise, especially when the new meaning is very different from the old one. In the later decades of the 20th century, parents were taken aback when they heard their children start using
wicked
as a term of strong praise. In fact there was nothing especially unusual about the development. This wasn’t the first time a word had taken on a meaning that was the opposite of its original sense.

Wicked
emerged as an adjective during the 13th century. It seems to have come from the Old English word
wicca
, ‘wizard’ (and
wicce
, ‘witch’), and from its earliest uses it had all the associations of evil and malignant supernatural powers.
The Wicked One
came to be a description of Satan, and any stock evil characters in plays would tend to attract the epithet. Pantomime today continues that tradition, with its
Wicked Fairy
and
Wicked Stepmother
.

Before long the word began to broaden its meaning, and was applied to all kinds of bad situations. Any cruel, fierce or vicious being, human or animal, could be called
wicked
. So could harmful, dangerous or offensive happenings. The air could be described as
wicked
, if it was foul-smelling; food also, if it was foul-tasting. A difficult road might be called
wicked
.

Then, towards the end of the 16th century, a lighter tone emerged. Someone might be described as having a
wicked tongue
or
wicked eyes
. Children were said to be
wicked imps
. Here the meaning is ‘mischievous’, ‘sly’ or ‘naughty’, and often the usage was distinctively jocular in tone. Later, people would even use the word to describe themselves in this way, adapting the biblical phrase (from the Book of Isaiah) to say
no peace/rest for the wicked!

It was a short step from here to the 20th-century sense of ‘amazing’, ‘splendid’, ‘remarkable’ – a usage which is actually found in American slang as early as the 1920s. It’s by no means alone. Other words which have developed the same set of laudatory senses include
sick
,
mad
,
insane
and
crazy
. The oddest, to my mind, is
horrorshow
. This was one of the words invented by Anthony Burgess in his novel
A Clockwork Orange
. It’s a phonetic rendering of a Russian word meaning ‘splendid’, and that’s how it has entered English slang. If someone were to say that ‘this book was horrorshow’, I’d really be rather pleased.

Wee

a Scottish contribution (14th century)

In 1955, Frank Sinatra released an album called
In the Wee Small Hours
. Its title track – ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’ – was one of those songs that stay in the mind, and it’s since been recorded by several other vocalists. But the expression wasn’t a modern coinage. It has an ancient Scottish ancestry, and represents an important strand in the history of English.

Wee
had travelled a long way by the time it reached the Hollywood recording studios. We first find it in the north of England in the 1300s, in such phrases as
a little wee
, and it soon moved up into Scotland. It could mean several things – ‘a little child’, ‘a small quantity’ or ‘a short distance or period of time’. The senses were all to do with the ‘amount’ of something. There’s a relationship with the Old English word
weigh
.

6. The cover of the 1955 record album by Frank Sinatra. The nursery rhyme ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ has done a great deal to popularise the word among non-Scottish children.

Eventually
wee
became an adjective meaning ‘extremely small’, ‘tiny’. And often it was used in a more general sense: ‘little’. A
wee bairn
was just a ‘small child’. Then an interesting development took place:
wee
became a term of endearment – a friendly, welcoming word – and began to lose its association with size. That’s how it’s often used today. If someone in Scotland invites you for
a wee drink
, beware! It won’t necessarily be a small one.

Scottish English emerged as a really distinctive dialect of the language very early on. It all began when English loyalists fled to Scotland after the Norman Conquest in 1066. They were made welcome there, and by the 13th century English had become the dominant language of the lowland south and east. Then, in 1296, Edward I of England invaded Scotland – the start of a 300-years war. It’s hardly surprising, accordingly, that with Scots identity at stake the English language would soon evolve a local character, quite unlike anything south of the River Tweed.

And it certainly did. Today, Scots English is alive and well, heard and seen in a variety of dialects, and with a local vocabulary of thousands of words, such as
gang
(‘go’),
richt
(‘right’),
bonnie
(‘pretty’) and
mickle
(‘great’). Some of the words and phrases have travelled well outside Scotland, as
wee
illustrates. But the prize for the most famous and well-travelled Scots expression has surely got to go to
Auld Lang Syne
– the Robert Burns poem sung traditionally at New Year. It literally means ‘old long since’ – that is, ‘for old times’ sake’. The words and tune have attracted the singers too, such as Billy Joel and Bobby Darin, and they’ve appeared in dozens of films. Not a bad result, for a British regional dialect.

Grammar

a surprising link (14th century)

Grammar is glamorous? For many people, that would be an impossible association of ideas, remembering a time when they were taught English grammar in school, trying to analyse complicated sentences into parts, and learning rules and terms whose purpose was never clear. Glamorous it wasn’t. For others, the association would be pointless, for they were never taught any English grammar at all.

This was a great shame, as grammar, when taught properly, is indeed an exciting and stimulating subject. It’s the study of the way we compose our sentences, of how we say what we mean and of the different effects we convey by varying the order of our words. In short, grammar shows us how we make sense. And the more we know about grammar, the more we understand how language works.

But this book isn’t about grammatical constructions; it’s about words. And when we explore the origins of the word
grammar
, we find some real surprises. Would you expect an encounter with magic and the supernatural? Read on.

Grammar
comes from a Latin word,
grammatica
, which in turn derives from
gramma
, meaning a written mark, or letter. It originally included the study of everything that was written – literature as well as language – and eventually this sense was extended to mean the knowledge that a person acquires through literacy. But people who could read and write were an élite. They included not only monks and scholars but also those who dealt in astrology and magic. This is where the supernatural comes in. In medieval Europe, the word
grammar
was often used to talk about the study of the occult. And when the word arrived in English, in the 14th century, it brought in those associations. A new word emerged: people would talk about
gramarye
, meaning ‘occult learning’, ‘necromancy’.