The Story of English in 100 Words (13 page)

It’s this magical sense that leads to
glamour
. In the 18th century in Scotland, people took up the word
grammar
, meaning ‘an enchantment’ or ‘a spell’, but they changed the pronunciation. Devils and wizards were said to
cast the glamour
over the eyes of onlookers. From here it was a short step to the meaning of an alluring charm surrounding someone or something. And in the 20th century, we see the word arriving at its present-day sense of ‘charm’ and ‘attractiveness’.
In the 1930s, people talked about
glamour boys
– a phrase given popular appeal when it was used to describe the handsome young airmen of the wartime RAF. Eventually the adjective came to be used chiefly for women, especially after the movies popularised the phrase
glamour girls
, and the pin-up photograph became widespread.

The word took an unexpected direction in the 1950s, when it began to be used as a euphemism for nude or topless modelling. If you were offered
glamour photographs
, you wouldn’t expect to see much clothing. Girls, such as those gracing page 3 in
The Sun
newspaper, were described as
glamour models
, and the agencies and events promoting them were said to be on the
glamour circuit
. The term is still widely used in this way.

The unexpected link between
grammar
and
glamour
illustrates a general point about the history of words. Often, a source word develops meanings that are so different from each other that we don’t suspect they have a common origin. Who would ever guess that there’s a common origin for
salary
,
sausage, sauce
and
salad
? And who would ever have predicted that
grammar
would one day give birth to such a flamboyant and publicity-seeking child as
glamour
?
Grammar
hasn’t yet achieved such a vivid popular presence – but I live in hope.

Valentine

first name into word (14th century)

On 14 February each year, in many countries, people send valentines as love tokens – usually a card, flowers or a small gift. Often it’s a chance for one person to express secret admiration for another. People sometimes spend ages deciding what to send and whether they ought to send it. But they probably don’t spend a moment reflecting on the linguistic character of what it is they’re sending.

Valentine
is an example of a first name being used as a common noun. The practice is surprisingly common, though many of the uses are specialised or slang. Certain kinds of apples, pears, daisies, magpies and fish have all at some time or other been called
Margaret
. Certain kinds of flags (
Blue Peter
) and card tricks (in whist or bridge) have been called
Peter
– as have cash registers, prison cells and penises.

Sometimes the name becomes part of a generally used idiom. People talk about
a Jack of all trades
,
simple Simon
,
a proper Charlie
,
taking the Mickey
and
every Tom, Dick or Harry
. In Australian English,
Sheila
is used colloquially for a young woman and
John
for a policeman (from French
gendarme –
‘johndarm’).
John
can be a lavatory in American English. Literature provides examples too, such as a
Sherlock
for a detective or a
Lolita
for a sexually precocious young girl. And the Bible has given us an
Adam
for a gardener, a
Samson
for a strong man and a
Solomon
for a
wise man. Named disasters can travel too: ‘We don’t want to see another (hurricane) Katrina.’

In many of these cases, we have no idea who the source person was. Charlie may well have been Charlie Chaplin, but who was the original Jack or Sheila? Nobody knows. And
Valentine
presents a puzzle too. The feast day of 14 February commemorates two early Christian martyrs from Italy, both named Valentine. But neither of them seems to have had any obvious link with romantic love. The amorous associations first come to the fore in Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem ‘The Parliament of Fowls’, written in the early 1380s, telling the story of Nature convening an assembly where the birds choose their mates.

Humans evidently rather liked the idea, because quite soon we find a variety of activities associated with the day. A common practice was a valentine lottery: names would be written on folded pieces of paper and placed in a pot, and the pairings which were drawn out would motivate a special relationship for the coming year. As a result, the papers themselves came to be called
valentines
, and this led to the practice of sending paper valentines and then valentine cards. In the 19th century it became big business, with manufacturers producing highly ornate creations, adorned with lace and ribbons. Children would go from house to house on the day, asking for small gifts. The practice was called
valentining
.

But we can never predict the course of language change, and eventually senses of
valentine
developed where the romantic associations of the word were left far behind. In the 16th century, a sealed letter from the Crown to landholders demanding the arrest of lawbreakers came to be called a
valentine
. And in the Second World War the name was given to a 16-ton heavy infantry tank. Why? Its production was apparently given the go-ahead on 14 February 1938.

Egg

a dialect choice (14th century)

One of the most famous words in the history of English language studies is
eggs
. It’s all because of William Caxton, who introduced printing to England in 1476.

Caxton was faced with a real problem. For hundreds of years, English had been written down by scribes from different parts of the country with different kinds of training. There was a huge variation in the way words were spelled. A word like
might
appears in manuscripts in over thirty different spellings –
micht
,
mycht
,
myght
,
mihte
and so on. Caxton had to make a choice. Which one was most likely to be most widely understood?

It wasn’t just spelling that posed a problem. People from different parts of the country used different words for the same thing – dialect variations. And this is where
eggs
comes in. In the prologue to one
of the books Caxton printed, he tells a story he had heard about a shipful of sailors who were becalmed in the Thames estuary, and who decided to make a shore visit while they waited for the wind to pick up. One of them went into a café (as we’d call it today) and asked for some ‘eggs’, but the lady who ran the establishment didn’t understand what he wanted, and replied that she couldn’t speak French. This made the sailor angry, because he couldn’t speak French either! He just wanted ‘eggs’. Then someone else told the lady that what the sailor actually wanted was ‘eyren’. She understood that, so the sailor got his eggs.

This story sums up Caxton’s confusion. ‘Lo!’, he says, ‘what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren?’ And he goes on: ‘It’s hard to please every man because of diversity and change in language.’ He would have to choose one or other of these words, if he were printing a text about eggs, and which one should he go for? He was a businessman, not a linguist, and he was – understandably – confused.

Why were there two words?
Eggs
was a word used chiefly in the north of England at the time. It was an Old Norse word, presumably brought to England by the Viking invaders a few hundred years earlier, though it doesn’t appear in writing until the 14th century.
Eyren
was used in the south of England – a development of the word that the Anglo-Saxons had used. Eventually, as we now know,
eyren
died out and
eggs
became the word in everyday use.

We don’t know whether the café owner was serious, or whether she was having a joke at the expense of the hungry sailor. But the tale does illustrate well the way people were beginning to feel the need for a kind of English that would be understood throughout the country. In the
egg
story we see one of the origins of present-day standard English.

Royal

word triplets (14th century)

Monarchs couldn’t have been
regal
or
royal
in Anglo-Saxon times. They could only have been
king-like
or
queen-like
. But during the 14th century, as part of the huge influx of vocabulary into English from French and Latin,
regal
and
royal
arrived, and along with
kingly
/
queenly
made up a cluster of words that have, rather sweetly, been called
triplets
.

Why did English speakers welcome these new words? All three basically mean ‘king/queen-like’, after all. Why have three words when one might do? The answer reveals something of the character of the language, for this triplet is not alone. We see the same sort of development taking place repeatedly, such as with Germanic
ask
, French
question
and Latin
interrogate
; Germanic
fire
, French
flame
and Latin
conflagration
; and Germanic
holy
, French
sacred
and Latin
consecrated
. As the examples build up, we can begin to see a pattern. The Germanic words are short and
feel down-to-earth; the Latin words are long and scholarly; and the French words have a different set of associations.

It’s sometimes said that we know a word by the company it keeps. From the very beginning,
regal
and
royal
went in different directions.
Regal
went conceptual, used with such ‘authority’ words as
throne
,
government
and
power
, as well as ‘appearance’ words such as
demeanour
,
figure
and
look
.
Royal
went personal, used with ‘ancestry’ words such as
blood
,
birth
and
family
, as well as ‘position’ words such as
princess
,
majesty
and
highness
. Learnèd Latin offered an alternative mode of expression to courtly French, and both were more stately, refined and cultured than their Anglo-Saxon equivalents.

These trends are still apparent today.
Regal
has had relatively little development over the centuries. It still typically adds connotations of superiority or distinction. Anything
regal
, by implication, is ‘fit for royalty’ – hence its application to such things as cars (
Buick Regal
), whisky (
Chivas Regal
), buildings (
Regal Cinema
) and the visit from an especially magisterial great-aunt.

By contrast,
royal
has accumulated a huge range of uses. It’s used in relation to the activities and words of royal people (
royal charter
,
visit
,
assent
,
command
,
warrant
and not forgetting the
royal we
– ‘We are not amused’) as well as social groups (
Royal Navy
,
Borough
,
Society
) and a host of person-related activities such as transport (
Royal Scot
), colours (
royal blue
) and cards (
royal flush
).