The Story of English in 100 Words (14 page)

The words don’t substitute for each other. The
Royal Mail
could not become the
Regal Mail
or the
Queenly Mail
. Nor is it possible, except in jest, to talk about the
Regal Shakespeare Company
or the
Kingly Albert Hall
.
Kingly
and
queenly
seem to be dying out, in fact, with only a few hundred thousand hits on Google, whereas
regal
has 20 million and
royal
200 million.

But we can never predict the future, when it comes to vocabulary. Who would ever have thought, in the Middle Ages, that
royal
would one day be used as a colloquial intensifier, similar to
bloody
? But it happened in the 19th century, and the usage is still with us. I recently heard someone say
He’s a royal pain in the neck
. And the defeat of a local football enemy was summed up in the regal words:
They got a right royal hammering
.

Money

a productive idiom (14th century)

Vocabulary isn’t just a matter of single words. It includes thousands of idioms – strings of words which have taken on a special meaning. We talk about doing something
at the drop of a hat
(‘immediately’),
getting cold feet
(‘becoming afraid’) and having
a heart of gold
(‘a generous nature’). Some words are very frequently used in idioms.
Money
is one of them – a popular idiomatic source since the word arrived from French in the 14th century.

You can give someone
a run for their money
,
see the colour of their money
,
get your money’s worth
,
have money to burn
and
spend money like water
. Maybe you won’t do something
for love nor money
, perhaps because you’re
not made of money
. Or maybe you will, because it’s
money for old rope
,
money for jam
. If you’ve got some, then
money is no object
and it might
burn a hole in your pocket
. You can
put your money where your mouth is
.
Money talks
, after all. And if you’re feeling proverbial, you can observe that
money is the root of all evil
,
doesn’t grow on trees
and
makes the world go round
. Even nonstandard grammar can survive in standard English as an idiom.
You pays your money and you takes your choice
.

It’s not just the general word that attracts idioms. The individual coins and banknotes do too, reflecting the currency of the culture. So in American English people
feel like a million dollars
,
make a fast buck
,
bet their bottom dollar
and
put their two cents worth
into a conversation. Some, such as
pass the buck
, have become part of colloquial standard English everywhere. In other cases, the idiom is translated: in British English, we’re more likely to see
feel like a million quid
and
put in their two pence worth
.

If there’s a change in the currency system, or in the value of money, it quickly affects the language (
§86
).
Penny
and
pence
have been really popular over the centuries, but many of these idiomatic expressions reflect an age when things cost a penny. In old publications we’ll find such expressions as
penny dreadful, penny bun, penny bank, penny arcade, penny whistle
and
penny novelette
. Some live on. Many people still say that cheap things are
ten a penny
, observe that something expensive is
a pretty penny
and offer others
a penny for your thoughts
. And, even in an age of new technology, people still say
the penny dropped
, from the 1930s, when people put a penny in a slot machine. Older people still use the euphemism about going
to spend a penny
, though the days when a public lavatory had a penny slot are long gone. Today it costs at least 20p, and more in some places. Maybe one day British English will get a new idiom:
I have to spend a pound
.

7. The 19th-century Yorkshire Penny Bank building in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. The idea behind the name was that savings could be deposited as small as a penny – a practice that the larger banks did not condone.

Music

a spelling in evolution (14th century)

How many possible ways are there to spell
music
? Today, just one. But over the history of English we see this word spelled in over forty ways. The word arrived from French in the 14th century, and early spellings reflected its origins. We find the French
q
in such forms as
musiqe, musyque
and
musique
. An English
k
makes its appearance in
musyk, musik
and
musike
. A few writers opted for
c
, producing
musice
and
music
.

The uncertainty led to some strange combinations. In the 15th century we find
musycque, mewsycke, musick, musicke
and others. And in the 16th century some writers, evidently totally at a loss, decided
to cover themselves by using all three consonants:
musickque
. The vowels too were variable, especially when people pronounced the word in different ways. We find
moosick
,
mwsick
,
maisick, masic, meesic
and
misic
.

When Dr Johnson published his
Dictionary
, in 1755, most of these variations had disappeared, but the modern spelling had not yet arrived. Johnson had strong views about spelling, and was of the opinion that ‘The English never use
c
at the end of a word’. So in his dictionary we find
musick
, as well as
comick, critick, physick, publickly
and many others. But this is one of those occasions where Dr Johnson’s authority wasn’t enough. In the USA, Noah Webster and other dictionary writers began dropping the final
k
as part of the changes being introduced into American English. The change evidently had universal appeal, for within a few decades the final
k
had been dropped from these words in British English too.

There is still a great deal of variation in the spelling of English words. Some of it is due to the differences between British and American English, such as
colour
and
color
or
litre
and
liter
. Some is due to different printing traditions, such as
judgment
and
judgement
or
organise
and
organize
. There is still a great deal of variation over whether to insert a hyphen or not in such words as
washing machine
and
flower pot
. And the situation remains fluid, with American spellings increasingly influencing British ones. Words such as
encyclopaedia
,
paediatrics
and
archaeology
are often
now seen as
encyclopedia
,
pediatrics
and
archeology
on both sides of the Atlantic, and around the Pacific too. And probably we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The internet is likely to eliminate some of the irregular spellings that have crept into English over the centuries.

When
rhubarb
came into English in the 14th century, it had no
h
: it had such spellings as
rubarb
and
rewbarb
. The
h
was added much later by writers who wanted to show the classical origins of the word. Today, people are voting with their fingers. Type
rubarb
into Google and you will get 80,000 hits (in 2011). And in fifty years’ time? Maybe
rhubarb
by then will seem as archaic as
Ye Olde Tea Shoppe
does now.

Taffeta

an early trade word (14th century)

On 14 July 1724 a fleet of cargo ships arrived in England after the long journey from the East Indies, carrying goods on behalf of the United Company of Merchants. The cargo lists showed
1846 addaties
,
1279 alliballies
and
1997 baftaes
, and the rest of the cargo included various numbers of
carridarries, chillaes, cushtaes, doofooties, emerties, ginghams, lacowries, nillaes, romals
and
taffeties
.

How many of these words do you know? Most people recognise
ginghams
, and might be able to identify some of the others if they really know the history of fabrics. But for most of us, the terms have no reality other than to provide ammunition for word-guessing games such as
Fictionary
or
Call My Bluff
. In fact they are all types of cotton, linen or silk, with names reflecting local Indian usage, or sometimes the town of origin (as with
cushtaes
, from Kushtia in Bangladesh). A few names refer to types of product, such as
romals
, which were silk or cotton squares or handkerchiefs.

We tend to underestimate the importance of words like these in the history of English vocabulary because they are so specialised. Few of them ever get into general dictionaries. But, for a language like English, in a country like Britain, tens of thousands of words have entered the language as a result of global trade. Many of them, such as
calico, chintz
and
khaki
, retain a distinctive spelling reflecting their exotic origins.

Taffeta
is first recorded in 1373. It appears in the list above as
taffetie
– one of many recorded spellings of the word before it settled down in its modern form. Its meaning has varied over the centuries, referring to various kinds of fabric, but its primary application has been to silk of a rich and lustrous quality. This led to
taffeta
being extended to non-fabric situations. Anything ornate or florid might be described in this way. Shakespeare has one of his characters, Berowne in
Love’s Labour’s Lost
(V.ii.406), say how he will never woo a lady in artificial ‘silken terms’. He calls them ‘taffeta phrases’.