The Story of English in 100 Words (22 page)

a matter of manners (17th century)

We learn to be linguistically polite at a very early age. It starts during the fourth year of life, when children have acquired enough language to have proper conversations. Parents start drilling. ‘Say please.’ ‘Say sorry.’ ‘I haven’t heard that little word yet.’ ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ The kids learn that there are words that should not be used in polite company. These then become the most desirable words of all, of course!

As we grow up, we learn more sophisticated expressions.

Times of day are given a linguistic introduction (
Good morning, Good night
), along with their informal variants (
Morning, Night-night
). Unexpected body noises elicit linguistic apologies (
Bless you, Pardon me
). Written English introduces us to special formulae (
Yours sincerely, All the best
). We learn to use the appropriate terms of address for different kinds of people in society (
§19
). And at the informal end of the scale, different groups develop their own politeness routines (
Hi, Yo, Cheers
).

It’s never possible to predict which words and phrases in a language a social group is going to accept or reject as polite. What is clear is that, from age to age, these expressions change. We can see this if we look at some of the expressions Jonathan Swift noted in the early 18th century. He tells us he used to keep a notebook in his pocket when he went to visit the ‘most polite families’. After he left the company, he would write down ‘the choicest expressions that passed during the visit’. Modern linguists do the same sort of thing as they travel about.

Some of the expressions Swift heard are still with us today. The members of his polite families said
such things as
talk of the devil
and
it’s an ill wind
. But most of them reflect a past age. A modern ear would make nothing of
You are but just come out of the Cloth-Market
– meaning ‘you’ve just got out of bed’. And although the gist of this extract from Swift’s
Polite Conversation
is clear enough, some expressions do require a gloss.

LADY SMART: Well, Ladies, now let us have a Cup of Discourse to our selves. [a cup of tea and talk]

LADY ANSWERALL: What do you think of your Friend, Sir John
Spendall
?

LADY SMART: Why, Madam, ’tis happy for him that his Father was born before him. [in other words, he isn’t thrifty]

MISS NOTABLE: They say, he makes a very ill Husband to my Lady.

LADY ANSWERALL: Well, but he must be allowed to be the fondest Father in the World.

LADY SMART: Ay, Madam, that’s true; for they say, the Devil is kind to his own.

MISS NOTABLE: I am told, my Lady manages him to Admiration.

LADY SMART: That I believe, for she’s as cunning as a dead Pig; but not half so honest.

Swift points out that the reader will find these phrases extremely helpful, for the expressions can be used over and over on all occasions. He wouldn’t find much difference if he were observing polite conversation today. Some things don’t change.

Dilly-dally

a reduplicating word (17th century)

English has some ingenious ways of making new vocabulary, but none more so than the technique of taking a word and saying it twice in quick succession – but changing one of the vowels or consonants in the process. The phenomenon is called
reduplication
.

It’s something that little children do quite naturally when they’re learning to talk. Many of their early words contain a repeated syllable –
mama, dada, baba, bye-bye, night-night, wee-wee
– and soon the reduplication appears with a change in the vowel –
mummy, daddy, baby
. It’s a short step from there to doing the same thing with two words. We hear it in many nursery rhymes and fairy stories. Do you remember Chicken Licken, who was so worried that the sky was falling down that he rushed off to tell the king? On the way he met a host of reduplicating friends – Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey – and, eventually, Foxy Loxy. The names vary in different tellings (such as Hen Len and Goose Loose), but the reduplication is always there.

This is reduplication for fun. The repetition is there to make the names sound appealing, and it also helps children remember the story. Grown-ups reduplicate for other reasons too. Sometimes it’s simply to emphasise a meaning, often adding a note of exasperation or criticism. This is what happened to
dally
, which already existed in 16th-century English as a verb meaning ‘trifle’ or ‘delay’. Around the beginning of the 17th century, it was reduplicated.
Stop dilly-dallying!
meant ‘Make your mind up!’ The same sort of development happened with
shilly-shally
, also expressing the notion of being undecided. This was originally
shill I, shall I
, a stronger version of
shall I, shall I
.

11. A children’s story that relies on reduplication for its effect.

Words like
zig-zag
are created for a different reason. Here there’s an attempt to symbolise a shape or movement in the outside world. The contrasting vowels reflect a change in direction.
Zig-zag
originally described a pattern of short, angled lines going in alternate directions, but it was soon used for all kinds of alternating shapes and movements – from lightning to knitting patterns. During the First World War it became a piece of military slang. If you were zig-zag, you were drunk.

Interesting things can happen to these reduplicated words. They can even be broken down into their parts, each one being used as a separate word. We can talk about people
shillying and shallying
. One such usage gained immortality in an old music-hall song:

My old man said ‘Follow the van,
And don’t dilly dally on the way’.
Off went the van wiv me ’ome packed in it,
I followed on wiv me old cock linnet.
But I dillied and dallied, dallied and I dillied,
Lost me way and don’t know where to roam …

The list of reduplicated words in English is a very
long one. The usual pattern is for the first element to have a vowel high up in the front of the mouth and the second element to have one low down in the back of the mouth. The
i
-to-
a
change is very popular –
pitter-patter, riff-raff, knick-knack, chit-chat
… So is
i
-to-
o
:
criss-cross, sing-song, ping-pong, tick-tock
… Another pattern uses a change of consonant, and the two elements rhyme:
helter-skelter, hanky-panky, fuddy-duddy, super-duper
… Shakespeare evidently liked this kind of word creation, for several examples appear in his plays:
skimble-skamble, bibble-babble, hugger-mugger, hurly-burly
…

Some reduplications must be quite old. Although
willy-nilly
isn’t recorded until the 17th century, its forms reflect a much earlier state of the language –
will I, nill I
, where
nill
is Old English, a conflation of
ne
and
will
, meaning ‘will not’. And they evidently remain popular, as new reduplications continue to be created. Since the 1970s we’ve had
hip-hop
,
happy-clappy
and
oogly-boogly
. Oogly-boogly? Something scary that jumps out at you in a horror film. Remember the monster that bursts out of the chest of Kane (John Hurt) in
Alien
? That was an oogly-boogly.

Rep

a clipping (17th century)

If you’re a
rep
, what are you? In the 17th century, you weren’t one: you had one.
Rep
was short for
reputation
. People would say something
upon rep
, meaning, ‘I’ll stake my reputation on it’.

In the late 1600s it was linguistically fashionable to shorten words in this way. People didn’t say
incognito
in casual speech, but
incog
. They said
That’s pos
or
pozz
for
positive
– meaning ‘That’s certain’. And they talked about a crowd of people as a
mob
. That was a two-stage shortening.
Mobile vulgus
, meaning ‘fickle crowd’, had come into English at the end of the 16th century. During the next century it was first shortened to
mobile
, and then to
mob
.

Words which are reduced in size in this way are called
clippings
. The essayist Joseph Addison couldn’t stand them. In an issue of the
Spectator
in 1711 he complained about the way people have ‘miserably curtailed some of our Words’, and he cites all the above. (It didn’t stop him using
pozz
himself, a few years later, though.)

Clippings are very common in the history of English. The ends of words are clipped in
ad, celeb, doc
and
prof
. The beginnings go in
phone
and
burger
. And both beginning and end go in
flu
and
fridge
. They are typically informal in style, but in many cases the clipping has lost its informal tone and become the regular expression, with the full form perceived as
more formal or precise: think of the full forms of
fax, memo, gym, exam, vet, pub
and
flu
. In some cases, such as
bus
and
cello
, the original full form (
omnibus, violoncello
) is hardly ever used. With
mob
, never.

Just because a word is clipped doesn’t stop it changing in meaning, of course, and the history of
rep
illustrates the point perfectly. In the 18th century it became a shortened form of
reprobate
– an immoral or dissolute person. A woman with a doubtful reputation was a
demi-rep
. At the same time, the clipping appeared with a capital
R
, first for
Republic
, then for a member of the House of
Representatives
(in the US political system) and in the 19th century for a member of the
Republican
Party.

The 20th century saw further developments. From around 1900
rep
(for
repertory
) became the normal way of referring to a theatre company that put on a regular programme of plays. Actors appeared
in repertory
, or
in rep
. Then, during the century,
reps
turned up as
representatives
of all kinds of organisations.
Holiday reps
looked after you when you travelled.
Union reps
looked after their members.
Sales reps
tried to sell you things.