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Professor Mozeson is quite specific as to which English words derive from which Hebrew roots. Let us examine some of these claims...
We must have been sick the day they taught that aspect of American History. We need a reference for this alleged event. How close was the voting? Did it happen on the same day that they nearly voted for German as the official language (another myth)?
At one time, every learned person "knew" that the Earth was flat. Before the advent of scientific linguistics, most Christian linguists accepted the biblical stories as a matter of faith. It has even been stated that, some time during the middle ages, a king had two children brought up so that they would not hear a word of any spoken language and then, a decade or so later, had them released. It is said that the first sound they made resembled the Hebrew word for bread, thus "proving" that Hebrew was the original language of mankind. There are many variants of this story which place it in various different countries under several different kings, suggesting that it is no more than a pious fiction. Even if it were true, it raises more questions than it answers. Why, for instance, do we not understand Hebrew from childhood? However, piety and folk beliefs are not the reasons that Noah Webster went unchallenged on his notions of the "Shemitic" origins of our language. More to the point is the fact that few people ever had a chance to read his opinions. Webster was a notorious crank who arbitrarily changed the spelling of words if he thought them too complicated. As the main reason people of his day bought dictionaries was to check their spelling, the original edition of Webster's moldered on the shelves. After his death, the Merriam brothers bought the rights to Webster's dictionary from his daughter and changed all the funny spellings back to what they ought to be. Well, not quite all of them. They missed a certain metal which is known in Britain as aluminium. The only reason that Americans call it aluminum is that Noah Webster preferred it that way. Let's look at some more of Prof. Mozeson:
We have read the rest of the article and, far from convincing us skeptics, he doesn't even mention skeptic, samurai or taboo again. This is quite a disappointment as we would dearly love to read an explanation of how Hebrew influenced the development of Japanese and Polynesian.
There is no conceivable reason for a connection between Hebrew JoB[H]aiL and Latin jubilare but Prof. Mozeson uses the phrases "clearly an echo" and "ought to be clear" as though we are to be blamed if we lack his preternatural insight. This is mere arm-waving and indicates that Prof. Mozeson is at a complete loss to explain why (or even how) the Romans took these words from Hebrew. Was ancient Judea actually famous for its judges? Not really. Perhaps it was to the Jews but it certainly was not to the Romans. Most Romans had never even heard of Judaea and those who had called it Palestina.
Is the Professor completely devoid of a sense of humor? Of course a Jordan is named after the biblical Jordan - it is, after all, a body of water. Someone acquainted with the Bible made it up as a joke. But scam? Give us a break! Better still, provide the evidence. The same goes for babble. Our edition of the OED does not say "unknown origin" but it does say that "no direct connexion to Babel can be traced". Prof. Mozeson is entitled to hold bizarre views about the origin of words but if he wishes to insist that a direct connection to Babel can be traced let him do it - trace the connection. An assertion is not proof, no matter how boldly it is asserted.
Are they really? Well... no, they are not. But that's as close as Professor Mozeson ever gets to a proof - an assurance that "really" he is correct.
A layman, reading the above quotation, might be forgiven for thinking that 19th century linguistics was riddled with anti-Semitic sentiment. After all, didn't these "racists" talk about "Aryan tongues". Linguists tend not to use the term Aryan any more. It was once used to mean the ancient language group which gave rise to most of the European, Iranian and North Indian languages. Unfortunately, since the hideous atrocities of the Nazi regime, aryan has acquired grotesque implications of racial superiority. For this reason, modern linguists have replaced Aryan with the term Indo-European. By not distinguishing clearly between Aryan, the 19th century linguistic term, and aryan, Hitler's term for the "master race", Professor Mozeson allows for confusion to creep in. Is it possible that Professor Mozeson deliberately intended this confusion? The implication of this (admittedly uncharitable) interpretation is that anyone who disagrees with Professor Mozeson may be dismissed as an anti-Semite. And that's a lot easier than showing how the Japanese got samurai from Hebrew. |
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From Cecilia Holmes:
That's an interesting guess, but you'll have to revamp it. Start with vamp, a noun meaning "the foot and ankle part of a stocking" (from the 14th century). In the 16th century a verb was formed from the noun with the meaning, "to repair the vamp of a stocking". It soon took on the more general meaning of "to repair or patch (just about anything)". Then, in the 19th century, there apparently arose a need for a word which meant "repair or patch again", and that is where the re- comes in. Revamp was originally applied to written works that were in need of rewriting. It was in the first half of the 20th century that the word began to be applied to other repaired items. Interestingly, in the 18th century, vamp also changed in meaning from "repair" to "improvise", in the sense of playing the piano. Where does vamp come from, anyway? Its immediate antecedent was Anglo-French vampé, from Old French avanpié, constructed from avan(t) "before, in front of" + pié "foot", referring to the part of the foot that the vamp covered. |
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Read about other words in our bookstore. |
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From Debby Bridge:
In honor of a librarian friend of ours who is in town for a conference at Stanford University, we'll root out the etymology of library. Chaucer certainly can be thanked for recording the earliest known instance of the word in English, though the date is probably a bit earlier than you suggest, about 1374. At that time the word referred simply to a room in a house where books were kept for reading. It derived from the French librairie "bookseller's shop". The French word came, via vulgar Latin libraria, from Latin librarius, an adjective meaning "concerned with books". The root of librarius was liber "book", and that word came directly from liber "bark of a tree". Some etymologists suggest that this was because bark was used as an early writing material, but others think that the Romans simply had a tradition that bark had been used for such a purpose. Cognates are Russian lub "bark" and Lithuanian luba "board", and there are cognates in the Romance languages, as well, having the meaning "book shop". Interestingly, the word never had that meaning in English. Some English doublets of library are libel (from Latin libellus "little book", because libel was originally simply a plaintiff's claim in written form) and libretto (Italian for "little book"). By the way, unlike modern libraries, Roman libraries must have been quite noisy places, as books were read to the patrons by slaves. In those days, most people could not read silently. It was considered quite remarkable that St. Augustine of Hippo could read without uttering the words. |
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From Jake Paredes:
It entered Middle English with the original meaning of Latin colonia, "a public settlement of Roman citizens in a hostile or new country". It later came to be used more generally in the 16th century, partly by influence from Old French colonie. The Latin word derives from colonus "tiller, farmer, cultivator" (from colere, "to inhabit, to cultivate"), implying that the first thing new settlers did in a region was work the land to provide food for themselves. The Roman colonia was often populated by veteran soldiers, acting as a garrison and retaining their Roman citizenship. The Indo-European root of Latin colere is *kwel- "to revolve, to move around". Other words deriving from that root are cultivate, bucolic, cycle and even palindrome. Cologne in Germany was once known as Colonia Agrippina, "the settlement of Agrippina", and so it, too, is cognate with colony. |
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From Will:
Sure, we can help, with a few newt's eyes and bat's wings. The word first appears in English in the early 15th century in Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, of all places, to translate what today is called a magician. It came from sorcer "magician", which derives from Old French sorcier, with cognates in Italian sortiere and Spanish sortero. The ultimate Latin source of these words is sors "sort", which, in case you are not familiar with the black arts, means in this sense "destiny" or "fortune". "Pronouncements from oracles" were known as sortes in Latin, and sortes means "lots" (as in "casting lots" or "drawing lots"). Sortarius was used to refer to "oracular priests" or those who cast/drew the lots. The shift in meaning to "one who uses magic" is not difficult to imagine. The Indo-European root at work here is *ser- "to line up", source also of series, assert, and assortment. The "line up" sense probably refers to lining up lots before drawing them. Since we're on the subject, we think sorcerer is a perfectly good word, but we cannot understand why the publishers of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had to change the title in the US to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (book one of the series) If you're interested in trying to find out why, click either title for the option of buying the book. Gee, and while we're being commercial, we might as well throw in a link to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the current book in that series). (Hey, has anyone noticed how much this Potter kid resembles Neil Gaiman's Timothy Hunter character?) |
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From Jaideep:
Ex has several meanings and uses in English. It can mean "out", "upward" or, taken a step further, "thoroughly", as in exclude, extol, and excruciate, respectively. It can also mean "bring into a certain state", as in exacerbate. Further, it can mean "to remove, expel, or relieve from [something]", as in expatriate "to remove from one's native land", where ex- means "remove" and patri- means "native land". From that sense comes the meaning you reference, that of "former". It was originally applied only to offices formerly held (the earliest example, from 1398, is ex-consul), but by the mid-19th century we find ex-beau, and by 1876 we find ex-wife. The root of ex is eghs "out", also the source of Greek words such as exoteric and eschatology. |
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Curmudgeons' CornerResident curmudgeon Barb Dwyer asks whereforeWhile driving this week, I noticed a car with an inscribed license plate bracket which read, "Romeo, Romeo, where the hell art thou, Romeo?" Given the similarity to Juliet's soliloquy which begins "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?", I assumed that the lady owner of this car intended it to be read as a parody of that speech. But why? The only way I can make sense of this is if...
The real meaning of wherefore is not "where" but "why". Juliet was not seeking Romeo's whereabouts but asking why he had to be called "Romeo". |
Sez You... |
From Pepijn:
Thanks for the information, Pepijn. We love to have the complete story. By the way, even we stumbled over does. |
From Richard Aaron:
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From Brian Degnan:
We have a recording of Mairzey doats... by Spike Jones and his City Slickers which we treasure for its anarchic loopiness. Also, in the song It Had to be You, Harry Nillson clearly articulates "Some mothers I've seen...". Presumably he intended "mother" to be understood as an aphetic contraction of a longer slang expression. |
From Chris:
Glad you managed to subscribe! Let us know what kind of trouble you were having with subscribing and we'll see if we can't fix that. We are pleased to have you aboard! On the other hand, if you check our back issues, you will see that gruntled is not the opposite of disgruntled. Strange to say, they both mean the same thing. |
From Philip B.
Henderson:
We think that Barb's quibble was not with the definition of comprise but whether it is followed by of. It is not clear from your quotation whether the "nation comprised of thirteen states" is from Webster's. If it is then... O tempora, o mores! |
Laughing Stock |
This test try why not?We found peculiar example of spam this in our inbox last week.
On first read we thought, "What a great example of someone translating a letter word for word into English", but after another read we realized that someone probably deliberately wrote this e-mail to sound like that. This was virtually confirmed when we clicked on the links provided in the e-mail and were taken to an x-rated, site. Now you know why we did not supply you with those links! |
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