What's in a word? (Part 5)

Welcome back, friends, to my series of indulgences in etymology! I have another ten words of interesting provenance to share with you all, and since we've hit our fifth instalment I thought it'd be fun to focus on some writing- and education-related words this time around. If you want to look at more etymologies, you can check out my other posts on the subject (now tagged for convenience!). The information in this post is, as always, taken from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Grammar

Source: Greek > Latin > Old French | First recorded: late 1300s

At first glance, the history of the word "grammar" seems fairly pedestrian. Its roots lie in the Greek "grammatike", which referred to a broad study of language and literature, and continued to be connected to the concept of learning, particularly in those topics, once it was adopted into Latin. For the first couple of centuries it was used in English, "grammar" was only applied to writing in Latin, which was the language of education; nobody particulary worried about the rules of vernacular languages, I suppose. From the 16th century onwards, though, we start to see it used in its modern meaning.

So what's the interesting bit? An alternative meaning of "grammar" from the medieval period is as a description of magical spells and incantations, related to the idea of learning—subects such as magic and astrology were more widely accepted fields of study in this period. This definition split off into the variant "gramary", and is related to the equally mystical words "grimoire" (a book of spells) and "glamour" (a type of enchantment).

Metaphor

Source: Greek > Latin > French | First recorded: late 1400s

It is very fitting that the word "metaphor" should, itself, be a metaphor. Having remained largely unchanged in spelling during its journey to us via French and Latin, it comes from the Greek "metaphora", meaning to transfer, particularly in the context of transferring sense and meaning between words. In a more literal sense, the word is built from two parts: "meta", meaning over or across, and "pherein", meaning to carry. Put that together, and we get metaphor defined as metaphorically carrying meaning across. Neat!

Pencil

Source: Latin > Old French | First recorded: mid-1300s

The earliest pencils were not sticks of graphite or chalk, but brushes. Of course, once our forebears started using graphite enclosed in wood to mark things, that became what a pencil was. But before that, the word described small, fine brushes used to paint or illuminate manuscripts. It came to us via the Old French "pincel", and before that from the Latin "penicillus", with a consistent definition. The word "penicillus" literally means "little tail", an apt description of a paintbrush, and is a diminuitive form of the Latin word for tail, "penis". The more you know, huh?

Edit

Source: Latin, possibly French? | First recorded: 1791

The history of "edit" is a bit of a tangle, but however you trace it you'll get to the same root. It's likely that we get "edit" as a back-formation of "editor", intended to create a verb for this noun to perform. It's also possible that the word derives from the French word "éditer", which is itself a back-formation of "édition" (you might guess that this translates to "edition" in English). A third alternative is that "edit" comes directly from the Latin word "editus" and its related participle "edere", which means to give out or publish and is the ultimate root of all of these words. A clear example that etymology is messy business!

Comment

Source: Old French? > Late Latin > classical Latin | First recorded: late 1400s

Nowadays, we think of a comment as a remark, maybe explanatory. But this was not always the case! The word derives from the Late Latin "commentum" (possibly directly, possibly via Old French), which means an interpretation. And that's where things get interesting, because the classical Latin meaning is quite different: an invention or fiction. How did that happen? In short, a misinterpretation. Early Christian theologians such as Isidore of Seville came across this Latin word meaning a fabrication and took it instead to mean an interpretation. Seeing as how Isidore was also probably responsible for mistranslating "fetus" so badly that people have been incorrectly putting an o into it for centuries, I must say I'm not surprised.

Vignette

Source: French | First recorded: 1751

I already gave you a brief sketch of the history of the word vignette in the last Grammar Talk post where we discussed it as a literary technique, but now it's time to explore it more fully. The original French meaning of "vignette" is a diminuitive form of the word "vigne", which refers to a vineyard. In the 18th century, the word was applied to the decorative borders of illustrations in books, many of which were designed to look like little vines. As this practice crossed from France to England, so did the term.

Over the course of the 19th century, the precise thing that "vignette" labelled shifted. In the early decades, the word began to refer to the (often loosely sketched) illustrations themselves, not their borders. You may recall from the Grammar Talk post that the idea of a vignette as a literary sketch developed from there. As photography began to take off, vingettes also started to include particular types of small photographic portraits with characteristically blurred edges which became very popular at the time. This definition is still with us today, as anyone who has ever used photo editing software will recognise.

Lecture

Source: Latin > Medieval Latin | First recorded: circa 1300

These days, we think of lectures in an academic context mostly as an instructive discourse on a particular subject, but that's only been the case within the last 500 years. (The non-academic meaning of "lecture" as a profound telling-off is even newer than that). In the high medieval period, when the word entered the English language, "lecture" referred to written literature and the learning that could be gained from it. The term was derived from the Latin for reading, "legere"; on the way to its current educational meaning, a lecture was defined as reading aloud.

As a fun side note, "legere" originally held the meaning of gathering or picking out, which would define reading, in a sense, as picking out words. Fitting, no?

Category

Source: Greek > Late Latin > French | First recorded: 1580s

The history of the word "category" is surprisingly argumentative. The Greek root "katēgoria" was originally defined as an accusation or prediction, derived in part from the word "agoreuein", which meant to declaim in public assembly. Over time, this definition softened a lot; by the time Aristotle used it in his philosophy it was generally understood to be more of an assertion. The way that Aristotle himself applied it to his work is, unfortunately, less clear, having been up for debate all the way into this last century. By the time it came into English from French, however, the meaning had settled on being a high-level notion, at least until the 1660s, when it was accepted as a companion to "class" as a description of a collection of similar items.

Research

Source: Latin > French | First recorded: 1570s

When the word "research" entered the English language in the latter half of the 16th century, it retained its meaning from the French of searching closely. The French developed it from the Latin word "circare", which means to wander—not a terribly big leap, really, considering my usual search patterns. If you think "circare" looks familiar, though, that's probably because it was derived from a more familiar Latin word: "circus", or a circle.

Over the course of the 17th century, the meaning of "research" in English was refined from a general close search to more specific scientific enquiry and investigations into things. Occasionally, in this period, it also referred to romantic pursuits; that definition has sadly fallen well out of fashion.

Allusion

Source: Latin | First recorded: 1540s

You may be familiar with the literary device allusion as a reference to something else, a definition which dates to the 1610s. For about six decades before that, though, it meant wordplay or a sort of joke. In the decade before that, "allusion" referred to a metaphor or parable. However, if we look at the Latin roots, we may be closer to their meaning with the current definition of "allusion" than with the definition it entered English using. The Latin "allusionem" means to play with, and is linked to "alludere", which literally means to play, in the sense of making a joke. Playing with words is one of my favourite activities, and making references is a particularly fun way to play. Next time you make an allusion in your writing, remember that you're supposed to be having fun!