etymology

Here is a word that applies to all of us without exception. No matter where or how, we have all been born: we have all had a birth.

So where does the word come from? Is it a Latin root, through French, perhaps. Well, no, in French it is naissance. Is it from Greek? In Greek, birth is γεννα [genna] or τοκετός [toketos]. So we will have to look elsewhere.

Let’s start by going back to Middle English. Here we may find various spellings, including bird, burd, burth, borth and byrd as well as the much more familiar birth. We have a nice example in On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s translation from Latin of Bartholomaeus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum, dating to 1398.

If defnes be in birþe, it is incurable.

Deafness from birth is incurable. …

The full text was published here.

Glossologics: a blog on language, with special emphasis on etymology, and including references to languages other than English. [@AlexpolisTigers]

In recent years, with the popularity of science fiction books and films, this word has been used more and more in the context of “extra-terrestrial, being from another planet”. In British English, it is used only extremely rarely to mean ‘foreigner’, and there are references to this in popular culture at the expense of US English, where it continues to have this meaning; such as in the song by Sting Englishman in New York, where he sings “I’m an alien, I’m an Englishman in New York” precisely because it sounds strange to the British listener.

It is interesting that it should sound strange, as that is precisely what the word once meant. You can see it in the meaning of foreigner – a person from a strange country. And what is an extra-terrestrial if not a being from a strange planet?

It came into English during the fourteenth century. We can see a few examples of it where it is used in different contexts, with differing meanings. Our first example comes from Guy de Chauliac’s medical text dating from 1425 Grande Chirurgie.

Glossologics: a blog on language, with special emphasis on etymology, and including references to languages other than English. [@MillieSlavidou]

Dance

If there is one thing that is common to human societies around the globe, it is dance in one form or another. Jane Austen observed this in her novel Pride and Prejudice, where Mr Darcy says “Every savage can dance.”

This modern word for the activity appears to be similar in a number of other languages: French has danser, Spanish danzar, Italian danzare, Swedish dansa and German uses tanzen. It seems unlikely that this is coincidental, and indeed it is not. All of these words come from the same source: Old French dancier. It is thought that the strong French influence in his area of culture helped to popularise the word and cement it in people’s vocabularies.

Read more On Dancing and Ballet, by @MillieSlavidou

Have you ever looked up at the sky and seen a flock of birds flying overhead? It can be a magnificent sight, the more so when there is a very large number of birds. It takes no great powers of deduction to work out how this expression might have come about – simple observation tells us that birds of the same species – of the same feather, as it were – can be frequently seen together.

So, where does it come from? This is an intriguing question. It appears in a translation of Plato’s Republic by Benjamin Jowett, published in 1856. Plato’s work dates to around 380 BC, which would indeed make it an ancient proverb. In Book I of The Republic, in Jowett’s translation, I found:

“I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says”

However, I then went to the Greek text. It reads:

Εγώ σοι έφη, νη την Δία, εγώ ω Σώκρατες, γε μοι φαίνεται, πολλάκις γαρ συνερχόμεθα τίνες εις ταύτο, παραπλησίαν ηλικίαν έχοντες διασώζοντες την παλαιάν παροιμίαν

I see no reference here to either birds or feathers. It does indeed state that it is in keeping with the old proverb – διασώζοντες την παλαιάν παροιμίαν – but it does not actually state what that proverb is.Scholars generally maintain that the “old proverb” in question is: Ηλιξ ήλικα τέρπει γέρων δε τέρπει γέροντα (Skouteropoulos, commentary on Plato, Polis Publications, σχόλια του Ν. Μ. Σκουτερόπουλου στην Πολιτεία του Πλάτωνα εκδ. Πόλις). This simply means that people have need of the company of others of their own age – no mention of birds or flocks. It seems to me that Jowett simply chose a well-known English proverb for his translation, to make it clear to the reader.

This means we have to look for another source for our proverb.

There is a slightly different turn of phrase, but still essentially the same expression, in The Rescuing of Romish Fox by William Turner, which dates to 1545. At that time, it was:

“Byrdes of on kynde and color flok and flye allwayes together.”

It seems likely that the expression was in use before that time, even if this is the earliest it appears in writing.

Now let’s take a look at how this is expressed in other languages. In French one might say qui se ressemble s’assemble, or literally “whoever resembles, assembles together.” Italian also has chi si assomiglia si piglia; “what is similar takes to each other”. The German expression is along similar lines: Gleich und Gleich gesellt sich gern, which means “similar and similar like to join together.” There is another German expression which is a bit more colourful: aus dem gleichen Holz geschnitzt, which translates as “carved from the same wood”.

This brings me now to Slovenian. There are two expressions of note. The first is very much like the German mentioned above: Podobno se s podobnim druži, meaning “similar keeps company with similar.” But it is intriguing to note that this language, geographically far from English, in a separate language family, also has this expression: Enake sorte ptiči skup letijo. This literally means “the same birds fly together”.

Another idiom in French is de même farine, or “from the same flour”. Similarly, in Portuguese, they say farinha do mesmo saco, meaning “flour from the same bag”, meaning that something looks and behaves similar and can be found in the same place, much as we might use the English expression.

In Spanish there are several expressions. We will start with pájaros del mismo plumaje vuelan juntos, which means the same as the English expression. Then there is also Dios los cría y ellos se juntan, meaning “God calls them and they gather together”.

In Polish we find a simple but succinct expression: Ciągnie swój do swego, which translates as“similar people are pulled to each other”. Japanese, too, would say “like draws to like”; Rui wa tomo wo yobu (類は友を呼ぶ).

Welsh also uses a similar phrasing to the English: adar o’r unlliw a hedan i’r unlle – “birds of the same colour fly to the same place”.

Geographically further away, but with the same concept, in Finnish we find: Samanlaiset linnut aina yhdessä lentävät, meaning literally “similar birds always fly together”.

Moving on now to Swedish, there are two lovely expressions to express this idea: Lika barn leka bäst, which means “similar children play best together”, a nice peaceful image, or, my personal preference: Kaka söker maka, an expression that literally translates as “cake looks for partner”.

Having looked at ancient Greek in the first part of the post, here is the modern expression: γυρίζει ο τέντζερης και βρίσκει και το καπάκι του [yirizei o tentzeris kai vriskei kai to kapaki tou] – “the pot turns round and finds its lid”. With more or less the same imagery is the Turkishidiom: tencere yuvarlanmış kapağını bulmuş – “the saucepan rolled away and found its lid”. Bulgarian, a neighbouring language to both of the previous two, has търкулнало се гърнето, та си намерило похлупак [tarkulnalo se garneto ta si namerilo pohlupak]. This means exactly the same as the Greek expression – “the pot turns and finds its lid”.

But Bulgarian does not stop there. We can also find които си приличат, се привличат [koito si prilichat se privlichat], meaning “those who look alike attract each other”. And, my personal favourite, краставите магарета през девет баира се подушват [krastavite magareta prez devet baira se podushvat] , which translates as “Mangy donkeys smell themselves from nine mountains afar”.

This next expression was a close contender to be my favourite: Ta enney ec muc er muc elley. It is from Manx, and translates as “a pig knows another pig”

Finally, I rather like the expression in Russian: рыбак рыбака видит издалека [rybák rybaká vídit izdaleká], which means “a fisherman sees a fisherman from afar”.

Glossologics a blog on language, with special emphasis on etymology, and including references to languages other than English.

(Cross-Possted with permission by Glossologics)

In honour of Women’s History Month

Given today’s meaning for this word, you might be surprised to learn of the elements that make it up. These days, we use gossip to mean “casual chat, social conversation” or, more negatively, “unconfirmed reports repeated and circulated about somone/ something”. However, it didn’t acquire this meaning until the early 19th century, fairly recently in the history of the word.

To see what the word meant, we shall look at its components, and the context in which it was generally used. It comes to us from Old English, via Middle English, and it is made up of godand sibb. The first part, god, has not changed a lot in meaning, except that it could be used in a more general sense of “religious” or “spiritual”, as well as “divine being”. You may recognise the second element, sibb, in the word “sibling”.

So if we put the two parts together again, what we have is god-sibb; “religious/ spiritual relative”. It referred to a person who had become a relative either by being a baptismal sponsor (a godparent) or by being the person baptised (godchild).

An example of it used with this meaning is in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in the Wife of Bath, from 1395:

He..hadde laft scole and wente at hom to bord With my gossyb dwellyng in oure toun; God haue hir soule! hir name was Alisoun.

(He had left school and went to live at home. With my godchild living in our town, God rest her soul, her name was Alison.)

So how did the word develop from meaning “spiritual relation” to “idle chatter”? This is not as odd as it might at first appear. The people chosen to be your child’s godparents were generally close friends. In the 14th century, the word started to become associated more with women and childbirth. This was because childbirth was a time when women would gather together to help and support the pregnant woman through labour and giving birth. Of course, labour and birth were fraught with risk and many women died giving birth. At a time like that, who better to offer you support than your close friends and relatives? God-sibs would attend a birth.

Naturally, as with any situation where people get together, there would have been conversation. Women encouraged the labouring woman with stories of their own positive birth experiences, or distracted her with stories of what was going on in the community, to try and take her mind off the pain. This sort of conversation came to be regarded as the talk of god-sibs, and the sense evolved to mean firstly “woman who attends a birth” and gradually “person, especially a woman, who engages in idle talk”, and over time, the things that were said rather than the people themselves became associated with the word.

Thus, it went from being a relative, to a positive meaning of women supporting one another, to a negative meaning of frivolous or even malicious chatter, as it is sometimes used today.