The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth Page A
Authors: Mark Forsyth
Tags: Reference, Language Arts & Disciplines, Etymology, Linguistics, word connections, historical and comparative linguistics
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best not to try to imagine.
When, in 1883, Krafft-Ebing was casting around for a name for a newly classified perversion, he thought of Sacher-Masoch’s novel. He wrote in Psychopathia Sexualis that:
I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly ‘Masochism,’ because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to his time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings … he was a gifted writer, and as such would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.
Poor Leo was still alive when Krafft-Ebing appropriated his name for a psychological disorder. He was, apparently, peeved by the terminology. Mind you, he probably rather enjoyed the humiliation.
The Villains of the Language
History is written by victors. The Elizabethan poet Sir John Harington once wrote:
Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.
But history is a lot fairer than language. Language takes your name and applies it to whatever it likes. Sometimes, however, it is fair, as with the word quisling .
Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian maths prodigy and invented his own religion. He also embarrassed himself rather during the Second World War by trying to get Norway to surrender to the Nazis so that he could be the puppet Minister-President. He succeeded in his plan and ten weeks after his appointment The Times wrote:
Major Quisling has added a new word to the English language. To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor … they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous. Visually it has the supreme merit of beginning with a Q, which (with one august exception) has long seemed to the British mind to be a crooked, uncertain and slightly disreputable letter, suggestive of the questionable, the querulous, the quavering of quaking quagmires and quivering quicksands, of quibbles and quarrels, of queasiness, quackery, qualms and quilp.
And it serves him right. However, language isn’t always on the side of justice. Consider these three names: Guillotine, Derrick and Jack Robinson. Which of those do you think was the nasty one?
Two Executioners and a Doctor
Once upon a time, hanging was the punishment for almost any crime. Even the great Elizabethan poet Ben Jonson, for the trivial offence of murder, was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted when Jonson proved that he could read and thus got Benefit of the Clergy. Instead of being executed, he had a T branded on his thumb and was sent home with a warning.
The T stood for Tyburn, which is where the hangings used to take place. We even know the name of the man who would have hanged Ben Jonson: he was called Thomas Derrick.
Thomas Derrick was a nasty man. There hadn’t been enough applicants for the role of executioner and so the Earl of Essex pardoned a rapist on condition that he would take on the job. That rapist was Derrick.
Derrick was a bad man and a good executioner. The two are probably connected. In fact, Derrick was something of an innovator. Rather than just slinging the rope over the beam, he invented a complicated system of ropes and pulleys, and it was by this method that he, in 1601, executed the Earl of Essex.
There’s a moral in that, but I haven’t the foggiest notion what it is – and the ethics get more complicated when you consider that Derrick’s name survives and Essex’s doesn’t. The rope system he invented started to be used for loading and unloading goods down at the docks and that’s why modern cranes still have a derrick . It’s named after a rapist and executioner. There’s no justice in this world: look at Jack Robinson.
There are three main theories on why things happen before you can say Jack Robinson . The first is that Robinson used to be the French
When, in 1883, Krafft-Ebing was casting around for a name for a newly classified perversion, he thought of Sacher-Masoch’s novel. He wrote in Psychopathia Sexualis that:
I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly ‘Masochism,’ because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently made this perversion, which up to his time was quite unknown to the scientific world as such, the substratum of his writings … he was a gifted writer, and as such would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.
Poor Leo was still alive when Krafft-Ebing appropriated his name for a psychological disorder. He was, apparently, peeved by the terminology. Mind you, he probably rather enjoyed the humiliation.
The Villains of the Language
History is written by victors. The Elizabethan poet Sir John Harington once wrote:
Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.
But history is a lot fairer than language. Language takes your name and applies it to whatever it likes. Sometimes, however, it is fair, as with the word quisling .
Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian maths prodigy and invented his own religion. He also embarrassed himself rather during the Second World War by trying to get Norway to surrender to the Nazis so that he could be the puppet Minister-President. He succeeded in his plan and ten weeks after his appointment The Times wrote:
Major Quisling has added a new word to the English language. To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor … they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous. Visually it has the supreme merit of beginning with a Q, which (with one august exception) has long seemed to the British mind to be a crooked, uncertain and slightly disreputable letter, suggestive of the questionable, the querulous, the quavering of quaking quagmires and quivering quicksands, of quibbles and quarrels, of queasiness, quackery, qualms and quilp.
And it serves him right. However, language isn’t always on the side of justice. Consider these three names: Guillotine, Derrick and Jack Robinson. Which of those do you think was the nasty one?
Two Executioners and a Doctor
Once upon a time, hanging was the punishment for almost any crime. Even the great Elizabethan poet Ben Jonson, for the trivial offence of murder, was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted when Jonson proved that he could read and thus got Benefit of the Clergy. Instead of being executed, he had a T branded on his thumb and was sent home with a warning.
The T stood for Tyburn, which is where the hangings used to take place. We even know the name of the man who would have hanged Ben Jonson: he was called Thomas Derrick.
Thomas Derrick was a nasty man. There hadn’t been enough applicants for the role of executioner and so the Earl of Essex pardoned a rapist on condition that he would take on the job. That rapist was Derrick.
Derrick was a bad man and a good executioner. The two are probably connected. In fact, Derrick was something of an innovator. Rather than just slinging the rope over the beam, he invented a complicated system of ropes and pulleys, and it was by this method that he, in 1601, executed the Earl of Essex.
There’s a moral in that, but I haven’t the foggiest notion what it is – and the ethics get more complicated when you consider that Derrick’s name survives and Essex’s doesn’t. The rope system he invented started to be used for loading and unloading goods down at the docks and that’s why modern cranes still have a derrick . It’s named after a rapist and executioner. There’s no justice in this world: look at Jack Robinson.
There are three main theories on why things happen before you can say Jack Robinson . The first is that Robinson used to be the French
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