Curry Favour

An interesting example of Folk Etymology is curry favour meaning to ingratiate oneself by flattery. First, curry is the word meaning to brush or groom a horse, not the Indian spice. And the second word was originally Fauvel, the name of a horse in a satirical French medieval poem from the early 1300s. The French word fauvel from which the horse was named meant "fallow" or "chestnut-coloured" among a few other meanings, but was not related to favour. Fauvel, the equine hero of the poem, was a cunning rascal, the sort of character that might be influenced by flattery or favours.

The phrase to curry Fauvel developed meaning to ingratiate yourself with someone hoping for a favor in return, like you would by currying the rascally horse. At the time that the phrase developed in English, the poem was well known to educated people in Britain. As time went by the poem, and therefore the original meaning of Fauvel, was forgotten, and the word favour was substituted. While the word favour made perfect sense with the meaning of the phrase, the verb curry remained as a curious puzzle.

By the way, the word for the spice curry came a few centuries later from Tamil via Portuguese.

Source: POSH and other language myths by Michael Quinion, 2004, Penguin Books, London

True Folk Etymology

This post will deal with true Folk Etymology, where an unfamiliar word is changed into a more familiar form, or as Anatoly Lieberman puts it in Word Origins...and how we know them "the process of altering otherwise incomprehensible words, in order to give them a semblance of meaning". The other sense of Folk Etymology (called "Etymythology" by Michael Quinion in his book POSH) in which people make up plausible origins of words or phrases, was discussed in a previous post July 13.

There are two sources of unfamiliar words -- old words that have lost their meaning over time, and new words borrowed from another language. An oft quoted example of the former is bridegroom. The original was bridegome where gome was an Old English word for "man". By the 16th century gome had fallen out of use, remaining only in bridegome where it no longer made sense.  The more common word groom was substituted even though at the time it referred to a manservant or person of a lower class (the horse keeper sense of groom developed more recently).

Another example is kitty-corner for diagonally opposite. The original was cater-corner where cater is an English word meaning "four" Anglicized from the French quatre. Cater developed into a verb meaning "to place diagonally". Cater is now rarely used outside this expression, so it no longer made sense, and various versions sprang up including catty-corner and the more familiar kitty-corner. It is speculated that some people thought the word had something to do with prowling cats, but I don't think this is necessary at all for the word change. Kitty-corner just seems easier to pronounce, and makes a little more sense than cater-corner. One word that does relate to cats that I had not suspected, is caterpillar which is from Old French chatepelose meaning "hairy cat".

A frequently referenced example of a word changed from a foreign language is cockroach from Spanish cucaracha (it was cacarucha with the U in a different syllable at the time it was borrowed). Cock and roach were two familiar but unrelated English words joined to approximate the new unfamiliar word.

Sometimes the translation completely changes the meaning. In America, the French Cap d'Espoir (Cape of Hope) was Americanized to Cape Despair and the place name Purgatoire (Purgatory) became Picketwire.

Etymology vs Entomology

Anatoly Liberman in his book Word Origins…and how we know them expressed surprise that his profession was frequently confused with entomology. He thought it must be a local quirk of the Midwestern mentality (he lived in Minnesota) until he discovered an article by a Professor of English at a Boston university. The professor related that a 1958 television lecture of his on “Folk Etymology” appeared on the printed program as “Folk Entomology”.

This mental switching of etymology to entomology is an illustration of the first definition of folk etymology (see previous post) where an unfamiliar word is converted to one with which we are more comfortable.

By the way, the root of entomology is Greek entomos referring to insects. The word means “cut in” and refers to the segmented bodies of some insects.

This inspired me to write the following poem, in the style of Ogden Nash.

            Professions

            An Etymologist studies the meaning of words;

            An Entomologist studies ants and ladybirds;

            But something that's even more absurd’s…

            A Scatologist studies animal turds.

Etymology & Folk Etymology

Here are my definitions:

• Etymology is the science of word origins.
• Folk Etymology is the art of guessing word origins.

This is what Merriam-Webster Online has to say:

Definition of ETYMOLOGY

1 : the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language

2 : a branch of linguistics concerned with etymologies

Definition of FOLK ETYMOLOGY

1 : the transformation of words so as to give them an apparent relationship to other better-known or better-understood words (as in the change of Spanish cucaracha to English cockroach)

First Known Use of FOLK ETYMOLOGY

1882 [folk etymology was in practice for millennia before the word was coined]

My Canadian Oxford gives a 2^nd definition: “a commonly held but false explanation of the origin of a word”. This is the meaning I’m using in this essay (I’ll write about the first meaning another time).

The Greek root of etymology means “true”. Etymologists attempt, as accurately as possible, to determine the true or actual source of a word. Folk Etymologists on the other hand can make up anything as long as it sounds plausible.

There must be something inherent in human genes to make us want to know the origins of things – words, phrases, objects… Or is it just me? No – I must have many fellow origin-seekers judging by the number of books written on the subject (I own 10 or 12 myself).

Most of early writing on word origins (and a significant amount of contemporary writing) was what would now be considered folk etymology. And much of it was wrong. For example Samuel Johnson’s first dictionary gave the origin of bonfire to be from the French for “good fire”; it actually comes from “bone fire”.

An etymologist knows you can’t determine the origin of a modern word just by looking at it. Here are some other examples of similar sounding (and similar meaning) words having completely different origins:

• Pan (the cooking utensil): from Old English panne, possibly from Latin patina meaning “dish” [question for you etymologists – how do you know it’s not from Latin panis, making “bread pan” almost as redundant as “pizza pie”?]
• Pantry: from Old French paneterie, ultimately from Latin panis therefore “a cupboard to store bread”. 

• Minimum: from Latin minimus meaning “least”
• Miniature: from Latin minium meaning “red lead” which was used to make (among other things) small illustrations in manuscripts called in Italian miniatura. By the time it reached English it had lost its original meaning of “red drawing” and become “small drawing” probably under the influence of minimum. 

• Isle: comes from Old French ile
• Island: from Old English igland, a compound of ig (island) + land. The spelling was modified to resemble Isle because of an assumed relationship. 

• Man: from Old English mann, plural menn, of Germanic origin.
• Human: from Middle English humaine from Old French from Latin humanus and ultimately from Latin homo (human being) 

This last pair I will expand on in a future post.

Source: 

Word Origins…and how we know them, Anatoly Liberman, 2005.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2001