Part 4 (1/2)

This is still an every-day word in Canada and the United States. It is a metaphorical use of _felon_, a fell villain. A whitlow was called in Latin _furunculus_, ”a little theefe; a sore in the bodie called a _fellon_” (Cooper), whence Fr. _furoncle_, or _froncle_, ”the hot and hard b.u.mpe, or swelling, tearmed, a _fellon_” (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was _tagax_, ”a _felon_ on a man's finger” (Cooper), lit.

thievish. One of its Spanish names is _padrastro_, lit. step-father. I am told that an ”agnail” was formerly called a ”step-mother” in Yorks.h.i.+re. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology (see pp. 99-104).

[Page Heading: PORTUGUESE WORDS]

Some of the above instances show how near to home we can often track a word which at first sight appears to belong to another continent. This is still more strikingly exemplified in the case of Portuguese words, which have an almost uncanny way of pretending to be African or Indian.

Some readers will, I think, be surprised to hear that _a.s.segai_ occurs in Chaucer, though in a form not easily recognisable. It is a Berber word which pa.s.sed through Spanish and Portuguese into French and English. We find Fr. _archegaie_ in the 14th century, _azagaie_ in Rabelais, and the modern form _zagaie_ in Cotgrave, who describes it as ”a fas.h.i.+on of slender, long, and long-headed pike, used by the Moorish hors.e.m.e.n.” In Mid. English _l'archegaie_ was corrupted by folk-etymology (see p. 115) into _lancegay_, _launcegay_, the form used by Chaucer--

”He worth upon his stede gray, And in his hond a _launcegay_, A long swerd by his syde.”

(_Sir Thopas_, l. 40.)

The use of this weapon was prohibited by statute in 1406, hence the early disappearance of the word.

Another ”Zulu” word which has travelled a long way is _kraal_. This is a contracted Dutch form from Port. _curral_, a sheepfold (_cf._ Span.

_corral_, a pen, enclosure). Both _a.s.segai_ and _kraal_ were taken to South East Africa by the Portuguese and then adopted by the Boers and Kafirs.[22] _Sjambok_ occurs in 17th-century accounts of India in the form _chawbuck_. It is a Persian word, spelt _chabouk_ by Moore, in _Lalla Rookh_. It was adopted by the Portuguese as _chabuco_, ”in the Portuguese India, a whip or scourge”[23] (Vieyra, _Port. Dict._, 1794).

_Fetish_, an African idol, first occurs in the records of the early navigators, collected and published by Hakluyt and Purchas. It is the Port. _feitico_, Lat. _fact.i.tius_, artificial, applied by the Portuguese explorers to the graven images of the heathen. The corresponding Old Fr.

_faitis_ is rather a complimentary adjective, and everyone remembers the lady in Chaucer who spoke French fairly and _fetousli_. _Palaver_, also a travellers' word from the African coast, is Port. _palavra_, word, speech, Greco-Lat. _parabola_. It is thus a doublet of _parole_ and _parable_, and is related to _parley_. _Ayah_, an Indian nurse, is Port.

_aia_, nurse, of unknown origin. _Caste_ is Port. _casta_, pure, and a doublet of _chaste_. _Tank_, an Anglo-Indian word of which the meaning has narrowed in this country, is Port. _tanque_, a pool or cistern, Lat.

_stagnum_, whence Old Fr. _estang_ (_etang_) and provincial Eng.

_stank_, a dam, or a pond banked round. _Cobra_ is the Portuguese for snake, cognate with Fr. _couleuvre_, Lat. _coluber_ (see p. 7). We use it as an abbreviation for _cobra de capello_, hooded snake, the second part of which is identical with Fr. _chapeau_ and cognate with _cape_, _chapel_ (p. 152), _chaplet_, a garland, and _chaperon_, a ”protecting”

hood. From still further afield than India comes _joss_, a Chinese G.o.d, a corruption of Port. _deos_, Lat. _deus_. Even _mandarin_ comes from Portuguese, and not Chinese, but it is an Eastern word, ultimately of Sanskrit origin.

[Page Heading: GORILLA--SILK]

The word _gorilla_ is perhaps African, but more than two thousand years separate its first appearance from its present use. In the 5th or 6th century, B.C., a Carthaginian navigator named Hanno sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules along the west coast of Africa. He probably followed very much the same route as Sir Richard Dalyngridge and Saxon Hugh when they voyaged with Witta the Viking. He wrote in Punic a record of his adventures, which was received with the incredulity usually accorded to travellers' tales. Among the wonders he encountered were some hairy savages called _gorillas_. His work was translated into Greek and later on into several European languages, so that the word became familiar to naturalists. In 1847 it was applied to the giant ape, which had recently been described by explorers.

The origin of the word _silk_ is a curious problem. It is usually explained as from Greco-Lat. _seric.u.m_, a name derived from an Eastern people called the _Seres_, presumably the Chinese. It appears in Anglo-Saxon as _seolc_. Now, at that early period, words of Latin origin came to us by the overland route and left traces of their pa.s.sage. But all the Romance languages use for silk a name derived from Lat. _saeta_, bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German (_Seide_) and Dutch (_zijde_). The derivatives of _seric.u.m_ stand for another material, _serge_. Nor can it be a.s.sumed that the _r_ of the Latin word would have become in English always _l_ and never _r_. There are races which cannot sound the letter _r_, but we are not one of them. As the word _silk_ is found also in Old Norse, Swedish, Danish, and Old Slavonian, the natural inference is that it must have reached us along the north of Europe, and, if derived from _seric.u.m_, it must, in the course of its travels, have pa.s.sed through a dialect which had no _r_.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] This includes Flemish, spoken in a large part of Belgium and in the North East of France.

[17] _Haversack_, oat-sack, comes through French from German.

[18] This applies also to some of the clan names, e.g., _Macpherson_, son of the parson, _Macnab_, son of the abbot.

[19] My own conviction is that it is identical with Dan. _dirik_, _dirk_, a pick-lock. See _Dietrich_ (p. 42). An implement used for opening an enemy may well have been named in this way. _Cf._ Du.

_opsteeker_ (up sticker), ”a pick-lock, a great knife, or a dagger”

(Sewel, 1727).

[20] ”It was a wholly _garbled_ version of what never took place” (Mr Birrell, in the House, 26th Oct. 1911). The bull appears to be a laudable concession to Irish national feeling.

[21] Formerly _ferdekin_, a derivative of Du. _vierde_, fourth; cf.

_farthing_, a little fourth.

[22] _Kafir_ (Arab.) means infidel.