The Professor and the Madman

Talking about dictionaries, the OED is perhaps the best, the classiest of them all. But as dictionaries go, you’d have to be insane to actually read it. And that’s only because it was written by one. Him, a hyper-religious man from Sri Lanka, who immigrated to America, then had sex with so many prostitutes that the people in New York got embarrassed and banished him to Florida, then to England, where he shot an Irish guy and got himself admitted to a mental hospital, called William Minor. And also, a Scottish cowherd.

The Scotsman, James Murray, was a polyglot, a member of the Philological Society, and is currently my favourite Impractical Joker. His aim was to make a directory of words “more complete than any”. Eventually the Society was approached by Oxford, and the wheels of what we call OED now, were put into motion. The work was easy enough, just trace the development of the word, along with evidence. Problem? Read every book ever written, and then read those written after that. Only an insane person could do such a thing.

 A still from the movie "The Professor and the Madman" based on the story of Murray and Minor. Sourced from Golden Scene.⁣

Enter the Ceylonese nymphomaniac. One advantage of being in an asylum, is that nobody bothers you when they see you jumping from reading about chemistry, to bookbinding, to mathematics of the octave scale. William Minor was perfect for the job. Minor thought so too, for he immediately applied after seeing an ad for “voluntary readers” in the newspaper.

So, they corresponded. Minor sent notes after notes of lexicographic evidence to Murray. The two eventually became friends. Murray even tried counselling Minor. Which perhaps worked, because Minor in about 1902, sliced off his own penis. A lot of pain, agony and long hours of holding in pee followed before the OED came to be.

That’s it, the origin of the Bible for anglophones all around. Courtesy of a team led by a pretentious cowherd, with help from an impulsive madman (which I think says a lot about the subject, and those interested in it). Etymology isn’t Latin or Greek, or even pure scholarly. It’s anecdotal.  

And no, Webster sucks so I won’t be doing a post on him and his.

The colourful world of Jazz (literally)

The popular root for “colour” comes from Greek “chrom-“. When Fourcroy and Haiiy stumbled upon a metallic element which made especially colourful compounds they decided to call it chromium. The metal was highly resistant, and was used for plating onto other metals. Ironically chromium plating made everything as far from chrome as is thinkable. This is also true for the browser wars. Google’s internet browser started off as “Chromium” before they decided to commit to the RGB and went with Chrome.

If you’re into jazz though, committing to RBG is your craft. You see when someone plays a note wrong, they deviate from the Diatonic scale. Some (read “LingLings”) may call it a wrong note, yes. To others, it’s adding a different “shade” and “hue” to the music and you have promptly found your way to the Chromatic Scale. 

Picture Credit: NextShark

 

Thus, anything that relates to colour is distinguished with the adjective “chromatic”. Study of colours is chromatology, and coloured photography is chromatography. Taking all we’ve come across so far we can also make a word for colour-blindness by combining Greek roots for “absence” (of), “colour” (from), “eyes” and add a noun-making suffix. We accordingly have “achromatopsia”.

Congratulations, we’ve made our first word which should be in the dictionary. If it’s not though, no worries. All words are made up.

Is black black or is black white?

As we’ve seen, nothing in Etymology is black and white. More so with black and white. Words like “blank” and “bleak” can be “black or dark” or “pale and colourless”. Were it up to etymologists, racism would be literally obsolete.

This confusion traces its roots to Germania, whose people couldn’t decide what colour to associate with “burning”. The Germanic word for “burning” was “black”. A thing while burning shone brightly, but it also turned dark black. So, when the Germanic word “black” traveled to English, it could mean both dark, and pale. The French then trotted along, adding a useless letter as they usually do, and spelt it “blank”. Eventually black (dark) and blank (pale) came to mean opposites.

Source: RandomInterestingFacts.com

In true spirit of etymology though that’s not all. One could argue, if one is not already lacking friends, that ““blank” can also mean a void or nothing”. Yes, and when you commit to that, you realize the blankness you see when you close your eyes is black. But, a blank sheet of paper is (ordinarily) white. And that’s still not all, the word “bleach” is derived from the Germanic word “black”, but it means to make things pale.

Did we just solve racism? No, we just bought something extremely tangential into the discussion because how else can you organically discuss etymology. But the important thing is, we were smug about it and made it seem more important than it actually is.

Salary comes from Salt? No...?

While we’re on Romans, and money we’ll have to address the now common did-you-know of “salary actually comes from salt?!”.⁣
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In times before the fridge and food challenges on TLC, food was the most valuable commodity, and anything which could increase the shelf-life of the food was even more so. Salt could be used as a great preservative. So, the soldiers who were “worth their salt” were paid in salt. In fact, “sol dare” in Latin means “to give salt”. It is probably not where “soldier” is derived from, but I would rather focus on the “probably” there. ⁣
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That said, it’s untrue that soldiers were literally paid in salt. Salt was a strictly regulated commodity yes, and by the ruling class. Receiving salt could be equated with receiving sustenance. And that is where the term supposedly comes from. But there’s no proof of it, and yet sources like Wikipedia and various Latin dictionaries (Like Lewis & Short, and Scheller’s) still attribute salary to salt.⁣
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Picture: Alfons Dlugosz's illustration of rolling of salt loaves at the Cracow Saltworks, Poland.⁣

“Salary” more likely derives from French “salaire” or Latin “salarium” both of which mean an “allowance”. But that’s boring. The only use of that information is when somebody else is trying to be more pretentious than you by threading the astute trail connecting salt and salary.  ⁣
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So, let’s dwell in the stories for longer. The myth is supported by the importance accorded to salt. In fact, in the Anglo-Saxon Britain, any town engaged with the trade and production of salt was denoted by their own prefix of “-wich”. And the sheer number of such towns in Greenwich, Driotwich, Northwich, Leftwich, etc. is evidence of the importance and prevalence. ⁣
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Salt has had an interesting history. Can it give rise to a revolution? Yes. Can it give rise to entire civilizations? Yes. Can it give rise to the word? Depends on who bought it up.⁣
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