Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860




We have picked out a few instances in which we think Mr. Wedgwood
demonstrably mistaken, because they show the temptation which is ever
lying in wait to lead the theoretical etymologist astray. Mr. Wedgwood
sometimes seems to reverse the natural order of things, and to reason
backward from the simple to the more complex. He does not always respect
the boundaries of legitimate deduction. On the other hand, his case
becomes very strong where he finds relations of thought as well as of
sound between whole classes of words in different languages. But it is
very difficult to say how long ago instinctive imitation ceased and
other elements are to be admitted as operative. We see words continually
coming into vogue whose apparent etymologies, if all historical data of
their origin were lost, would inevitably mislead. If we did not know,
for example, the occasion which added the word _chouse_ to the English
language, we have little doubt that the twofold analogy of form and
meaning would have led etymologists to the German _kosen_, (with the
very common softening of the _k_ to _ch_,) and that the derivation would
have been perfectly satisfactory to most minds.--_Tantrums_ would look
like a word of popular coinage, and yet we find a respectable Old High
German verb _tantaron_, delirare, (Graff, V. 437,) which may perhaps
help us to make out the etymology of _dander_, in our vulgar expression
of "getting one's dander up," which is equivalent to flying into a
passion.--_Jog_, in the sense of _going_, (to _jog_ along,) has a vulgar
look. Richardson derives it from the same root with the other _jog_,
which means to shake, ("A. S. _sceac-an_, to _shake_, or _shock_, or
_shog_.") _Shog_ has nothing whatever to do with shaking, unless when
Nym says to Pistol, "Will you _shog_ off?" he may be said to have shaken
him off. When the Tinker in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" says,
"Come, prithee, let's _shog_ off," what possible allusion to shaking is
there, except, perhaps, to "shaking stumps"? The first _jog_ and _shog_
are identical in meaning and derivation, and may be traced, by whosoever
chooses, to the Gothic _tiuhan_, (Germ, _ziehen_,) and are therefore
near of kin to our _tug_. _Togs_ and _toggery_ belong here also. (The
connecting link may be seen in the preterite form _zog_.) The other
_jog_ probably comes to us immediately from the French _choquer_; and
its frequentative _joggle_ answers to the German _schutkeln_, It.
_cioccolare_. Whether they are all remotely from the same radical is
another question. We only cited it as a monosyllabic word, having
the air of being formed by the imitative process, while its original
_tiuhan_ makes quite another impression.--Had the word _ramose_ been a
word of English slang-origin, (and it might easily have been imported,
like so many more foreign phrases, by sailors,) we have as little doubt
that a derivation of it from the Spanish _vamos_ would have failed to
convince the majority of etymologists. This word is a good example of
the way in which the people (and it is always the people, never the
scholars, who succeed in adding to the spoken language) proceed in
naturalizing a foreign term. The accent has gone over to the last
syllable, in accordance with English usage in verbs of two syllables;
and though the sharp sound of the _s_ has been thus far retained, it is
doubtful how long it will maintain itself against a fancied analogy
with the grave sound of the same letter in such words as _inclose_ and
_suppose_.--We should incline to think the slang verb _to mosey_ a mere
variety of form, and that its derivation from a certain absconding
Mr. Moses (who broke the law of his great namesake through a blind
admiration of his example in spoiling the Egyptians) was only a new
instance of that tendency to mythologize which is as strong as ever
among the uneducated. _Post, ergo propter_, is good people's-logic; and
if an antecedent be wanting, it will not be long before one is invented.

If we once admit the principle of _onomatopoeia_, the difficulty remains
of drawing the line which shall define the territory within which those
capable of judging would limit its operation. Its boundary would be
a movable one, like that of our own Confederacy. Some students, from
natural fineness of ear, would be quicker to recognize resemblances of
sound; others would trace family likeness in spite of every disguise;
others, whose exquisiteness of perception was mental, would find the
scent in faint analogies of meaning, where the ordinary brain would be
wholly at fault. In the original genesis of language, also, we should
infer the influence of the same idiosyncrasies. We were struck with this
the other day in a story we heard of a little boy, who, during a violent
thunder-storm, asked his father what that was out there,--all the while
winking rapidly to explain his meaning. Had his vocabulary been more
complete, he would have asked what that _winking_ out there was. The
impression made upon him by the lightning was not the ordinary one of
brightness, (as in _blitz_, (?) _eclair_, _fulmen_, _flash_,) but of
the rapid alternations of light and dark. Had he been obliged to make
a language for himself, like the two unfortunate children on whom King
Psarnmetichus made his linguistic experiment, he would have christened
the phenomenon accordingly.

Mr. Wedgwood has by no means carried out his theory fully even in
reference to the words contained in his first volume, nor does the
volume itself nearly exhaust the vocabulary of the letters it includes
(A to D). Sometimes, where we should have expected him to apply his
system, he refrains, whether from caution or oversight it is not easy
to discover. The word _cow_, which is commonly referred to an imitative
radical, he is provokingly reserved about; and under _chew_ he hints
at no relation between the name of the action and that of the capital
ruminant animal.[a] Even where he has derived a word from an imitative
radical, he sometimes fails to carry the process on to some other where
it would seem equally applicable, sometimes pushes it too far. For
instance, "_Crag_. 1. The neck, the throat.--Jam. Du. _kraeghe_, the
throat; Pol. _kark_, the nape, crag, neck; Bohem. _krk_, the neck; Icel.
_krage_, Dan. _krave_, the collar of a coat. The origin is an imitation
of the noise made by clearing the throat. Bohem. _krkati_, to belch,
_krcati_, to vomit; Pol. _krzakae_, to hem, to hawk. The same root gives
rise to the Fr. _cracher_, to spit, and It. _recere_, to vomit; E.
_reach_, to strain in vomiting; Icel. _hraki_, spittle; A. S. _hrara_,
cough, phlegm, the throat, jaws; G. _rachen_, the jaws." (As _crag_
is not an English word, all this should have come under the head of
_craw_.) "_Crag_. 2. A rock. Gael. _creag_, a rock; W. _careg_, a stone;
_caregos_, pebbles." We do not see why the rattling sound of stones
should not give them a claim to the same pedigree,--the name being
afterwards transferred to the larger mass, the reverse of which we see
in the popular _rock_ for _stone_. Nay, as Mr. Wedgwood (_sub voce
draff_, p. 482) assumes _rac_ (more properly _rk_) as the root, it would
answer equally well for _rock_ also. Indeed, as the chief occupation
of crags, and their only amusement, in mountainous regions, is to pelt
unwary passengers and hunters of scenery with their _debris_, we might
have _creag, quasi caregos faciens sive dejiciens, sicut rupes a
rumpere_. Indeed, there is an analogous Sanscrit root, meaning _break,
crack_. But though Mr. Wedgwood lets off this coughing, hawking,
spitting, and otherwise unpleasant old patriarch _Rac_ so easily in
the case of the foundling _Crag_, he has by no means done with him.
Stretched on the unfilial instrument of torture that bears his name, he
is made to confess the paternity of _draff_, and _dregs_, and _dross_,
and so many other uncleanly brats, that we feel as if he ought to be
nailed by the ear to the other side of the same post on which Mr.
Carlyle has pilloried August _der starke_ forever. But we honestly
believe the old fellow to be belied, and that he is as guiltless of them
as of that weak-witted Hebrew _Raca_ who looks so much like him in the
face.

[Footnote a: An etymology of this kind would have been particularly
interesting in the hands of so learned and acute a man as Mr. Wedgwood.
It would have afforded him a capital example of the fact that
considerable differences in the form and sound of words meaning the same
thing prove nothing against the onomatopoeic theory, but merely that the
same sound represents a different thing to different ears. L. _Boare,
mugire_, E. _moo_; F. _beugler_, E. _bellow_; G. _leuen_, L. _lugere_,
E. _low_, are all attempts at the same sound, or, which would not affect
the question, variations of an original radical _go_ or _gu_. For a
full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see
Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Europeennes_, Vol. I. Section 86.]

In the case of _crag_, Mr. Wedgwood argues from a sound whose frequency
and marked character (and colds must have been frequent when the
fig-tree was the only draper) gave a name to the organ producing it.
We can easily imagine it. One of these early pagans comes home of an
evening, heated from the chase, and squats himself on the damp clay
floor of a country-seat imperfectly guarded against draughts. The next
morning he says to his helpmeet, "Mrs. Barbar, I have a dreadful cold
in my--_hrac_! _hrac_!" Here he is interrupted by a violent fit of
coughing, and resorts to semeiology by pointing to his throat. Similar
incidents carrying apprehension (as Lord Macaulay would say) to the
breezy interiors of a thousand shanties on the same fatal morning, the
domestic circle would know no name so expressive as _hrac_ for that
fatal tube through which man, ingenious in illegitimate perversion,
daily compels the innocent breath to discharge a plumbeous hail of
rhetoric.

But seriously, we think Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of _crag_ (or rather,
that which he adopts, for it has had other advocates) a very probable
one, at least for more northern tribes. There is no reason why men
should have escaped the same law of nomenclature which gave names to the
_cuckoo_ and the _pavo_.[a] But when he approaches _draff_, he gets upon
thinner ice. Where a metaphorical appropriateness is plainly wanting to
one etymology and another as plainly supplies it, other considerations
being equal, probability may fairly turn the scale in favor of the
latter. Mr. Wedgwood is here dealing with a sound translated to another
meaning by an intellectual process of analogy; and no one knows better
than he--for his book shows everywhere the fair-mindedness of a thorough
scholar--the extreme difficulty of convincing other minds in such
matters. He seems to have been unconsciously influenced in this case by
a desire to give more support to a very ingenious etymology of the word
_dream_. His process of reasoning may be briefly stated thus: _draff_
and _dregs_ are refuse, they are things thrown away, sometimes (as in
German _dreck_, sordes) they are even disgustful; and as there is no
expression of contempt and disgust so strong as spitting, the sound
_rac_ transferred itself by a natural association of ideas from the act
to the object of it. He cites Du. _drabbe_, Dan. _drav_, Ger. _traebern_,
Icel. _dregg_, Prov. _draco_, Ger., Du. _dreck_, O. F. _drache,
dreche_, (and he might have added E. _trash_,) E. _dross_, all with
nearly the same meaning. We have selected such as would show the
different forms of the word. To the same radical Mr. Wedgwood refers G.
_truejen_, _betruegen_, and this would carry with it our English _trick_
(Prov. _tric_, in Diez, Fr. _triche_). In our opinion he is wrong,
doubly wrong, inasmuch as we think he has confounded two widely
different roots. He has taken his O. Fr. forms from Roquefort (Gloss.
Rom. I. 411,) but has omitted one of his definitions, _coque qui
enveloope le grain_, that is, the husk, or hull. Mr. Wedgwood might
perhaps found an argument on this in support of our old friend _Rac_ and
his relation to huskiness; but it seems to us one of those trifles, the
turned leaf, or broken twig, that put one on the right trail. We
accept Mr. Wedgwood's derivative signification of _refuse, worthless,
contemptible_, and ask if all these terms do not apply equally well to
the chaff of the threshing-floor? It is more satisfactory to us, then,
to attribute a part of the words given above to the Gothic _dragan_,
(L. _trahere_, G. _tragen_,) to drag, to draw, and a part to Goth.
_thriskan_, to thresh. The conjecture of Diez, (cited by Diefenbach,)
that the Italian _trescare_ (to stamp with the feet, to dance) should
be referred to the same root, is confirmed by the ancient practice of
threshing grain by treading it out with cattle. We might, indeed, refer
all to one root, by deriving _dross_ (a provincial form of which is
_drass_) through the O. Fr. _drache_, (as in O. Fr. _treche_, Fr.
_tresse_, E. _tress_,) but we have A. S. _dresten_, which is better
accounted for by _therscan_. The other forms, such as _drabbe_, _dregg_,
and _dragan_, the _b_ and _v_ being analogous to E. _draggle, drabble,
draught, draft_, all equally from _dragan_. We have a suspicion that
_dragon_ is to be referred to the same root. Mr. Wedgwood follows
Richardson, who follows Vossius in a fanciful etymology from the Greek
[Greek: derkomai = blepein] to see. Sharpness of sight, it is true, was
attributed to the mythologized reptile, but the primitive _draco_ was
nothing but a large serpent, supposed to be the boa. This sense must
accordingly be comparatively modern. The eagle is the universal type of
keenness of vision. The reptile's way of moving himself without legs is
his most striking peculiarity; and if we derive _dragon_ from the root
meaning to drag, to draw, (because he draws himself along,) we find it
analogous to _serpent_, _reptile_, _snake_.[b] The relation between
[Greek: trechein] and _dragan_ may be seen in G. _ziehen_, meaning both
to draw and to go. Mr. Wedgwood says that he finds it hard to conceive
any relation between the notion of _treachery_, _betrayal_, (_truegen_,
_betruegen_,) and that of drawing. It would seem that to _draw_ into
an ambush, the _drawing_ of a fowler's net, and the more sublimated
_drawing_ a man on to his destruction, supplied analogies enough. The
contempt we feel for treachery (for it is only in this metaphysical way
that Mr. Wedgwood can connect the word with his radical _rac_[c]) is a
purely subsidiary, derivative, and comparatively modern notion. Many,
perhaps most, kinds of treachery were looked upon as praiseworthy in
early times, and are still so regarded among savages. Does Mr. Wedgwood
believe that Romulus lost caste by the way in which he made so many
respectable Sabines fathers-in-law against their will, or that the wise
Odysseus was a perfectly admirable gentleman in our sense of the word?
Even in the sixteenth century, in the then most civilized country of the
world, the grave irony with which Macchiavelli commends the frightful
treacheries of Caesar Borgia would have had no point, if he had not taken
it for granted that almost all who read his treatise would suppose him
to be in earnest. In the same way _dregs_ is explained simply as the
sediment left after _drawing off_ liquids. _Dredge_ also is certainly,
in one of its meanings, a derivative of _dragan_; so, too, _trick_ in
whist, and perhaps _trudge_. Indeed, all the words above-cited are more
like each other than Fr. _toit_ and E. _deck_, both from one root, or
the Neapol. _sciu_ and the Lat. _flos_, from which it is corrupted.

[Footnote a: The German _pfau_ retains the imitative sound which the
English _pea_-cock has lost, and of which our system of pronunciation
robs the Latin.]

[Footnote b: And to _worm_, (another word for _dragon_,) if, as has been
conjectured, there be any radical affinity between that and _schwaermen_,
whose primitive sense of crawl or creep is seen in the _swarming_ of
bees, and _swarming_ up a tree.]

[Footnote c: That is, unless he takes the _rag_ in _dragan_ to be the
same thing, which he might support with several plausible analogies,
such as E. _rake_, It. _recare_, etc.]

But the same subtilty of mind, which sometimes seduces Mr. Wedgwood into
making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable
relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage
to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the
gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and
tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The
nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic
proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and
brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or
philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is
practically useful to have the German gift of summoning a thing up from
the depths of one's inward consciousness. It is when Mr. Wedgwood would
reverse the order of Nature, and proceed from the tropical to the direct
and simple, that we are at issue with him. For it is not philosophers
who make language, though they often unmake it.

Mr. Wedgwood's most successful application of his system may be found,
as we think, under the words, _dim_, _dumb_, _deaf_, and _death_. He
might have confirmed the relation between dumbness and darkness from the
acutest metaphysician among poets, in Dante's _ove il sol tace_. We have
not left ourselves room enough to illustrate Mr. Wedgwood's handling of
these etymologies by extracts; we must refer our readers to the book
itself. Apart from its value as suggesting thought, or quickening our
perception of shades of meaning, and so freshening our feeling of the
intimate harmony of sense and spirit in language, and of the thousand
ways in which the soul assumes the material world into her own heaven
and transfigures it there, the volume will be found practically the most
thorough contribution yet made to English etymology. We are glad to hear
that we are to have an American edition of it under the able supervision
of Mr. Marsh. Etymology becomes of practical importance, when, as the
newspapers inform us, two members of a New York club have been fighting
a duel because one of them doubted whether Garry Baldy were of Irish
descent. Any student of language could have told them that Garibaldi is
only the plural form (common in Italian family names) of Garibaldo, the
Teutonic Heribald, whose meaning, appropriate enough in this case, would
be nearly equivalent to Bold Leader.




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