suborn

19 January 2019

Suborn is a verb that is usually heard in the context of lying under oath, and indeed roughly half of the instances of the verb in the Corpus of Contemporary American English are in the phrase suborn perjury. The verb clearly means to induce someone to commit a crime, but where does it come from?

Like many English legal terms, this one comes from French, a result of the Normans taking over the English legal system after 1066. (One of my favorite podcasts is a legal one, Opening Arguments, where the interlocutors are fond of jokingly attributing legal terms to “thirteenth-century Saxony.” But while the principles of English common law do indeed have roots in pre-Conquest, Germanic notions of justice, English legal jargon is usually from French.) In particular the English suborn comes from the Anglo-Norman suburner or subhorner, the meaning of which is remarkably consistent with the present-day English verb.

From a 1358 city of London statute:

Et plus curial chose serroit et accordaunt a ley et reson que homme se acquittat par son serment et siz bones gentz de jurer ovesqe lui ou par enquest de doze hommes qe par deux, issint subornés et faucement procures et enformés
(And because it would be more seemly and more according to law and reason that man should acquit himself his oath and that of six good people swearing with him, or by an inquest of twelve men, than by the witness of two thus suborned and tortiously procured and primed)

Of course, with the word being French, we can trace suborn’s roots back to Latin, where the basic meaning of the verb subornare is to equip, to adorn, but where it was also used to refer to inducing or inciting a crime, especially perjury. For instance we have this from Cicero’s Pro Aulo Caecina 71, a speech he gave in 69 B.C.E.:

itaque in ceteris controversiis atque iudiciis cum quaeritur aliquid factum necne sit, verum an falsum proferatur, et fictus testis subornari solet et interponi falsae tabulae, non numquam honesto ac probabili nomine bono viro iudici error obici.
(Therefore in other disputes and trials, when the question at issue is, whether a thing has been done or not, whether what is alleged be true or false; and when false witnesses are sometimes suborned, and false documents foisted in; it is possible that sometimes a virtuous judge may be led into error by a seemingly honorable and probable pretense.)

The etymology of suborn is, therefore, quite ordinary and straightforward, but it is unusual in that the meaning and patterns of usage have been preserved pretty much unchanged for over two millennia.

Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, Universities of Aberyswyth and Swansea, 1977–92, s. v. suburner.

Bateson, Mary, ed. Borough Customs, vol. 1, Seldon Society 18, London, 1904, 169–70.

Corpus of Contemporary American English, Brigham Young University, 2019.

Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1879, s. v. suborno.

Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, June 2012, s. v. suborn, v.

stiff upper lip

17 July 2019

Having a stiff upper lip is considered the quintessential British quality of resolution in the face of adversity. But surprisingly, the phrase itself is an American import to Britain.

The phrase first appears in the pages of the newspaper the Massachusetts Spy on 14 June 1815:

I kept a stiff upper lip, and bought [a] license to sell my goods.

Nova Scotian writer and politician Thomas C. Haliburton uses it in his 1837 novel The Clockmaker:

Its a proper pity sich a clever woman should carry such a stiff upper lip.

And it appears in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

“Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip,” said George.

The earliest British citation in the Oxford English Dictionary isn’t until 1887, when it appears in the newspaper The Spectator.

Source:

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. stiff, adj., n., and adv.

speed

12 January 2014

Speed is a word with a rather straightforward etymology, but one with several archaic meanings that may be surprising to some. It is from the Old English word sped, which, among other senses, carried the meaning of quickness, swiftness that we are familiar with today.

In Old English the sense of quickness was a secondary and rarer sense of the word. In the extant literature it only appears in the dative plural form spedum and is used adverbially to mean speedily. (In Old English the dative plural of a noun can function as an adverb.) For example, there are these lines from the Old English poem Genesis, 2033–35:

                    Him þa broðor þry
æt spræce þære    spedum miclum
hældon hyge-sorge    heardum wordum.
(In that conversation, the three brothers very speedily healed his heart-sorrow with hard words.)

In Middle English speed is still mainly used adverbially, but as part of an adverbial phrase, often with a preposition. An example from the mid-thirteenth century poem The Story of Genesis and Exodus, line 1598:

Fro bersabe he ferde wið sped.
(He went from Beersheba with speed.)

It isn’t until the Early Modern period that speed starts to be widely used as a general noun meaning quickness, as in these lines from Milton’s 1667 Paradise Lost, 2:699–700:

Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.

Going back to Old English, the Anglo-Saxons more commonly used sped to mean abundance, wealth and power, might. These senses died out in the early part of the Middle English period, not being found after about 1250, so they are among the words and meanings that didn’t survive the transition from Old to Middle English.

The Anglo-Saxons could also use sped to mean success, good fortune. This sense of speed was somewhat more successful and is commonly found into the early modern era. It is still found in Scottish dialect and in the old-fashioned, but not quite obsolete, wish of good speed.

The verb to speed follows a similar pattern. The Old English verb spedan means to succeed or prosper. It isn’t until the Middle English period that it starts to be used to mean to hasten.

In its Indo-European roots, speed is part of a larger group of words relating to swaths of time and distance and movement toward a goal. Some examples from other languages include the German spät (late), the Latin spatium (space), and the Old Slavic speti (to thrive).

Speed also has some specialized meanings that have developed with technology. The sense meaning the gear ratio of a bicycle, as in a ten-speed bike, dates to 1866 and the early forerunner of the bicycle, the velocipede. The application of the word to photographic film dates to 1892. One wonders how long this photographic sense will survive into the digital age—probably for quite a while as digital cameras also have a speed setting and film will probably remain in use for specialized applications for decades to come. And the use of speed as a slang term for methamphetamine is first attested to in 1967, one of the children of the Summer of Love.

Sources:

Bosworth and Toller, “sped,” “spedan,” An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 1898.

Liberman, Anatoly, Word Origins...And How We Know Them, Oxford University Press, 2005, 192.

“sped(e (n.),” “speden (v.),” Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan, 2001.

“speed, n.,” “speed, v.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989.

sophisticated

3 January 2014

Our current senses of sophisticated, meaning either refined, cultured or highly developed, complicated, are surprisingly recent. The application of the word to people meaning experienced, refined can only be dated to 1895, when it appears in Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure:

Though so sophisticated in many things she was such a child in others that this satisfied her.

The sense applied to things that are complex, advanced is even more recent. From C. S. Lewis’s 1945 science fiction novel That Hideous Strength:

The man was so very allusive and used gesture so extensively that Mark’s less sophisticated modes of communication were almost useless.

The noun sophisticate, meaning a worldly, cultured person, is from 1923.

Other senses of the adjective are older, however. Sophisticated originally meant mixed with a foreign substance, adulterated or altered from a natural state; a sense that dates to at least 1607, when it appears in Thomas Dekker’s play The Whore of Babylon:

The drinke euen in that golden cup, they sweare
Is wine sophisticated, that does runne
Low on the lees of error.

And when applied to literary works, sophisticated can mean having been altered during copying or printing.

It makes sense, then, that the adjective comes from the verb to sophisticate, meaning to mix with a foreign substance, which dates to around 1400 when it appears in a version of The Book of John Mandeville:

It fallez oft tyme þat marchands sophisticatez peper.
(It happens oftentimes that merchants sophisticate pepper.)

The English verb is taken from the Medieval Latin sophisticare, which in turn comes from the Greek σοφιστής (sophistes), meaning one who accepts payment for instruction. These sophists, were different from the philosophers, who engaged in intellectual pursuits and education for higher purposes and not for money, hence the sophists were considered by some to be tainted or adulterated by base and material motivations. As a result, their teachings became associated, often unfairly, with specious and poor reasoning, or sophistry. The Latin sophisma means a false conclusion or fallacy. Presumably by the time the verb appeared in English, this sense of false reasoning had given way to deception and adulteration of substances, as in the merchant adulterating the pepper in the Mandeville quotation, although the trail of citations is not complete enough to be absolutely sure that this is the semantic path the word took.

The key to understanding the modern shift in meaning of sophisticated is the sense of altered from a natural state. Something that is cultured or refined is also altered from its natural state. Also, something that is mixed or made up of many substances is complex. The development of the current meanings is not surprising, but what is a bit of a shock is the rapidity with which they have taken over. The senses of adulterated and altered have all but completely vanished, and you have to turn academic literary criticism to find sophisticated used to mean altered during printing.

So, if you mix with the right circle of people, you too can become sophisticated.

Sources:

“sophisma,” Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1879.

“sophistic, adj.,” “sophisticate, n.,” “sophisticate, v.,” “sophisticated, adj.,” “sophistry, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989.

saved by the bell

4 August 2018

Saved by the bell, which the OED defines as “to be rescued from a difficult situation,” comes to us, as should be no surprise, from the world of boxing. It originally and quite literally referred to a boxer who was about to be beaten into submission only to have the bell ring, signaling the end of round. The origin is so obvious that it shouldn’t require evidence, but there is an absurd-on-its-face explanation that the phrase comes from devices rigged onto coffins that those buried alive could ring if they woke up after having been buried. This myth is pernicious and is repeated by many who should know better.

One of the regulars on this website, Richard Hershberger, turned up the oldest citation of the phrase that I’m aware of. It’s from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of 30 January 1891:

In the fourth round Ramsey nearly knocked out Hennessey, who was very groggy, but was saved by the bell, and came up well for the fifth.

There are many uses of the phrase in boxing writing in the closing decade of the nineteenth century and the early ones of the twentieth. For instance, there is this from the Washington Post of 19 January 1897:

Wilson clinched repeatedly to avoid a knock-out during the last two rounds, and was saved by the bell in the last round.

The earliest non-boxing use of the phrase that I have found is still a sports writing one, but in reference to baseball, where the use is figurative; the “bell” is a rainstorm that ends the game and saves Yankee pitcher Waite Hoyt from ignominy after being shelled by the Athletics in the first two innings. It’s from the New York Times of 22 June 1928:

Old Jupe turned on a fancy brand of wet goods and Mr. Hoyt staggered gratefully to the bench when Umpire George Hildebrand suspended hostilities. After waiting a reasonable length of time the umpires called the game. Mr. Hoyt was saved by the bell.

As an aside, you don’t get many references to Jupiter Pluvius, or “old Jupe Pluv” as it is phrased elsewhere in the article, in today’s sports writing. (Jupiter Pluvius, or Rainy Jupiter, is reference to him being the god of storms.)

The earliest non-sports use of the phrase that I’ve found is from a Los Angeles Times gossip column from 31 July 1932:

Saved by the Bell
Echo from Chaplin’s English tour. Whenever Charlie Chaplin and Michael Arlen meet, they have an agreement whereby each is permitted to talk about himself without interruption for five minutes by the clock.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2018, s. v. bell, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2012, s. v. save, v.