Tommy / Tommy Atkins

12 January 2016

The great joy of running this website is that now and again you discover a term that simultaneously connects with great historical figures and events and reveals how language, the most human of inventions, works. The British slang term for a soldier, Tommy, is just such a word. It is short for Tommy Atkins, and the word’s history, both purported and real, pulls in both the great, i.e., the Duke of Wellington, and the small, i.e., an example of how to fill out a government form correctly.

As mentioned, Tommy is slang for a British private soldier. Today, the word is chiefly associated with those who fought in the First World War, but its origins are at least a hundred years older, in the Napoleonic wars. Today it’s primarily found in British usage, but North Americans may be familiar with Tommy from movies about the two World Wars and from the Kipling poem. And the oldest among us will remember its use during the first half of the twentieth century, when the word had some currency on this side of the pond.

Who is the Tommy Atkins who lent his name as a sobriquet for the British soldier? Most likely there is no real person behind the term’s use. While there have been a number of British soldiers with that name over the centuries, the name was probably picked because its only remarkable feature is its lack of remarkability, like John Smith. The first documented use of the term is in the form Thomas Atkins. And not only is it in that form, it is quite literally on a form, the 1815 Collection of Orders, Regulations, &c., a book that was issued to every British soldier and that contained a record of his pay and allowances. Like all good bureaucratic documents, that book provides an example of how to properly fill out a form for a soldier’s pay:

Description, Service, &c. of Thomas Atkins, Private, No. 6 Troop, 6th Regt. of Dragoons. Where Born… Parish of Odiham, Hants. When ditto… 1st January 1784. [...] Bounty, £7, 7s. Received, Thomas Atkins, his x mark.

The beauty of this specific use is that it would be seen by thousands of officers and soldiers all across the British Empire, permanently cementing the name’s use as a soldier’s sobriquet. In fact, this book was so closely associated with the name that soldiers took to calling the book itself The Tommy Atkins. We tend to look to Shakespeare and great literary works for linguistic innovation, but more often it’s things like humble bureaucratic documents, texts that we see on a daily basis but don’t take conscious note of, that are more powerful.

It is likely that by the time this document was issued in 1815 Thomas Atkins was already a generic slang term for a soldier and it’s appearance in that document is an attestation, rather than a coinage. One clue to this is that soldiers and sailors were already calling bread tommy, often soft tommy, white tommy, or brown tommy to differentiate various types. Grose’s 1796 A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has this:

TOMMY. Soft Tommy, or white tommy; bread is so called by sailors, to distinguish it from biscuit.

The 1811 revision of Grose’s dictionary, known as the Lexicon Balatronicum, adds to the above:

Brown Tommy; ammunition bread for soldiers; or brown bread given to convicts at the hulks.

While these citations aren’t in the same sense as the name for a soldier, they show the name Tommy was in slang use by British soldiers, and it’s not hard to imagine a jump from the bread to the person who ate it.

By 1850 Thomas Atkins had been familiarized to Tommy Atkins, and by 1881 it had become simply Tommy.

There is a popular story that the name was coined by the Duke of Wellington in honor of a soldier who had died bravely at the Battle of Boxtel in 1794, Wellington’s first major battle. The story says that the war office consulted the duke on an appropriate name for a soldier to use in its 1815 pay book and that Wellington recalled the battle where Atkins, as he lay dying, told the young duke-to-be that the multiple wounds he had received were “all a day’s work.” Wellington allegedly chose the name to honor the brave lad. But the biographical details in the pay book don’t match those of the alleged namesake, and most tellingly, it is unlikely that the War Office would have bothered Wellington with such bureaucratic minutiae in 1815, given that the duke was busy with other things at the time, such minor concerns as the Battle of Waterloo and exiling Napoleon to St. Helena.

If this tale has no evidence behind it, what evidence would it take to convince us that it were true? Well, if someone produced a draft manuscript of the 1815 pay book with Wellington’s emendation or a letter from the Duke instructing the change be made, that would clinch it. Failing that, an after-the-fact letter or memoir of Wellington’s telling the story of his directing the change would be almost as good. A documented, second-hand account by someone who knew Wellington would be strong evidence, but not in-and-of-itself convincing. Even evidence from muster rolls that a soldier named Thomas Atkins of the 33rd Regiment of Foot (Wellington’s regiment) died at Boxtel would be something. But we have none of these or anything like them.

Furthermore, the Wellington story doesn’t appear until many decades after the fact—the earliest version I know of that connects Wellington to Tommy Atkins only dates to 1908, and that one that is demonstrably false because it gives the date of Wellington’s coinage as 1843. I have found no versions of the tale, even those told by professional historians, that reference any source material that would support the tale as being true. The tale is simply repeated and everyone, even historians who should know better, take that repetition as evidence. If the Iron Duke ever related the Atkins story to someone, we have no record of him doing so. And if he did, the actual incident may well have involved a soldier with a different name that Wellington conflated with the then-current slang name Thomas Atkins; such conflation is a very common form of memory error. But more likely this is another example of a famous name over time becoming associated with a myth. We have a tendency to ascribe events and phenomenon to famous people.

There are also several claimed citations of Tommy Atkins from the eighteenth century, which if true would put the kibosh on the Wellington story, but these claims also appear to be false. One is allegedly from a 1743 letter that was quoted in the Spectator magazine in 1938, but no one has been able to find the original. A second, even sketchier, account has Atkins captured by the Americans at Yorktown in 1781; again, no supporting evidence has been adduced.

Perhaps it is fitting that the archetype of the British soldier be named for someone who exists only in myth. Better that than one that can be labeled as false or incorrect.

Sources:

Carter, Philip. “Atkins, Thomas (d. 1794),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online ed, May 2006.

Clode, Charles M. The Military Forces of the Crown: Their Administration and Government, vol 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1869. 59

Laffin, John. Tommy Atkins: The Story of the English Soldier. London: Cassell, 1966. xi–xiii.

“Notices to Correspondents.” Notes and Queries. 25 April 1885. 340.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, second edition, 1989, s. v. Tommy, n.1.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, third edition, June 2014, s. v. Thomas Atkins, n.; Tommy Atkins, n.

tidy

26 February 2014

Tidy is one of those words whose origin seems unfathomable, but when you learn it suddenly becomes patently obvious. 

Our modern word tidy comes from the Old English tid, meaning “time, hour season,” and that word is also the origin of our modern word tide and tidings. Old English also had an adjective tidlic, meaning “temporary, opportune, in season,” but it’s unlikely that this adjective developed into our modern tidy because the -lic ending normally doesn’t develop into -y. Instead, it seems that tid developed a second adjectival form sometime in the thirteenth century.

The earliest recorded appearance of tidy is not in the sense we might expect. One would expect that the earliest sense would be that of “timely,” but the earliest sense we know of is that of “in good condition, abundant, healthy.” Tidy appears in a gloss of a thirteenth century Latin manuscript, defining the word saluber or “healthy.” The word also appears in the poem The Story of Genesis and Exodus, written around 1250 and with an extant manuscript from before 1325, describing the dream that appeared to Pharaoh and that would be interpreted by Joseph:

.vii. eares wexen fette of coren,
On a busk ranc and wel tidi.
(seven ears of corn grew fat on a bush strong and very healthy)

This sense was often applied to crops and livestock and grew out of the “timely, in season” sense. This sense of tidy developed into a sense applied to people meaning admirable, possessing desirable qualities. This sense can still be found today, although it has been downgraded somewhat to “satisfactory, pretty good.” And it is found in the sense meaning “considerable, big” as in a tidy sum of money. This sense is found in the romance William of Palarne, written sometime prior to 1375:

Al þat touched þer to a tidi erldome, to þe kowherd & his wif þe king ȝaf þat time.
(All that was contiguous with a tidy earldom, the king gave to the cowherd and his wife at that time.)

The sense meaning “timely,” while we would expect it to be earlier, is actually recorded later, also in William of Palarne:

Gret merþe to þe messangeres Meliors þan made for þe tidy tidinges þat tiȝtly were seide.
(Great mirth to the messengers, conversation [was] then made about the tidy tidings that were said properly conveyed.)

An inversion of recorded senses and the logical semantic development like this is not all that unusual, and it is probably due to the fact that relatively few English-language manuscripts in early Middle English survive. Most literary and legal documents from the period are in Anglo-Norman French and most scholarly work is in Latin, so there weren’t all that many English language documents to begin with, and even fewer survived the centuries. So, while we know quite a lot about early Middle English, we don’t have a complete record of the language from the period.

The meaning of tidy most in use today, “orderly, clean,” dates to the beginning of the eighteenth century. This also comes from the general sense of “admirable.”

Sources:

“tidi (adj.),” Middle English Dictionary, 2001.

“tidy, adj., n., and adv.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989.

testilying

10 August 2018

Testilying is a blend of testify and lying and refers to someone, especially a police officer, committing perjury. It seems to have first arisen within the ranks of the New York City police department in the early 1990s. The term came into the public consciousness as a result of a 1994 investigation into corruption in that department.

The earliest citation I have found is from a 22 April 1994 New York Times article:

New York City police officers often make false arrests, tamper with evidence and commit perjury on the witness stand [...] And it is prevalent enough in the department that it has its own nickname: “testilying.”

Source:

Sexton, Joe. “‘New York Police Often Lie Under Oath, Report Says.” New York Times, 22 April 1994, A1.

terror / terrorism / terrorist

26 September 2019

Terrorism is not simply a modern phenomenon; it’s existed since time immemorial. But it wasn’t until the French Revolution that it was given its name.

Its root, terror, dates to the fifteenth century and is a borrowing from the Anglo-Norman terrour and the Latin terror. Its first citation in English in the OED is from a life of St. George written c. 1480:

for he wes anerly þat ane
þat of criste þe treutht had tan,
þat but rednes ore terroure
of goddis son wes confessoure.

(For he was only that one that the truth of Christ had taken, that for shame and terror of God’s son he was a confessor.)

So, for several centuries terror had the basic meaning that we know today, fear.

The political use of the term came with the post-revolutionary Jacobins, whose rule of France in 1793–94 is known as The Terror. This label appears in English by 1798 in the writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who equated the depredations of the Jacobins with the English who were oppressing Ireland:

The system of police (if police is what it can be called) is far more atrocious than ever it was in France, in the height of the Terror.

So, terror became associated with violent actions of a state in the oppression of its people. For instance, the magazine Encounter said this in July 1978:

Anyone who cannot see and appreciate the true difference between Russia today and Russia at the height of the Stalinist terror has a very poor idea of one or other of these phenomena.

This sense continues to this day.

But terrorism has always been used in a related, but different sense. It’s the use of violence by a non-state actor to achieve a political end. Sometimes terrorism is sanctioned by a government and carried out by paramilitary forces. Again, this a borrowing from French, although modern French this time: terrorisme. The first use of terrorism in English is by Thomas J. Mathias in his 1796 satirical poem The Pursuits of Literature:

John Thelwall [...] pointed out the defects of all the ancient governments of Greece, Rome, Old France, &c.; and the causes of rebellion, insurrection, regeneration of governments, terrorism, massacres, or revolutionary murders.

Unfortunately in its division of senses, the OED does not distinguish between state and non-state actors. So its unclear in this citation which is being referred to.

Roger Graef in his 1989 Talking Blue: The Police in Their Own Words uses the word to refer to the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, then the paramilitary police force in Northern Ireland. In this case, Graef is associating terrorism with the Provisional IRA, a non-state actor:

In Northern Ireland two decades of terrorism have produced battle fatigue in the RUC.

The New York Times also uses it in this way in a 2009 article:

Terrorism has no place in Islamic doctrine.

Terrorist follows a similar trajectory. It first appears as a synonym for the Jacobins and their supporters. From the Courier and Evening Gazette of 10 November 1794:

The Section Lepelletier, formerly the firmest in support of the Jacobin Society, declared eternal war against the terrorists and intriguers.

By 1806 terrorist was being used to apply to non-state actors. From Francis Plowman’s Historical Review of the State of Ireland of that year:

But the affected zeal for the constitution, the artful misrepresentation of facts, and the undaunted fierceness of those terrorists, had too long usurped the power of the viceroy, and abused the confidence of the British cabinet.

Source:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, Sep. 2011, s. v. terror, n., terrorism, n., terrorist, n.

terrific

17 February 2014

If you look at terrific, the origin is rather obvious. The form, or morphology, of the word gives it away, although from its meaning you would never guess where it comes from. Terrific is from the Latin terrificus, meaning frightening. Despite it coming from classical Latin, terrific doesn’t enter English use until the early modern era. The first writer known to use it is John Milton in his 1667 Paradise Lost. Milton uses it in the sense of frightening as he describes the creation and lists many of the animals that God has created:

The Serpent suttl’st Beast of all the field,
Of huge extent somtimes, with brazen Eyes
And hairie Main terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call. (7.495–98)

A serpent with a hairy mane? One would think that Milton wasn’t a very good zoologist, but this line is probably an allusion to Virgil and the Aeneid, the epic poem about the founding of Rome, which describes the two serpents which devour the priest Laocoön and his two sons as having iubaeque sanguineae superant undas (and blood-red crests that top the waves, 2.206–07). We don’t see this “frightening” sense of terrific much anymore; the modern sense has scared it away.

The modern sense of terrific meaning great or marvelous is a much more recent development. In the mid-eighteenth century the word began to be used to mean large or excessive. In a 1743 translation of Horace’s odes, Matthew Tower described the giant Porphryion as “of terrific size,” which could be interpreted as meaning terrifying and awe-inspiring and also as of great size. And within a few decades in his 1798 satirical poem The Literary Census, Thomas Dutton could mean only of great size when he writes of pamphleteer William Cobbett, “I am struck with admiration at the terrific sublimity of his genius.”

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, this sense of great size had come to mean simply great or excellent. An 1871 advertisement in the Athenaeum magazine could say:

The last lines of the first ballad are simply terrific,—something entirely different to what any English author would dream of, much less put on paper.

And by the next century Denis Mackail’s 1930 novel The Young Livingstones could contain this exchange:

“Thanks awfully,” said Rex. “That’ll be ripping.”
“Fine!” said Derek Yardley. “Great! Terrific!”

In the space of three-hundred years, terrific had moved from a Latinate description of awe-inspiring terror with allusions to Virgil to become a rippingly informal word.

Sources:

“terrific, adj. and n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011.