lukewarm

26 April 2021

While its meaning, tepid or moderately warm, is widely understood by English speakers, the origin of lukewarm is something of a mystery to present-day speakers. The second half of the compound, -warm poses no problem, but luke- is baffling. That’s because it is a lexical fossil, a root that pretty much survives only in this compound.

Luke comes down to us from the Old English root hleow, meaning shelter, often with connotations of warmth, and the verb hleowan meaning to provide warmth. We see it, in the form gehliuran, in a text purporting to be a letter from Alexander the Great to his old tutor, Aristotle. The letter is not genuine, but part of the Alexander legend, a mythos about the warrior that was quite popular in the medieval period. The letter appears in the Beowulf manuscript. The passage in question is in a section where Alexander purportedly relates what happened to him in India:

Ða cwom þær semninga swiðe micel wind ond gebræc, ond to þæs unheorlic se wind geweox þæt he þara ura getelda monige afylde, ond he ða eac usse feþer-fot-nietenu swiðe swencte. Ða het ic gesomnigan eft þa geteld ond seamas ealle tosomne, ond hie mon þa seamas ond þa þing ðara ura wic-stowa earfoðlice tosomne for þæm winde gesomnode. Ond ða on gehliuran dene ond on wearman we gewicodan.

(Then suddenly there came a great wind and crash, and the wind grew so fierce that it knocked down many of our tents, and greatly troubled our livestock [lit. four-footed-animals]. Then I ordered the tents be assembled again and the bags all brought together, and the bags and gear of our camp were gathered together with difficulty because of the wind. And then we camped in a milder and warmer valley.)

The Old English is a translation of an older Latin text, in which the crucial line reads:

in [a]pri[ci]ore ualle sedem castrorum inuenimus

(we reached a place of encampment in a sunny valley)

But by the early Middle English period, the connotation of warmth had become denotation. The poem Laȝamons Brut, a mythical history of Britain probably composed before 1200 (the manuscript is from c.1275) tells of the death of King Arthur’s knight Sir Bedivere:

Þene gare he uorð strahte;
mid stroge his maine.
and smat þene eorl Beduer;
forn a þan breoste.
þat þa burne to-barst sone;
biuoren and bihinde.
a opened wef his breoste;
þa blod com forð luke.
Þer feol Beduer anan;
deð uppen uolden.

(Then he thrust forth the spear with his strong might and smote the earl Bedivere in the breast so that the byrnie burst open at once, before and behind. The blow opened his breast; the blood came forth luke. Bedivere fell there at once, dying upon the earth.)

We see the redundant compound lukewarm appear in the early fifteenth century, indicating that the standalone luke was falling out of use and no longer universally understood. The following is from another purported Alexander letter, known as the Secreta secretorum (Secrete of Secrets), this one from Aristotle imparting worldly wisdom to his pupil. It was translated from French, probably before 1425:

Bathes er on of þe merueylles of þys werld, ffor yt ys housyd after þe ffoure tymes of þe ȝeer, ffor cold accordes to wynter, leuk-warme to Veer, hoot to somer, drye to heruest. Greet wyt ys it to make ffoure dwellynges by ordre yn bathes, þe firste be cold, þe seconde leuk-warme, þe þrydde hoot, þe ferthe drye.

(Baths are one of the marvels of this word, for they are constructed after the four seasons of the year, for cold accords to winter, lukewarm to spring, hot to summer, dry to autumn. It is very wise to make four stages in order in the baths, the first is cold, the second lukewarm, the third hot, and the fourth a drying off.)

Aside from the occasional deliberately archaic usage, luke fell out of use by the end of the fifteenth century, leaving us only with the mysterious lukewarm.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online, 2018, s.v. gehleow; hleowan, hlywan; hlywþ. hlewþ; hleow, hleo.

Fulk, R. D., ed. “The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle.” The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010, 66–69.

Madden, Frederic, ed. Laȝamons Brut, vol. 3 of 3. London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1847, lines 27550–57. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. leuk, adj., leu(e adj.(1).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, December 2020, s.v. lukewarm, adj. and n., luke, adj., lew, adj.1 and n.2.

Steele, Robert, ed. Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, vol. 1. Early English Text Society, extra series 74. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898, 2.63, 82. The Internet Archive. London, Lambeth Palace Library 501.

lorem ipsum ...

Example of the placeholder lorem ipsum text mistakenly making its way into print in Singapore’s Straits Times, 26 April 2014

23 April 2021

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ... This seemingly pseudo-Latin, phrase is used in the typesetting industry as a place holder for text. It is intended to be a meaningless passage used to demonstrate what a printed page will look like without the reader being distracted by the content. Occasionally, one will see it make its way into print or onto a web page due to an editorial oversight.

There are many variations on the lorem ipsum text, but one common version reads:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

But what, if anything, does it mean? It is a corrupted extract from Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil) written in 45 B.C.E. Cicero’s actual words and a translation follow. Note that among other errors, the typesetter’s version begins not only in mid-sentence, but also in the middle of the word dolorem:

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia nonnumquam eiusmodi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

(Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?)

How long has this particular dummy text been around? There are claims that it can be found in 16th century printer’s samples, but these claims are unverified. Extant evidence for its use dates to the 1960s when the Letraset company began using the lorem ipsum text in promotional material for their products. (In the days before desktop publishing and computerized typesetting, Letraset produced transfer sheets of letters in various font sets that one could use to mock up page layouts. My first job after leaving the army in 1989 was as an editor for a number of professional newsletters, and I used Letraset transfers to create the headlines on the camera-ready copies we sent to the printer.) In the 1980s, electronic typesetting programs, such as Aldus Pagemaker, began including the text as default filler, and its usage exploded. It seems unlikely that Letraset initiated the practice of using this dummy passage, and it probably had been used by printers for some time before the 1960s, even if it does not date to the 1500s.

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Sources:

Adams, Cecil. “What Does the Filler Text ‘Lorem Ipsum’ Mean?” The Straight Dope, 16 February 2001.

Cicero. “De finibus bonorum et malorum.” On Ends. H. Rackham, trans. Loeb Classical Library 40. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1914, 1.10, 35–37

Cima, Rosie. “The History of Lorem Ipsum.” Priceonomics, 13 March 2015.

Photo credit: "Literary Icon in the Malay Community," Straits Times, 26 April 2014, D6. Unknown photographer, 2014. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

lord / lady

Entries in the Abingdon II Chronicle for the years 912 and 913 C.E. that refer to Æþelflæd, the Lady of the Mercians. An image of Old English script.

22 April 2021

The words lord and lady both come to us from Old English and stem from the cultural practice of the nobility providing sustenance and wealth to their court and their people. Lord is from the Old English hlaford, a blend of hlaf (loaf) + weard (guardian). And lady is from the Old English hlæfdige; that is hlaf (loaf) + *dige (kneader). Neither the word *dige or the verb *digan are attested in the extant Old English corpus, but digan means to knead in Gothic, and there is the Old English noun dag, which gives us our present-day word dough. So, it’s not a stretch to assume *dige and *digan existed in Old English. Therefore, a lord is literally a guardian of bread, and a lady is a kneader of bread, two etymologies that tell us something about gender roles in early medieval England.

Most of the senses of lord and lady that we use today existed in Old English, and the semantic development of the two words follows that of the Latin dominus/domina and French seigneur/dame, for which lord and lady have been commonly used in translations.

An example of hlaford in Old English is from the poem The Battle of Maldon, lines 314–19. The poem is incomplete, and this passage appears near the end of the surviving portion. (The manuscript was destroyed in the Ashburnham House fire in 1731—the same fire that damaged the Beowulf manuscript—but a transcript had been made several years earlier.) The battle was a historical but minor one, fought on either 10 or 11 August 991 C.E. between the English and Viking raiders. The poem was probably composed shortly afterward. The passage here is about the death of Byrhtnoth, the earl who commanded the English forces, and is spoken by Byrhtwold, one of his veteran retainers (all the Byrht[—]s can be a bit confusing):

Her lið ure ealdor     eall forheawen,
god on greote.     A mæg gnornian
se ðe nu fram þis wigplegan     wendan þenceð.
Ic eom frod feores;     fram ic ne wille,
ac ic me be healfe     minum hlaforde,
be swa leofan men,     licgan þence.

(Here lies our ruler, all cut down, a good man in the dust. He who thinks to turn away from this war-play will always regret it. I am wise in life; I will not turn away, but by the side of my lord, by such a dear man, I intend to lie.)

Calling Byrhtnoth a hlaford or lord is just what we might expect of masculine gender roles of the era. But popular expectations of medieval gender roles are not always accurate, and some of the Old English uses of hlæfdige or lady demonstrate that. Women in early medieval England had more influence, power, and autonomy that many might think. That is not to say that there was anything close to gender equality in that period—early medieval England was very much a patriarchal society—but our concepts of powerless medieval women are largely based on gender roles as they existed after the twelfth century. During the early medieval period, English women could exert considerable power and influence, with the main limitation on their power stemming from social class rather than their sex. Noble and wealthy women sometimes wielded considerable political and economic authority, and abbesses not only governed their cloistered colleagues, but they often administered enormous estates.

Perhaps the most famous of these powerful women of the period was Æthelflæd, the daughter of King Alfred of Wessex and wife of Æthelred, the ealdorman of Mercia. Æthelflæd assumed power upon the death of her husband in 911 and ruled until 918, styled as Lady of the Mercians. When she died the title and power briefly passed to her daughter Ælfwynn—the only known example of secular rule passing from one woman to another in early medieval England—before Ælfwynn was deposed by her uncle, Æthelflæd’s brother Edward, the king of Wessex.

The following passage from the Abingdon Chronicle II makes reference to Æthelflæd fortifying a series of towns, indicating that she played a military role:

AN DCCCCXII. Her com Æþelflæd Myrcna hlæfdige on þone halgan æfen Inuentione Sancte Crucis to Scergeate & þær ða burh getimbrede, & þæs ilcan geares þa æt Bricge.

AN DCCCCXIII. Her Gode forgyfendum for Æþelflæd Myrcna hlæfdige mid eallum Myrcum to Tamaweorðige & þa burh þær getimbrede on foreweardne sumor, & þæs foran to Hlafmæssan þa æt Stæfforda.

(A.D. 912. In this year Æþelflæd, the lady of the Mericans came to Scergeate on the holy evening of the Discovery of the Holy Cross and there built the fort and also in this year the one at Bridgnorth.

A.D. 913. In this year, by the grace of God Æþelflæd lady of the Mercians and all the Mercians went to Tamworth & there built that fort at the beginning of summer & then before Lammas (1 August) the one at Stafford.)

The present-day location of the town of Scergeate is not known.

These two words present a case where assuming the etymology is an accurate guide to cultural mores can lead you to the wrong conclusion. The gender roles depicted in the etymologies may be broadly accurate, but early medieval gender roles were more subtle and complicated than these particular etymologies, and popular history in general, would have us believe.

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Sources:

Abingdon Chronicle II, London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i, fol. 140r.

“The Battle of Maldon.” The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, ed. Anglo Saxon Poetic Records 6. New York: Columbia UP, 1942, 15–16.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. lord, n. and int, lady, n.

Image credit: London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B.i, fol. 140r. Fair use of a portion of a digitized medieval manuscript to illustrate a point under discussion.

long in the tooth

A horse yawning, exposing its teeth

21 April 2021

To be long in the tooth is to be old. Like many such expressions, the phrase got its start as a literal description, in this case of horses, but soon began to be applied figuratively to people and other things. In its early applications to people, it was quite sexist, comparing women to livestock, but over the ensuing 185 years that sexist connotation has largely been lost when using the phrase to refer to things other than women.

As horses age, their gums recede, exposing the roots of the teeth, and an oral examination can give a rough estimate of a horse’s age (Cf. don’t look a gift horse in the mouth). And, indeed, the earliest recorded use of the phrase is in reference to horses. From Thomas Medwin’s 1834 The Angler in Wales in a passage about Lord Byron’s stable:

His stable was at this time numerously though not very nobly supplied; and where he picked up such a set of dog-horses is amazing. The animal that carried him was loaded with fat, and resembled what we call a Flanders mare. She was encumbered with a hussar saddle and holsters, a standing martingale, and breast-plate. Though skittish, she was only remarkable for the lowness of her action, and, what made her a favourite with her master, the consequent ease of her pace, the amble, her ordinary one. A brown gawky leggy Rozinante, very long in the tooth, and showing every bone in his skin, was generally ridden by his courier, though occasionally, by way of variety, and to show the extent of the stud, he was mounted on a black, entire, forest pony, who had acquired the mauvaise habitude of having his own way, and would frequently take it into his capricious head to quit the cavalcade, and return to his stable.

Within a few years, we see long in the tooth applied figuratively to women. In this passage about the availability of marriageable women in India to British officers, the women are directly compared to horses. From John Francis Bellew’s 1841 Memoirs of a Griffin:

“As you are so fond of dancing,” said Marpeet, “what say you to joining a hop to-morrow evening ?” “With all my heart,” said I; “always ready for a ‘trip on the fantastic toe;’ but who is your friend?” “Why,” rejoined the captain, “I have a ‘provoke’ here from the mistress of the Kidderpore establishment for the orphan daughters of officers (by the way, I expect my young Mogulanee will figure there some of these days), to attend a dance to-morrow; they have a ball there once a fortnight (I believe), to show off the girls, and give them an opportunity of getting spliced.” “That's a new feature of schools; in England, if I remember right, the efforts of the mistresses tend the other way to keep the girls from getting married.” “That,” said Marpeet, “would never do in India, where women are thinking of getting buried about the age they talk of being married in lat. 50° N. Yes, this is the place for the man who wants a wife, and wishes to be met half-way, detesting, like me, the toil of wooing. There he can go, and if he sees a girl he likes, good forehand, clean about the fetlock-joints, free in her paces, sound and quiet, and not too long in the tooth, if not bespoke, he'll not find much difficulty in getting her.”

That same year, Major Michel’s retelling of the story of King Henry V and the battle of Agincourt uses the phrase in the same sexist manner, only with more subtlety. He doesn’t directly compare women to horses, but long in the tooth is used immediately after a description of horses and in the context of riding and lovemaking:

Having tethered their horses, Leonard led Gamme into the other stables belonging to the hostelrie, and there they found many steeds covered with warlike trappings, and some of great value. "

David,” said Leonard, “do rapscallion blades, according to our host's words, ride horses such as these? Did you hear the girl talk of the gentleman in the velvet cloak? and again, good David, did you see her face, her eyes, her figure? Why she is a very angel! In fact, David, there is a mystery, and a pretty petticoat, either of which would be sufficient to make Leonard Hastings ride a thousand miles on a bare-backed hackney; much more, then, would it force him to remain, when he thinks he has already ridden enough for the day. I tell you, dear honest David, that the squire of the most noble Earl of March is most deeply in love, and by the turn of that dear little girl's eye, I think it is reciprocal, and, forsooth, why not? We shall see: as if the old mother be sulky, why I will make love to her too, or perhaps, considering she is a little too long in the tooth for me, a friend might manage it instead.

And within another decade, we see the phrase being used figuratively in contexts completely divorced from horses, although contemporary readers would have been likely to make the connection. From William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1852 novel The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.:

His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean, and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the toyshops of London could not make a beauty of her.

Since most people today don’t come in regular contact with horses, the phrase has lost much of the equine association it once had. So, using long in the tooth in reference to people does not necessarily invite a comparison to livestock anymore, although it would often be impolite to comment on a person’s age in many contexts.

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Sources:

Bellew, Francis John. “Memoirs of a Griffin.” The Asiatic Journal, 34.40, April 1841, 252–53.

Medwin, Thomas. The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen, vol. 2 of 2. London: Richard Bentley, 1834, 181–82. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Michel, Major. Henry of Monmouth: or the Field of Agincourt, vol. 1 of 3. London: Saunders and Otley, 1841, 8–9. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. long, adj.1 and n.1.

Thackeray, William M. The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., vol. 1 of 2. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1852, 18–19. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Rachel Cowen, 2005. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

jinx

Playbill for a January 1891 Chicago production of Little Puck with the character Jinks Hoodoo

9 March 2021; minor update: 21 April 2021

A jinx is a person or thing that carries bad luck with it. The origin of the Americanism is not quite certain, but it most likely comes from the name of a character in a very popular play at the turn of the twentieth century. The major dictionaries, however, all give tentative etymologies relating to the bird known as the wryneck or jynx because of its use in magic and casting spells. But the avian etymology has significant problems, and there is a clear trail of lexical evidence leading from the play to the word jinx that has been uncovered by researcher Douglas Wilson.

The play is Little Puck, produced by and starring comic actor Frank Daniels and written by Archibald C. Gunter. It debuted in New York in 1888 and, although today it is all but forgotten, it was tremendously successful, with touring companies and revivals throughout the United States of the next two decades. Among the cast of characters was this role, originally played by actor Harry Mack:

Jinks Hoodoo, esq. a curse to everybody.....Harry Mack

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jinks was commonly used as the name of comical characters in theater and in jokes. And hoodoo, a variation on voodoo, was in use as a bringer or run of bad luck by 1882. Audiences of the day would instantly recognize a character named Jinks Hoodoo as a comical bringer of bad luck. And over the years, the meaning of hoodoo would shift onto the first element, jinks.

Jinks Hoodoo quickly caught on as a nickname for someone who brought bad luck. For example, an account in the Hawaiian Gazette with a dateline of 4 March 1895 tells of a “very nervous” passenger traveling on the steamer Australia bound for San Francisco who was certain the ship would sink before reaching port:

The officers of the vessel found that smoke was issuing from the main hatch. The supposition was that the coal was on fire, but happily it turned out that “back smoke” from the funnel was the cause of the trouble. But few of the passengers knew anything of the matter until it was over. At the time the smoke was discovered most of the male passengers were in the smoking room trying to “do” one another out of a dollar at the classic games of “cinch” When they heard of the ship’s escape the winners were glad and the losers declared that Mr. Ficke was a genuine “Jinks Hoodoo.”

And the Nevada State Journal of 4 April 1906 has this about Duncan B. Harrison, veteran of the Spanish-American War, dramatist, and actor, but who, as far as I can tell, had no connection with the play Little Puck—when the article says he is the only original, it means that misfortune has long dogged him, not that he played the part in the play’s debut:

Harrison is evidently a child of misfortune. He seems to be the only original “Jinks Hoodoo.” Wherever there is a brick house to fall, Harrison is there to furnish a cushion, but not to tumble. Wherever there is a cloudburst, Harrison does the wet-dog act. He probably owns an umbrella, but, whether he does or not you are going to find him under the downpour, whenever it rains.

The clipping and respelling to jinx appeared at just about this time. The word seems to have been a favorite of one or more sportswriters for the San Jose, California Evening News. There is this from 3 November 1906, which intriguingly uses jinx as a carrier of good luck:

Manager Mayer has hurled as startling defi at Danny Shay, the Stockton captain, stating that the latter can secure any baseball players in the world to play with his team. So confident has been Mayer’s tone that Shay and Moreing, the guiding stars of Stockton baseballdom, have lost their faith in their baseball Jinx.

And a few days later on 9 November 1906, the Evening News had this:

Mayer will carry along a Jinx with him for good luck.

At the beginning of the next season, on 4 May 1907, the paper ran this:

San Jose has a team of which she may well be proud this season. Not once have they been in danger of losing the coveted position at the head of the procession. The Jinx is certainly with the locals this year. Artie Mayer, son of Manager E. P. Mayer, is the mascot of the team, and he seems to have brought good luck to the San Jose club.

By mid-season, however, the San Jose team’s luck had changed, and the Evening News ran this article:

The Jinx that has been clinging onto the San Jose club for several weeks, was given the run Sunday afternoon, when the locals defeated the San Francisco team of the California League by a score of 5 to 3.

Over the next few years, other sportswriters picked up the word, but used it in the Jinks Hoodoo sense of bad luck. And by 1912 the sports pages of America’s newspapers are filled with jinxes.

The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry from 1933, says jinx is “apparently” from jynx, an alternative name for the wryneck bird. The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster follow suit. The bird has traditionally been linked to magic, from its supposed use in spells or charms, and the OED includes a 1693 citation of jynges meaning a charm or spell. But there are nearly two centuries and an ocean between this association and the word’s appearance in the name of the character of Jinks Hoodoo. It is possible the A. C. Gunter took his cue in naming the character from this old association, but it is far more likely that he was relying on the then-current tradition of labeling characters in jokes with the name Jinks.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. jinx, n.

“Harrison Again in Evidence.” Nevada State Journal (Reno), 4 April 1906, 8. NewspaperArchive.com.

“The Injured Innocents Leary.” Hawaiian Gazette (Honolulu), 19 March 1895, 2. NewspaperArchive.com.

“Jinx Has Been Given the Run.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 29 July 1907, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Merriam-Webster.com, accessed 7 February 2021, s.v. jinx, noun.

“Music—The Drama.” New-York Daily Tribune, 18 January 1888, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Oakland Ball Players Coming.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 4 May 1907, 4. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. jinx, n., jynx, n., hoodoo, n. and adj.

“Pennant Race to End.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 3 November 1906, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Sportorial.” The Evening News (San Jose, California), 9 November 1906, 7. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Wilson, Douglas G. “‘Jinx’ etymology #3.” ADS-L, 10 January 2004.

Photo credit: Chicago Public Library, public domain image.