Alabama

3 February 2022

Detail from a 1743 French map showing the Alabama River as it flows into the Mobile River and into the Gulf of Mexico

The name Alabama comes from the name of a Muskogean people who lived in what is now the state of Alabama. The Alabama language is still spoken by several hundred people, mostly by those living on the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation in Texas. Europeans also applied the name to the river that runs through the state to the Gulf of Mexico.

The literal meaning of Alabama is unknown, although some speculative suggestions are often repeated as fact. It is often claimed that Alabama comes from the Choctaw albah (thicket) + amo (to clear, gather) or ayamule (I open, clear), so in this explanation Alabama would mean thicket gatherers. But this etymology is unlikely. It has also been translated as here we rest, but there is no factual basis for this translation.

The earliest recorded European use of the name appears to be on a Spanish map from about 1544, the Mapa del Golfo y Costa de la Nueva España, which records a settlement named Aljbano.

The name appears in English by 13 April 1708, when it is used in a letter from Thomas Nairne, a British trader and Indian agent, that relates the killing of an Alabaman at the behest of the Chickasaw.

After this Gentlman had informed me of most things materiall relateing to his Country, he thus went on. About 6 years agoe (say's he) Tonti with 7 or 8 Frenchmen more came up to our Towns, through the Chicta Country, made peace with us, and presented our Chief men very liberally, invited us Down to their Fort, and in passing patched up a peace betwixt us and the Chictaws. To be free with you Capt. said he I was one of them who was deluded, by their great promises. They boyed us up with a mighty expectation, of what vast profite we should reap by Freindship and commerce with them, so that upon their Desire I Killed one of your subjects the Albamas and carryed them the hair.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. “Alabama.” Ethnologue: Languages of the World, twenty-fourth edition.

Cumming William P. and Louis De Vorsey, Jr. “Mapa del Golfo y Costa de la Nueva España.” The Southeast in Early Maps, third edition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998, Plate 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Alabama, n. and adj.

Nairne, Thomas. Letter to Robert Fenwick, 13 April 1708. Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River. Alexander Moore, ed. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1988, 56. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Antoine Philippe de Marigny, Carte Particulière d'Une Partie de la Louisianne, 1743. Library of Congress. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain wor

pagan

Nine present-day pagan symbols representing (1st row) Slavic, Celtic, and Germanic Neopaganism, (2nd row) Hellenism, Wicca, Italo-Roman Neopaganism, (3rd row) Goddess movement, Kemetism, and Semitic Neopaganism

2 February 2022

Pagan is a Christian term which originally meant someone who is not Christian, a heathen. In later use, it came to mean someone who does not practice an Abrahamic religion. Pagan is borrowed directly into English from the Latin paganus. That Latin word originally meant a rustic or someone from the countryside, as opposed to the city. In the opening centuries of the Common Era, paganus developed a secondary meaning of civilian, as opposed to miles (soldier). And around the fourth century C.E. it developed the religious sense that was borrowed into English.

Why that semantic change happened in Latin is uncertain. It may have been that as Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, the older, polytheistic deities continued to be worshiped in the countryside. Or the shift may have occurred in parallel with milites Christi (soldiers of Christ). Or it may have occurred in parallel with heathen, which is often believed to have originally referred to a dweller on the heath, although the etymological connection between heathen and heath may be spurious.

Regardless of how the religious meaning developed in Latin, it is the religious sense of pagan that was imported into English. We first see the English word in The Alliterative Morte Arthure, whose surviving manuscript is from c.1440, but whose composition date was probably before 1400. In this passage, Arthur is speaking of Mordred:

I sall neuer soiourne sounde, ne sawghte at myne herte,
In ceté ne in subarbe sette appon erthe,
Ne ȝitt slomyre ne slepe with my slawe eyghne,
Till he be slayne þat hym slowghe, ȝif any sleyghte happen;
Bot euer pursue the payganys þat my pople distroyede,
Qwylls I may pare them and pynne, in place þare me likes.

(I shall never rest soundly, nor be  at peace in my heart,
In a city nor in a suburb that is set upon the earth,
Nor yet slumber nor sleep with my slothful eye,
Till he is slain who slew him, if any deceit happen;
But ever pursue the pagans that destroyed my people,
So I may confine and pin them in a place of my choosing.)

Direct borrowing from Latin is the source for our present-day word, but there were two older versions that came into English from Latin via the Anglo-Norman paen. These are payen and paynim. Both of these words appear in a collection of Kentish sermons from c.1275:

For al þat is ine þis wordle. þet man is. bote yef ha luuie godalmichti. and him serui; al hit him may þenche for lore and idelnesse. þo a resunede ure lord þe paens be ise apostles. vre fore he hedden i be so longe idel. þo þet hi ne hedden i be in his seruise; þo ansuerden þe paens; þet non ne hedden i herd hij.

(For all that is in this world of men is good if he loves God almighty and serves him; all may seem to him to be loss and idleness, consequently our lord did not ask paynims to be his apostles. For they had been so long idle, because they had not been in his service; though the paynims answered that they had not heard him.)

And:

And ihesu crist þet for us wolde an erþe be bore. and anured of þo þrie kinges of painime.

(And Jesus Christ would be born on earth for us and worshiped by the three kings of pagandom.)

But by the sixteenth century, the Anglo-Norman versions gave way to the one directly from Latin, except in historical or deliberately archaic use.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2017, s.v. paen.

Hall, Joseph, ed. “Dominica in sexagesima sermo.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250, vol. 1 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 221. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud MS Misc. 471.

———. “Sermo jn die epiphanie.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250, vol. 1 of 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 216. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud MS Misc. 471.

Krishna, Valerie, ed. The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition. New York: Burt Franklin, 1976, lines 4042–47. Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. paganus. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. pagan(e, n., pagan, adj., paien, n., paien, adj., painim(e, adj., painim(e, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. pagan, n. and adj.; September 2005, s.v. payen, n. and adj., paynim, n. and adj.

Image credit: unknown artist, 2011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Pennsylvania

1 February 2022

Detail of a 1685 map showing the area of Pennsylvania settled by Europeans, i.e., Philadelphia and the surrounding environs and what is now Delaware

The eastern portion of what is now Pennsylvania was part of Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape people. Indigenous peoples who lived in what are now the central and western portions of the state included the Susquehannock, Shawnee, Iroquois, and Erie. Additionally, the Nanticoke, an offshoot of the Lenape, migrated into what is now Pennsylvania from Delaware following contact with Europeans. Most of the Indigenous peoples who once dwelled in what is now Pennsylvania were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma and elsewhere. As a result, Pennsylvania is one of the thirteen states with no government-recognized tribes, but Indigenous communities unrecognized by the settler-colonist government still dwell there today.

The English colony was founded by William Penn as a Quaker colony in 1681 by King Charles II. The king granted the charter to pay off a £16,000 debt he had owed to Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and insisted the colony be named for the admiral as part of the debt repayment. The younger Penn had wanted to name it New Wales, but when the king weighed in he decided to call it Penn + sylvania (Latin: woodlands), so Pennsylvania literally means Penn’s woodlands. The 1681 charter reads:

Whereas His Majesty in consideration of the great merit and faithful services of Sir William Penn deceased, and for divers other good Causes Him thereunto moving, hath been Graciously pleased by Letters Patents bearing Date the Fourth day of March last past, to Give and Grant unto William Penn Esquire, Son and Heir of the said Sir William Penn, all that Tract of Land in America, called by the Name of Pennsylvania.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

“The King’s Declaration to the Inhabitants and Planters of the Province of Pennsylvania” (2 April 1681). A Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania. London: Benjamin Clark, 1681, 4–5.

Native-languages.org, accessed 14 December 2021.

Image credit: Christopher Browne, 1685, A New Map of Virginia, Maryland, and the Improved Parts of Pennsylvania & New Jersey. Library of Congress.

phat

An example of white adoption of a Black slang term. The Phat Cart food vendor in Portland, Oregon. Three white people standing outside a food kiosk, with a fourth white person behind the counter writing down orders.

31 January 2022

The Black slang phat means something that is excellent, desirable, rich in quality. It is common in hip-hop parlance where it is often used to refer to music or to sexually desirable women. It is semantically similar to another Black slang term, large. As for its origin, phat is simply a respelling of fat.

The adjective fat has had a sense of rich or abundant for a thousand years. The Old English fætt carried this sense, as can be seen in the version of Psalm 147:3 found in the Arundel Psalter from c.1099 C.E. It’s a Latin Psalter with an Old English interlinear gloss:

forþon he gestrangode hegas gata þinra gebletsode bearn þine on þe. se asette endas heora sibbe & of fætte hwætes gefilþ þe

(Because he strengthened the bars of the gate, blessed your children in you. He established peace on your borders and filled you with the fat of the wheat)

The Latin is adipe frumenti.

This sense is maintained moving into the Middle English period. John Wyclif uses it, c.1380, in a petition which, among other things, criticizes monasteries and convents for taking control of local, parish churches in order to obtain their benefices or endowments:

Also comunly siche chirchis ben approprid by symonie, as þei witen betere hemself, payinge a gret summe of moneye for sich apropriacioun, ȝif þe benefice be faat.

(Also, commonly such churches are appropriated by simony, as they think better of themself, paying a great sum of money for such an appropriation, if the benefice is fat.)

And this sense of fat is perhaps best known in the phrase fat of the land, which comes from Genesis 45:18, first translated this way in the Geneva Bible of 1561:

And take your father, and your housholdes, and come unto me, and I will giue you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shal eat the fat of the land.

But these senses of fat meaning rich or abundant are generally not applied to people, as phat can be.

The phat spelling was first recorded in 1963, making an appearance in an article about Black slang in the 2 August issue of Time magazine:

mellow, phat, stone, boss. General adjectives of approval: a stone fox is a very pretty girl; a boss short is a big car.

The sense of phat meaning sexually desirable was in place by the mid 1970s. Herbert Foster’s 1974 Ribbin’, Jivin’, and Playin’ the Dozens records the following incident:

School has just ended. George is sitting on the steps in the school running a strong rap with a number of girls. A female teacher comes down the steps and hears him say, “How about a kiss, baby?”

[...]

Actually, if the female teacher were a “scab” or a “fish” the student probably would have ignored her. This teacher, however, was a “phat tip.” By making a big play in front of the girls, he was paying her a compliment.

Foster’s notes to this passage read:

The earlier definition of “rapping” or “running a strong rap” had sexual connotations. [...] In jive lexicon or street language a “fish” or a “scab” is an ugly girl. Also, a female who is “phat” is a beautiful girl or woman. My informants tell me that the letters in “phat” stand for “pussy,” “hips,” “ass,” and “tits,” or a “pretty hole at times.” I am sure there are some others. “Tip” is a Buffalo word meaning a girl or woman.

The acronymic origin related here is incorrect, but it is noteworthy that the idea that phat is an acronym has been around as long as the sexually desirable sense has appeared in print.

But it was with the word’s use in 1990s hip-hop culture to refer to music that phat really took off in popularity. Here is an example from the Michigan Chronicle of 4 August 1993 about an unlikely rap artist, child television star Raven-Symoné:

Raven was asked to give three reasons why people should buy her album. She paused for a moment, then explained, “It’s phat. Second there are ten songs, three written by my daddy that I helped write. And, the third reason is every song is for every person. The kids and grownups can listen. So that’s it.” (For those who don’t know, “phat” in hip hop/rap terminology means a strong, slammin’ sound or beat.)

And this about a more typical rap artist from the Afro-American Gazette of 13–19 March 1995:

On his riveting 12 track debut album, This Is How We Do It, on Def Jam, Montell Jordan has successfully bridged the gap between traditional R&B harmonies and phat beats that equal slammin’ tracks.

But phat is not just used to refer to music and attractive women. As the 1963 quotation indicates, it is also a general adjective of approval. From the Black Collegian of October 1996:

I have made it through my first semester I am attending a historically Black college after having gone to predominately White schools all of my life. I have never felt so good. College is phat! I have met some of the most interesting and smart Black students I have ever encountered.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“African American Up and Coming Rising Star.” Afro-American Gazette (Grand Rapids, Michigan), 13–19 March 1995, 9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Americana: Beyond the Ears of the Greys.” Time, 2 August 1963, 14.

The Bible and Holy Scriptures. Geneva: 1561, Genesis 45:18, 24. Early English Texts Online (EEBO).

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. fætt, n.

Foster, Herbert L. Ribbin’, Jivin’, and Playin’ the Dozens. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1974, 51–52.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. phat, adj.

Holsey, Steve. “Raven-Symone: The Hardest Working Little Girl in Show Business.” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), 4 August 1993, 1-B. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. fat, adj.

Oess, Guido, ed. Der Altenglische Arundel-Psalter. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910, Psalm 147:3, 229. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Arundel MS 83.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2001, modified June 2021, s.v. phat, adj.; March 2015, modified December 2021, s.v. large, adj., adv., and n. (and int.); second edition, 1989, s.v. fat, adj. and n.2.

Parker, Linda Bates. Black Collegian (New Orleans), October 1996, 21. ProQuest Magazines.

Wyclif, John. “A Petition to the King and Parliament” (c.1380). Select English Works of John Wyclif, vol. 3 of 3. Thomas Arnold, ed. London: Macmillan, 1871, 519. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Anonymous photographer, 2014. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

normality / normalcy / normalness

28 January 2022

Google Ngram graph of the frequency of normality, normalcy, and normalness in American writing from 1900–2019. Normality is the most common of the three. Normalcy surges in frequency in 1916 from almost no use to an initial peak in 1924. After that, it waxes in wanes in frequency but remains in fairly frequent use. Normalness is extremely rare throughout this period.

Normality, normalcy, and normalness all carry the same meaning, that of conformance to a standard or to the usual state of things. But while they mean the same thing, the three words differ in register, dialect, and frequency of use. Of the three, normality is the most common on both sides of the Atlantic, but normalcy is more likely to be found in North America than in Britain and is viewed by some as an error or, at least, as an informal usage. Normalcy is also historically associated with the 1920 presidential candidacy of Warren Harding. Normalness is quite rare on both sides of the Atlantic.

Google Ngram graph of the frequency of normality, normalcy, and normalness in British writing from 1900–2019. Normality is the most common of the three, rising in frequency throughout the period. Normalcy is vanishingly rare before 1916, after which it slowly and steadily grows in frequency, but remaining significantly less common than in American usage (see graph below). Normalness is extremely rare throughout this period.

Etymologically, the three words are similar. They share the same root, normal, but use different endings that change nouns and adjectives into abstract nouns, -ity, -cy, and -ness. And all three first appear in the mid nineteenth century.

Of the three, normality is the oldest and the most common. It is most likely modeled on the French normalité, which dates to 1834 in that language. The English word appears shortly after the French one, in an article about German literature in the May 1837 Eclectic Review:

The German possesses little social flexibility, yet so much stronger is his individuality, and to that he will give free expression, even to willfulness and caricature. Genius bursts through every barrier that would oppose it; and even amongst the vulgar, the mother-wit breaks out. When one contemplates the literature of other nations, one observes more or less of normality—a sort of French art of gardening; it is the German alone which is forest-like—a field overrun with wild growth. Each intellect is a flower, distinct in form, colour, perfume.

Normalcy appears a couple of decades later, but its early use is restricted to mathematical jargon. From Charles Davies’s and William Peck’s 1855 Mathematical Dictionary:

SUB-NOR´MAL. [L. sub, and norma, a rule]. That part of the axis on which the normal is taken, contained between the foot of the ordinate through the point of normalcy of the curve, and the point in which the normal intersects the axis.

A review of Joseph Worcester’s 1860 dictionary in the May 1860 issue of the New Englander notes that normalcy could be found in technical texts but had yet to appear in any general dictionary. (Worcester was the chief competitor to Noah Webster in the nineteenth century American dictionary market.)

The 1864 edition of Webster’s dictionary (published posthumously) corrected this omission, but the definition does not make clear if it is used generally or only in the mathematical sense:

Nôr´mal, a. (Lat. normalis, from norma, rule, pattern; Fr. & Sp. normal, It. normale.)
1. According to an established norm, rule, or principle; conformed to a type or regular form; accomplishing the end or destiny; performing the proper functions; not abnormal; regular; analogical.
[...]
2. (Geom.) According to a square or rule; perpendicular; forming a right angle.
[...]

Nôr´mal, n. (Fr. ligne normale. See supra.)
1. A perpendicular.
2. (Geom.) A straight line perpendicular to the tangent of a curve at any point, and included between the curve and the access of the abscissus.
[...]

Nôr´mal-cy, n. The state or fact of being normal; as, the point of normalcy. [Rare.]

But the general (i.e., non-mathematical) sense is definitely in use a decade later. From the Chicago Sunday Times of 14 February 1875 in an article about aristocrats at Parisian dances:

Stiffness and pretense soon wear off at the balls. Blood, not a bit blue, asserts itself, and animal spirits seek their wonted channel. If their claim to high breeding be accepted, they will at once forego further self-assertion. A little wine warms them into candor and normalcy, and then grand airs fly off like a covey of partridges, not to return, at least the same evening.

But as the Google Ngram graph shows, normalcy remained rare until around 1916 when it surged in popularity in American writing. (The Google Ngram tool is not the best measure, but it makes a quick “back of the envelope” estimate that is usually reasonably accurate. Plus, the tool makes it easy to create comparative visualizations, which is why I use it here.) In 1920, Republican U.S. presidential candidate Warren Harding made Return to Normalcy his campaign slogan. The slogan was widely critiqued as “bad” English, but it capitalized on the weariness created by the First World War, the influenza pandemic, and the anti-Communist Red Scare, and Harding won in a landslide. Harding was using normalcy in his speeches as early as 14 June 1920, as this transcript in the Kansas City Star shows:

Normal thinking will help more. The world does deeply need to get normal, and liberal doses of mental science freely mixed with resolution will help mightily. I do not mean the old order will be restored. It will never be again. But there is a sane normalcy due under the new conditions, to be reached in deliberation and understanding. And all men must understand and join in reaching it. Certain fundamentals are unchangeable and everlasting.

But as we have seen, Harding did not coin this sense of normalcy, nor did his use significantly alter the popular trajectory of the phrase, as can be seen in the Google Ngram graph. Rather, Harding’s use of the phrase started after the surge in popularity was well underway and well before it had reached its initial peak, which was around 1924. So, he didn’t make a significant contribution to the popularity of the word. What Harding’s use of normalcy did, however, was bring the word to the attention of grammarians and linguists.

That leaves us with normalness, which is the red-headed stepchild of the three. It has always remained rare in both British and American English. But it appeared at about the same time as the other two words. Its first appearance is in an 1854 translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. Of note is the translator, Mary Ann Evans, better known by the pseudonym she used in penning literary works, George Eliot:

Let the fanatic make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is still sand; mine be the pearl—a júdicious friend. The agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normalness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial judgment; through him I correct, complete, extend my own judgment, my own taste, my own knowledge.

Feuerbach’s German was Normalität.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“Article VI.—Worcester’s Dictionary.” New Englander (New Haven, Connecticut), May 1860, 417. ProQuest.

“Art. VII. Menzel on German Literature.” The Eclectic Review (London), May 1837, 504. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

“Dancing Paris” (24 January 1875). Sunday Times (Chicago), 14 February 1875, 12. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Davies, Charles and William G. Peck. Mathematical Dictionary and Cyclopedia of Mathematical Science. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1855, 542. Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Dr. Webster’s Complete Dictionary of the English Language. Chauncey Goodrich and Noel Porter, eds. London: Bell and Daldy, et al., 1864, 893, s.v. normalcy, n. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Mary Ann Evans, trans. London: John Chapman, 1854, 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1994, 664–65, s.v. normalcy.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, modified March 2021, s.v. normality, n.; modified June 2019, s.v. normalcy, n.; modified March 2018, s.v. normalness, n.

“Where Harding Has Stood.” Kansas City Star (Missouri), 14 June 1920, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed 11 December 2021.