Valkyrie

21 February 2024

Words disappear from the language all the time. The concepts they represent become less useful or they are replaced by spiffier, newer terms and fade into obscurity and eventual disappearance from all but the largest of historical dictionaries. But occasionally these words are plucked from the fields of the slain and given new life. Such is the case with Valkyrie.

A Valkyrie, in Norse mythology, is a female warrior spirit who selects the most heroic of the battlefield dead and escorts them to eternal life in the warrior-paradise of Valhalla. The word comes from the Old Norse valr, or the “the dead, slain,” and kjósa, “to choose.” So a Valkyrie is literally a “chooser of the slain.”

The Old Norse word had a cognate in Old English, wælkyrie, but in early medieval England the word was used to denote an evil female goddess or demon (e.g., the Furies or the Gorgons), or even a sorceress or witch. While the word gained a foothold in early medieval England, it does not appear that the Scandinavian mythology of the female spirit who selected the best from among the slain warriors did.

The Old English word appears mostly in glosses, but here is an example from The Wonders of East, a description of the fantastic peoples and creatures to found in distant lands. It’s one of the texts in the Beowulf manuscript, copied c.1010. This text uses the adjective wælcyrian. Exactly what the word signifies in this case is unclear, but it means something akin to Gorgon-like or demonic:

Eac þonne þær beoð wildeor acenned; þa deor þonne hy mannes stefne gehyrað, þonne fleoð hy feor. Þa deor habbað eahta fet on wælcyrian Eagan ond twa heafdu; gif him hwylc mon onfon wille, þonne hiera lic-homan þæt hy onælað. Þæt syndon þa ungefrægelicu deor.

(Also, wild animals are native there; when those animals hear a human voice, then they flee far away. The animals have eight feet and Valkyrian eyes and two heads; if anyone wishes to capture them, then they ignite their bodies in flames. Those are incredible animals.)

This Old English cognate survives into Middle English, but it disappears from the language sometime after 1400.

Valkyrie was reintroduced into English in the mid-18th century as tales of Norse mythology began to be studied and translated into English. With this reintroduction, the Scandinavian sense of the female chooser of the slain and the association with Norse mythos came into English.

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Sources:

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. walkirie, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. Valkyrie, n., walkyrie, n.

“Wonders of the East.” In The Beowulf Manuscript, R. D. Fulk, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2010, 16–19. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv.

Zoëga, Geir T. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, reprint 2004, originally published 1910, s.v. valr, n., kjósa, n.

Photo credit: Adolph E. Weidhaas, 1936. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

G-man

Poster for the 1935 movie G Men, starring James Cagney

19 February 2024

To an American, a G-man is a federal law enforcement officer, and the G is generally taken to come from government, but this may not be the case. There is an earlier Irish use of G-man used to refer to police officers of the G Division, the detective division, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It may be that the Irish usage crossed the Atlantic with immigrants, or it may be that the two usages are etymologically unrelated, arising separately on each side of the ocean. Militating against the Irish connection is that in American usage G-men have always been federal agents, originally treasury agents charged with enforcing Prohibition, not ordinary police detectives.

The G Division of the Dublin police was formed in 1842. Divisions A–F were uniformed divisions patrolling various districts of the city, and the G Division were the detectives. Quickly, however, the G Division assumed responsibility for monitoring and suppressing republican political activities, that is, to say in the parlance of the day, Fenianism.

The earliest use of G-men that I have found, however, refers to ordinary police work. From Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal of 2 September 1872:

A few months ago our city was honoured with a short sojourn of a notorious gang of garotters [sic], whose desperate attacks upon citizens awakened a feeling akin to dread in those whose business required them to be in the streets after nightfall. Thanks to the energetic efforts of our efficient detective force, the depredations of these ruffians were but few; and the G men of Exchange Court—the Scotland Yard of Dublin—daily placed in the dock powerfully-built men of the worst type of English criminals.

A use of G men in relation to suppressing political activities comes in an 1881 autobiography (published anonymously) of republican activist Michael Davitt:

Detective officer Sheridan was directed by his Chief to go over to the Land League offices, in Sackville Street, and tell Davitt that he was wanted in the Lower Castle Yard. Sheridan, at an interval, was followed by half a dozen “G men,” as the occupants of Exchange Court are called in the newspapers, and he confronted Davitt in company with Messrs. Harris and Brennan, two of the traversers in the recent State Trial, upon O’Connell Bridge.

And there is this delightfully written account of a G-man staking out the home of politician and activist John Dillon in Freeman’s Journal of 16 April 1888:

Early on Saturday a detective was posted at the top of North Great George’s-street, and he planted himself with his back to the railings of Belvidere College, where he could command a view of Mr. Dillon’s front door. He was very artistically dressed as an ordinary citizen, but “gave himself away” badly with his gloves and umbrella—no man built to baton Nationalists ever looks quite at home with Supple’s No 9 on his paws, and one of Smyth’s silk alpaca rain-protectors under his arm. He sauntered at intervals up and down the street, then he perused Tit Bits until the third edition of the Evening Telegraph was on sale; as time went on the “last edition” arrived and he again invested, and before he went off duty he had squandered the money of the ratepayers on an “extra.” About 6 o’clock Sergeant 13 C and Constables 94 C and 193 C took up their posts opposite the G man, at whom they stared with a “don’t-know-yer” air that was quite delightful.

American use of G-man can be traced to 1928, referring to U.S. Treasury agents charged with enforcing Prohibition. The earliest use I have found is in a 28 October 1928 Associated Press report of the affairs of Mary Louise Cecilia “Texas” Guinan (1884–1933), an actress and owner of a number of speakeasys. The report uses the term, crediting it to night club slang:

Miss Guinan, stopping over en route to New York where she has an engagement Monday with the “G” men (night club for federal prohibition agents), was moved into invective against California by dispatches lastnight [sic]. These dispatches quoted Marie Prevost of the films as saying Miss Guinan left Hollywood suddenly without paying $800 for a month’s rent of Mis Prevost’s bungalow.

(The character of Guinan on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation is named for Texas Guinan. On the show, Guinan runs the lounge on the starship Enterprise.)

There is a popular myth that G-man was coined on 26 September 1933 by George Kelly Barnes, a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly. He allegedly said, “Don’t shoot, G-men! Don’t shoot!” as he was being arrested by FBI agents. Kelly may or may not have uttered those words, but he clearly was not the originator of the term.

So is G-man an Irish import or an all-American term? For the moment, at least, we don’t have enough evidence to say one way or the other.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “California Boosters Will Not Be Able to Use ‘Texas Stuff.’” Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), 28 October 1928, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bauerle, Richard F. “Origin of ‘G-Man.’” American Speech, 32.3, October 1957, 232–33. JSTOR.

Davitt, Michael. Davitt’s Life: In Sunshine and Shade. Dublin: W. J. Alley, 1881, 13. Gale Primary Sources: The Making of the Modern World.

Dobbie, Elliott, V. K. “Did ‘G-man’ Come from Ireland?” American Speech, 32.4, December 1957, 306-307. JSTOR.

“Mr. John Dillon and the Police.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 16 April 1888, 5/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. G-man, n.

“To All Whom It May Concern.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 2 September 1872, 7/6. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1935. Wikipedia. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of the poster to illustrate the topic under discussion.

mendelevium

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907)

16 February 2024

Mendelevium is a radioactive, synthetic chemical element in the actinide series with atomic number 101 and the symbol Md. It has no uses outside of pure research. It was first synthesized at the University of California Berkeley by a team led by Stanley G. Thompson that included Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, Gregory Robert Choppin, and Bernard G. Harvey. The element is named for Dmitri Mendeleev, the chemist who formulated the Periodic Law and was instrumental in developing the periodic table of the elements.

The discovery was announced at a meeting of the American Physical Society in May 1955, and the 14 May issue of Science News-Letter reported the discovery:

Dr. Ghiorso said element 101 has been given the name mendelevium (chemical symbol Mv), in honor of the great 19th century Russian chemist, whose periodic system of the elements is known to every student of high school chemistry. Mendeleev's system has been the key to the discovery of elements for nearly a century.

The team published the details of the discovery in the June 1955 issue of Physical Review:

We would like to suggest the name mendelevium, symbol Mv, for the new element in recognition of the pioneering role of the great Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev, who was the first to use the periodic system of the elements to predict the chemical properties of undiscovered elements, a principle which has been the key to the discovery of the last seven transuranium (actinide) elements.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially approved the name in 1997 but changed the chemical symbol to Md from the original suggestion of Mv.

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Sources:

“Element 101 Discovered.” Science News-Letter, 67.20, 14 May 1955, 307. JSTOR.

Ghiorso, A., et al. “New Element Mendelevium, Atomic Number 101” (18 April 1955). Physical Review, 98, June 1955, 1518–19 at 1519. American Physical Society: Physical Review Journals Archive. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRev.98.1518.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

“Names and Symbols of the Transfermium Elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1997)” Pure and Applied Chemistry, 68.12, December 1997, 2471–73 at 2473. DOI: 10.1351/pac199769122471.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2001, s.v. mendelevium, n.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, before 1907. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Australia

Abraham Ortelius’s world map, 1570, depicting a vast southern continent labeled Terra australis nondum cognita (Southern land not yet known)

14 February 2024

The continent of Australia gets its name, appropriately enough, from the Latin australis, meaning southern. And the name Terra australis incognita (unknown southern land) has been applied to hypothetical southern continents since antiquity. There is no all-encompassing Indigenous name for the continent; instead there is a wide variety of local names for its different regions.

The first European to visit the continent we know today as Australia was Willem Janszoon in 1606. He dubbed the land Nieu Zelant, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not generally adopted. The name New Zealand was later applied to Aotearoa by European settler-colonists of those islands. A second Dutch explorer, Dirck Hartog, landed on the continent in 1616. He called the land Eendrachtsland, after his ship, the Eendracht (Unity or Concord), but again the name did not catch on.

A third Dutchman, Abel Tasman, was the first to give the continent a lasting name. He made two voyages to the South Seas for the Dutch East India Company, in 1642–43 and again in 1644. On this second expedition he named the continent Nieuw-Holland (New Holland), a name that lasted for some while. The island of Tasmania is named after him. (Tasman had dubbed that island Van Diemen’s Land, after Antonio Van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.)

The name Australia was first applied to the continent in an English translation of a work by Gabriel de Foigny. De Foigny, under the pseudonym Jacques Sadeur, published two books about the continent. The first was the 1676 La Terre australe connue (The Southern Lands, Known). The preface to the second book in 1692, Les avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voyage de la terre austral (The Adventures of Jacques Sadeur in the Discovery of and Voyage to the Southern Land), contains this passage:

Il est encore vrai qu’en comparant la Description que nous a fait de la Terre Australe Fernandes de Quir, Portugais, avec celle qu’on va lire, on est oblige d’avoüer qu’il saut qu’il en ait découvert quelque chose: Car nous lisons en sa huiriéme Requeste au Roi d’Espagne, que dans les découvertes qu’il sit l’an 1610, de la Terre Australe, il trouva un Païs beaucoup plus fertile & plus people que tous ceux de l’Europe.

While in the original French de Foigny simply called it la terre australe (the southern lands) The English translation of this passage, published in 1693, adds the name Australia:

It is likewise true, that upon comparing the Description that Ferdinando de Quir a Portugal, gives of the Southern Continent, with that which is contained in this Book, it must needs be allowed, that he hath made some Discovery of that Country. For we read in his eighth Request to the King of Spain, that in the Discoveries, which he made in the year 1610, of the Southern Country, called here Australia, he found a Country much more Fertile and Populous than any in Europe.

The passage mentions Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, who commanded a 1605–06 expedition under the Spanish flag, to find Terra australis. While he did map much of the Pacific, he did not find the continent. Although his second-in-command, Luis Váez de Torres sailed almost within sight of it while circumnavigating the island that is now known as New Guinea. The Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia is named for him.

The name Australia was officially adopted by the British Admiralty as the name for the continent in 1824 following the 1814 publication of Matthew Flinders’s account of his 1802–03 voyage circumnavigating the continent. Flinders was the first to identify Australia as a continent.

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Sources:

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

de Foigny, Gabriel [Jacques Sadeur, pseud.]. La Terre austral connue. Paris: Jacques Verneuil, 1676. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

———. Les avantures de Jacques Sadeur dans la découverte et le voyage de la terre australe. Paris: Claude Barbin, 1692, sig. a.iiii.verso–a.v.recto. Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Gallica.

———. A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis, or the Southern World. London: John Dunton, 1693, n.p. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Life in Australia.” Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2007. Archive.org.

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

“Where Did the Name ‘Australia’ Come From?” National Library of Australia. n.d. (accessed 12 January 2024).

Image credit: Abraham Ortelius, 1570. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

Arctic / Antarctic

Members of Roald Amundsen’s Antarctic expedition at the South Pole, December 1911. From left to right: Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting.

12 February 2024

Artic and Antarctic have pretty straightforward etymologies. The only hiccup is that they are borrowed from both French and Latin—English acquired the words in the late fourteenth century, at a time when the literati were conversant in both French and Latin, so it is impossible to untangle the influences of both. The French, in turn, also developed from Latin, and the Latin is borrowed from Greek. Specifically, the English words come from the Middle French artique / antartique and the Latin arcticus / antarcticus. The Latin is from the Greek ἀρκτικός (arcticos), meaning northern (literally it means bear, after the circumpolar constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) and ἀνταρκτικός (antarcticos), opposite to the north.

In classical antiquity, the celestial north pole was slightly closer to Kolchab (Beta Ursae Minoris) than it was to Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris), and therefore in the middle of the constellation due to precession of the earth’s axis of rotation, like the wobbling of a top. The entire constellation, rather than an individual star, was taken by navigators as indicating the north. Since then the celestial pole has been slowly edging closer to Polaris and is now less than one degree from it. (In about 12,000 years, the pole star will be Vega, in the constellation Lyra.)

John Trevisa, in his late fourteenth-century translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) uses the Latin polus articus and polus antarticus to refer to the north and south celestial poles:

And þis spere gooþ about apon twey poles, þe on þerof is by north and goþ neuer doun to vs, and hatte polus articus, þat is þe northe pole. Þe oþir is polus antarticus, þat is þe souþ polus, and is neuer iseie of vs; and þat is for it is fer fro vs, oþir on case þe erþe is between vs and him.

(And this [heavenly] sphere goes about upon two poles, the one thereof is in the north and never comes down to us, and is called polus articus, that is the north pole. The other is polus antarticus, that is the south polus, and is never seen by us; and that is because it is far from us, also it happens the earth is between us and it.)

In contrast, Geoffrey Chaucer, writing his Treatise on the Astrolabe at about the same time, has anglicized the words:

Understond wel that as fer is the heved of Aries or Libra in the equinoxiall fro oure orisonte as is the cenyth fro the pool artik; and as high is the pool artik fro the orisonte as the equinoxiall is fre fro the cenyth. I prove it thus by the latitude of Oxenford: understond wel that the height of oure pool artik fro oure north orisonte is 51 degrees and 50 mynutes; than is the cenyth fro oure pool artik 38 degres and 10 mynutes.

(Know well that the head of Aries or Libra is as far in the celestial equator from our horizon as is the zenith from the arctic pole; and the arctic pole is as high from the horizon as the celestial equator is from the zenith. I demonstrate it thusly with the latitude of Oxford: know well that the height of our arctic pole from our northern horizon is 51 degrees and 50 minutes; then the zenith is 38 degrees and 10 minutes from our arctic pole.)

And:

Understond wel that the latitude of eny place in the region is verrely the space bytwixe the cenyth of hem that dwellen there and the equinoxiall cercle north or south, taking the mesure of the meridional lyne, as shewith in the almykanteras of then astrelabye. And thilke space is as much as the pool artike is high in that same place from the orisonte. And than is the depressioun of the pool antartik, that is to seyn, than is the pool antartik, bynethe the orisonte the same quantite of space neither more ne lesse.

(Know well that the latitude of any place in the region is truly the space between the zenith of those who dwell there and the celestial equator north or south, taking the measure of the meridian line, as is shown in the circles marked [i.e., the almucantars] on the astrolabe. And that space is as great as the arctic pole is high in that same place from the horizon. And then the depression of the antarctic pole, that is say, the antarctic pole is the same quantity of space beneath the horizon, neither more nor less.)

As seen in these early examples, Arctic and Antarctic started out as postmodifiers, that is they generally followed the noun they were modifying. But by the end of the fifteenth century, they were appearing before the noun.

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Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Treatise on the Astrolabe.” The Riverside Chaucer, Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, 2.22, 675 and 2.25, 676.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. Arctic, adj. and n., Antarctic, adj. and n.

Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, vol. 1 of 3. M. C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 8.6, 1.457.

Photo credit: Olav Bjaaland, 1911. Wikipedia. Public domain image.