Crisis

27 October 2006

Earlier this week I heard Al Gore speak at a rally in favor of Proposition 87, a question on the ballot this year here in California that will authorize more taxes to pay for research into alternative energy sources. Political rallies and demonstrations in Berkeley are hardly notable, but it’s not everyday that you get the opportunity to hear a former vice president and since the rally was literally around the corner from our office a group of us spent our lunch hour listening to Gore.

He was, obviously, in favor of alternative energy and the proposition, but he also said something that raised my linguistic skepticism. Gore repeated the old chestnut that the Chinese word for crisis was formed from two characters, one meaning danger and the other opportunity, thus a crisis is really a two-edged sword. I had, of course, heard this one before, but this time I was motivated to look into whether or not it was really true.

I found the answer in the first Google search result. An essay by Victor Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, conclusively debunks this old saw.

The Mandarin word for crisis is w?ij?, and when written is composed of two characters w?i and j?. And w?i is indeed also used to mean danger.

So far so good. But j? does not mean or connote opportunity. J? has a variety of meanings in Mandarin. It can mean critical moment or turning point. So w?ij? does not mean danger + opportunity, so much as it means dangerous point in time–a pretty accurate translation of the English crisis. J? can also mean quick-witted, resourceful, and machine or device, none of which are particularly relevant here.

The confusion may have arisen because j? is also one of the syllables in the Mandarin word for opportunity. That word is j?hu�, where hu� means occasion. But j? in and of itself does not mean opportunity or anything close to it.

The English word crisis is a direct lift from Latin, which in turn takes it from the Greek, ??????, meaning decision. English use of the word dates to the mid-16th century when it was used to mean a turning point in the course of a disease, a point that would either result in the patient’s recovery or death. Bartholomew Traheron’s 1543 translation of Vigon’s The Most Excellent Workes of Chirurgerye defines the term as:

Crisis sygnifyeth iudgemente, and in thys case, it is vsed for a sodayne chaunge in a disease.

This medical sense of crisis isn’t much used anymore, but the adjective critical still refers to such a turning point in a patient’s health.

By 1627, crisis was being used to mean a turning point in things other than medicine. And by the 18th century it had acquired its current meaning of a time of danger or insecurity. From Myles Davies’s Athenæ Britannicæ of 1715:

Great Crisises in Church and State.

And from the Junius Letters of 1769:

To escape a crisis so full of terror and despair.

Mair’s essay can be found at
http://www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html.

Book Review: Yale Book of Quotations

20 October 2006

This extensive and extremely well-researched book of quotations by Fred Shapiro contains over 12,000 quotations from a variety of sources. It not only includes the usual literary quotes found in such collections, such as T.S. Eliot’s:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But also quotes from popular culture, such as this one by Tupac Shakur:

California love!
California–knows how to party

And from sources like advertising slogans:

I can’t believe I ate the whole thing." (Alka Seltzer)

As is the usual practice in such collections, the quotes are arranged by author with a key word index in the back matter. Each quotation includes a source, often quite specific and sometimes surprising. For example, we all recall the quote, but who remembers that this famous line was uttered during remarks on an after-school child-care initiative in January 1998:

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Every good library should have at least one good quotations reference, and the broad mix of quotations makes the Yale Book of Quotations an excellent choice.

Hardcover; 1,104 pp; Yale University Press; October 2006; ISBN: 0300107986; $50.00

Pages

20 October 2006

The Foley scandal, in which a Florida congressman has been found to have sent sexually explicit instant messages to teenage assistants has brought the word page to fore. Why do we call young attendants and messengers pages, and is the word related to the pages in a book?

The word page is from the Anglo-Norman word page, meaning young male servant. This sense dates to around 1225 in French and makes its English appearance shortly afterwards in the form of surnames like Serlo le Page (1234), Walt. Page (1236), and Will. le Page (1240). The earliest cite in the OED3 for the term as an ordinary noun is from c.1300 in the poem Havelok the Dane:

Was ther-inne no page so lite that euere wolde ale bite.

The ultimate origin appears to be from the Greek παιδιον, meaning boy.

Page was used over the centuries to mean a young servant, especially one attending a person of high rank, and by 1781 the word was being used to mean a boy or young man employed by a hotel or other establishment as a waiter or messenger. From William Cowper’s 1781 Truth:

She yet allows herself that boy behind;�His predecessor’s coat advanced to wear, Which future pages yet are doomed to share.

On the left side of the Atlantic, the word also came to be used for a boy who is employed to run errands for legislators (now, of course, pages can be girls too). From the Boston Evening Transcript of 18 February 1840:

A page took them to the Clerk–the Clerk handed them to the Speaker.

The verb to page dates to the 16th century, originally meaning to wait on or attend someone. From The History of Kyng Boccus & Sydracke, believed to be from 1537:

A chyld�is both tendar and grene�Unto he come to greatter age That he may hym selfe page.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the verb had also come to mean to use a page to summon someone. From L.L. Bell’s 1904 At Home With Jardines:

The name of Jardine was paged through the corridors and billiard-room and café.

And from the New York Sun of 21 August of that same year:

A bell boy is called. "Here, page Mr. Smith, Room 186," the clerk will say. The process of "paging" Mr. Smith consists of calling out his name in the dining and other public rooms of the hotel.

By 1936, the term was being used to refer to electronic announcements. From the RCA Review of 1936:

General announce and paging systems.

Finally, this sense of page is not related to the word for one side of leaf of paper. While that sense is also from an Anglo-Norman word page, it ultimately comes from the Latin pagina, a piece of writing. The Latin pangere means to compose.

Book Review: Dancing on Mara Dust

13 October 2006

Usually I restrict my reviews and notices to books about language and linguistics, but in this case it’s a book by a regular contributor to the Wordorigins discussion forum, Vivien Smith, a.k.a. ElizaD. The book is Dancing on Mara Dust: The True Story of a South African Farm.

Written with her mother, Nancy Mathews, the book is the story of Ms. Mathews and her parents and their life in the Transvaal in the early part of the 20th century. Written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact style, the book tells a tale of the travails and the joys of a hardscrabble family life. It evokes a time and place that is no more and is populated with a string of interesting characters who duck in and out of the family’s life (including a cameo appearance by Prince Edward, later King Edward VIII, who does not come off too well in the family’s estimation).

The book is not completely without linguistic interest. It is peppered with good South African words like mielies (maize), koppie (hill), and kraal (corral), as well as place names like Soutpansberg (salt-pan mountain).

Unfortunately, I’m not sure the book is readily available (at least not yet) in the United States. It can be found at amazon.co.uk and other sources in the UK.

Paperback, 208 pages, Vivien Clear Publishing (Oct 2006), ISBN 0955267102, £10.99.

Treason

13 October 2006

Treason has been much in the news of late.

This past Wednesday the United States charged Adam Yehiye Gadahn with treason, the first time since 1952 that such a charge has been brought against an American citizen. Gadahn has allegedly appeared in al-Qaeda training videos and is suspected of working in the terrorist group’s training camps. The Californian is believed to be in Pakistan.

In other treason news, Iva Toguri, one of several female radio broadcasters known as "Tokyo Rose," died last month at her home in Chicago . She was convicted of treason in 1948, the only one of the Japanese-American broadcasters so convicted, and pardoned by President Ford in 1977.

Treason is a very rare crime. In the history of the United States, there have been less than 40 prosecutions for treason, and even fewer convictions. The most famous treason case, that of Vice President Aaron Burr in 1807, resulted in an acquittal. The last person charged with treason by the United States was Tomoya Kawakita, a Southern Californian who was found guilty in 1952 of torturing American prisoners or war during WWII. Kawakita was sentenced to death, although the sentence was commuted and he was eventually deported. None of the famous Cold War spy cases involved charges of treason.

When I heard the news of Gadahn’s indictment on television, I was struck by the word treason. While hardly an unfamilar term, it sounded odd to my ears and I immediately wondered what its etymology was.

The word treason makes its appearance in the manuscript The Ancren Riwle (The Nun’s (Anchoress’s) Rule), a manual of monastic rules published sometime before 1225, in a reference to King David’s killing of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband:

Dauid�dude�treison and monsleiht on his treowe kniht Vrie, hire louerd. (David�did�treason and manslaughter on his true servant Uriah, her husband.)

This early sense of treason means simply betrayal and does not have the specific meaning of betrayal of the state. The word comes from the Anglo-French treysoun and ultimately from the Latin verb tradere, meaning to betray. So treason has the same root as betray.

The word had acquired its modern legal meaning of an offense against the state by 1303, when it appears in Robert Manning of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne:

Yn no thyng wote y more tresun, than brynge thy lorde to hys felun.

English law originally divided the crime into high treason, or crimes against the sovereign or the state, and petit treason, crimes against a subject (e.g., murder). The phrase high treason is still used today, although it no longer has a counterpart in petty treason.

The Treason Act of 1351, which although amended many times in the intervening centuries is still in force in England, defines treason as:

when a man does compass or imagine the death of our lord the King, or of our lady his Queen or of their eldest son and heir; or if a man violates the King’s companion, or the King’s eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King’s eldest son and heir; or if a man does levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere, and thereof be properly attainted of open deed by people of their condition�and if a man slays the chancellor, treasurer, or the King’s justices�being in their places, doing their offices: and it is to be understood, that in the cases above rehearsed, that ought to be judged treason.

This 1351 statute, in modified form, is also the source for American law on the subject of treason. Article III of the US Constitution says:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

In the American version gone are the crimes against the person of the head of state or his ministers. And having abandoned the monarchy, the crime of sleeping with the Queen, a crime because it could place one’s offspring illegitimately on the throne, is also gone. But what remains contains two interesting terms, adhere and aid and comfort.

Adhere is definitely an odd word here to the modern ear. It is used here in the old sense of to be a follower, a partisan of a person or group. In the original Anglo-French version of the 1351 statute the term appears as adherdant. In modern slang, an adherent might be rendered as fellow traveler. But we no longer use this sense of adhere in non-treasonous contexts and the only reason that it is still used in the legal documents is because of the specific wording in the Constitution requires it.

Like adhere, aid and comfort, is familiar; in fact, giving aid and comfort to the enemy is something of a cliché. In the original Anglo French of the 1351 statute, it is eid ou confort. What is odd, though, is the use of comfort. Again, this is an old, obsolete sense of the word meaning encouragement, strength, or incitement. This sense also first appears in Ancren Riwle:

Of fleschliche vondunges and of gostliche both and kunfort ageines ham. (Of fleshly, and also of spiritual temptations, and of comfort against them.)

Ponder for a moment that the specific wording of indictment of treason against an alleged 21st century terrorist is rooted in the legal language of the mid-14th century and that some of the words used to define it are first found in an even older manuscript about monastic life. A marvelous thing this English language of ours.