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On the Study of Words by Richard C Trench

R >> Richard C Trench >> On the Study of Words




Thus how different the light in which we shall have learned to regard a
sin, according as we have been wont to designate it, and to hear it
designated, by a word which brings out its loathsomeness and deformity;
or by one which palliates this and conceals; men, as one said of old,
being wont for the most part to be ashamed not of base deeds but of
base names affixed to those deeds. In the murder trials at Dublin, 1883,
those destined to the assassin's knife were spoken of by approvers as
persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their
'removal.' In Sussex it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may
be 'tight,' or 'primed,' or 'crank,' or 'concerned in liquor,' nay, it
may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for
him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: 'Pransus' and 'potus,'
in like manner, as every Latin scholar knows, mean much more than they
say.] Fair words for foul things are everywhere only too frequent; thus
in 'drug-damned Italy,' when poisoning was the rifest, nobody was said
to be poisoned; it was only that the death of this one or of that had
been 'assisted' (aiutata). Worse still are words which seek to turn the
edge of the divine threatenings against some sin by a jest; as when in
France a subtle poison, by whose aid impatient heirs delivered
themselves from those who stood between them and the inheritance which
they coveted, was called 'poudre de succession.' We might suppose
beforehand that such cloaks for sin would be only found among people in
an advanced state of artificial cultivation. But it is not so. Captain
Erskine, who visited the Fiji Islands before England had taken them
into her keeping, and who gives some extraordinary details of the
extent to which cannibalism then prevailed among their inhabitants,
pork and human flesh being their two staple articles of food, relates
in his deeply interesting record of his voyage that natural pig they
called '_short_ pig,' and man dressed and prepared for food, '_long_
pig.' There was doubtless an attempt here to carry off with a jest the
revolting character of the practice in which they indulged. For that
they were themselves aware of this, that their consciences did bear
witness against it, was attested by their uniform desire to conceal, if
possible, all traces of the practice from European eyes.

But worst, perhaps, of all are names which throw a flimsy veil of
sentiment over some sin. What a source, for example, of mischief
without end in our country parishes is the one practice of calling a
child born out of wedlock a 'love-child,' instead of a bastard. It
would be hard to estimate how much it has lowered the tone and standard
of morality among us; or for how many young women it may have helped to
make the downward way more sloping still. How vigorously ought we to
oppose ourselves to all such immoralities of language. This opposition,
it is true, will never be easy or pleasant; for many who will endure to
commit a sin, will profoundly resent having that sin called by its
right name. Pirates, as Aristotle tells us, in his time called
themselves 'purveyors.' [Footnote: _Rhet_. iii. 2: [Greek: oi laestai
autous poriotas kalousi nun.]] Buccaneers, men of the same bloody
trade, were by their own account 'brethren of the coast.' Shakespeare's
thieves are only true to human nature, when they name themselves 'St.
Nicholas' clerks,' 'michers,' 'nuthooks,' 'minions of the moon,'
anything in short but thieves; when they claim for their stealing that
it shall not be so named, but only conveying ('convey the wise it
call'); the same dislike to look an ugly fact in the face reappearing
among the voters in some of our corrupter boroughs, who receive, not
bribes--they are hugely indignant if this is imputed to them--but
'head-money' for their votes. Shakespeare indeed has said that a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet; but there are some things which
are not roses, and which are counted to smell a great deal sweeter
being called by any other name than their own. Thus, to deal again with
bribes, call a bribe 'palm oil,' or a 'pot de vin,' and how much of its
ugliness disappears. Far more moral words are the English 'sharper' and
'blackleg' than the French 'chevalier d'industrie': [Footnote: For the
rise of this phrase, see Lemontey, _Louis XIV_. p. 43.] and the same
holds good of the English equivalent, coarse as it is, for the Latin
'conciliatrix.' In this last word we have a notable example of the
putting of sweet for bitter, of the attempt to present a disgraceful
occupation on an amiable, almost a sentimental side, rather than in its
own proper deformity. [Footnote: This tendency of men to throw the
mantle of an honourable word over a dishonourable thing, or, vice versa,
to degrade an honourable thing, when they do not love it, by a
dishonourable appellation, has in Greek a word to describe it, [Greek:
hypokorizesthai], itself a word with an interesting history; while the
great ethical teachers of Greece frequently occupy themselves in
detecting and denouncing this most mischievous among all the impostures
of words. Thus, when Thucydides (iii. 82) would paint the fearful moral
ruin which her great Civil War had wrought, he adduces this alteration
of the received value of words, this fitting of false names to
everything--names of honour to the base, and of baseness to the
honourable--as one of the most remarkable tokens of this, even as it
again set forward the evil, of which it had been first the result.] Use
and custom soon dim our eyes in such matters as these; else we should
be deeply struck by a familiar instance of this falsehood in names, one
which perhaps has never struck us at all--I mean the profane
appropriation of 'eau de vie' (water of life), a name borrowed from
some of the Saviour's most precious promises (John iv. 14; Rev. xxii.
17), to a drink which the untutored savage with a truer instinct has
named 'fire-water'; which, sad to say, is known in Tahiti as 'British
water'; and which has proved for thousands and tens of thousands, in
every clime, not 'water of life,' but the fruitful source of disease,
crime, and madness, bringing forth first these, and when these are
finished, bringing forth death. There is a blasphemous irony in this
appropriation of the language of heaven to that which, not indeed in
its use, but too frequent abuse, is the instrument of hell, that is
almost without a parallel. [Footnote: Milton in a profoundly
instructive letter, addressed by him to one of the friends whom he made
during his Italian tour, encourages him in those philological studies
to which he had devoted his life by such words as these: Neque enim qui
sermo, purusne an corruptus, quaeve loquendi proprietas quotidiana
populo sit, parvi interesse arbitrandum est, quae res Athenis non semel
saluti fuit; immo vero, quod Platonis sententia est, immutato vestiendi
more habituque graves in Republica motus mutationesque portendi,
equidem potius collabente in vitium atque errorem loquendi usu occasum
ejus urbis remque humilem et obscuram subsequi crediderim: verba enim
partim inscita et putida, partim mendosa et perperam prolata, quid si
ignavos et oscitantes et ad servile quidvis jam olim paratos incolarum
animos haud levi indicio declarant? Contra nullum unquam audivimus
imperium, nullam civitatem non mediocriter saltern floruisse, quamdiu
linguae sua gratia, suusque cultus constitit. Compare an interesting
Epistle (the 114th) of Seneca.] If I wanted any further evidence of
this, the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to
observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with
others, be it in the conflict of the tongue or the pen, or of weapons
more wounding yet, if such there be, is ever to assume some honourable
name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject
in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name
which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
light. [Footnote: See p. 33.] A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men
give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or
the other, will yet be receptive of the influences which these words
are evermore, however imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might
hope to gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these nicknames
they enlist what at first are so much more potent, the prejudices and
passions of the many, on their side. Thus when at the breaking out of
our Civil War the Parliamentary party styled _themselves_ 'The Godly,'
while to the Royalists they gave the title of 'The Malignants,' it is
certain that, wherever they could procure entrance and allowance for
these terms, the question upon whose side the right lay was already
decided. The Royalists, it is true, made exactly the same employment of
what Bentham used to call question-begging words, of words steeped
quite as deeply in the passions which animated _them_. It was much when
at Florence the 'Bad Boys,' as they defiantly called themselves, were
able to affix on the followers of Savonarola the title of Piagnoni or
The Snivellers. So, too, the Franciscans, when they nicknamed the
Dominicans 'Maculists,' as denying, or at all events refusing to affirm
as a matter of faith, that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without
stain (sine macula), perfectly knew that this title would do much to
put their rivals in an odious light. The copperhead in America is a
peculiarly venomous snake. Something effectual was done when this name
was fastened, as it lately was, by one party in America on its
political opponents. Not otherwise, in some of our northern towns, the
workmen who refuse to join a trade union are styled 'knobsticks,'
'crawlers,' 'scabs,' 'blacklegs.' Nor can there be any question of the
potent influence which these nicknames of contempt and scorn exert.
[Footnote: [See interesting chapter on Political Nicknames in
D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_.]]

Seeing, then, that language contains so faithful a record of the good
and of the evil which in time past have been working in the minds and
hearts of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer
indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation's life.
To study a people's language will be to study _them_, and to study them
at best advantage; there, where they present themselves to us under
fewest disguises, most nearly as they are. Too many have had a hand in
the language as it now is, and in bringing it to the shape in which we
find it, it is too entirely the collective work of a whole people, the
result of the united contributions of all, it obeys too immutable laws,
to allow any successful tampering with it, any making of it to witness
to any other than the actual facts of the case. [Footnote: Terrien
Poncel, _Du Langage_, p. 231: Les langues sont faites a l'usage des
peuples qui les parlent; elles sont animees chacune d'un esprit
different, et suivent un mode particulier d'action, conforme a leur
principe. 'L'esprit d'une nation et le caractere de sa langue, a ecrit
G. de Humboldt, 'sont si intimement lies ensemble, que si l'un etait
donne, l'autre devrait pouvoir s'en deduire exactement.' La langue
n'est autre chose que la manifestation exterieure de l'esprit des
peuples; leur langue est leur esprit, et leur esprit est leur langue,
de telle sorte qu'en developpant et perfectionnant l'un, ils
developpent et perfectionnent necessairement l'autre. And a recent
German writer has well said, Die Sprache, das selbstgewebte Kleid der
Vorstellung, in welchem jeder Faden wieder eine Vorstellung ist, kann
uns, richtig betrachtet, offenbaren, welche Vorstellungen die
Grundfaden bildeten (Gerber, _Die Sprache als Kunst_).] Thus the
frivolity of an age or nation, its mockery of itself, its inability to
comprehend the true dignity and meaning of life, the feebleness of its
moral indignation against evil, all this will find an utterance in the
employment of solemn and earnest words in senses comparatively trivial
or even ridiculous. 'Gehenna,' that word of such terrible significance
on the lips of our Lord, has in French issued in 'gene,' and in this
shape expresses no more than a slight and petty annoyance. 'Ennui'
meant once something very different from what now it means. [Footnote:
_Ennui_ is derived from the Late Latin phrase _in odio esse_.] Littre
gives as its original signification, 'anguish of soul, caused by the
death of persons beloved, by their absence, by the shipwreck of hopes,
by any misfortunes whatever.' 'Honnetete,' which should mean that
virtue of all virtues, honesty, and which did mean it once, standing as
it does now for external civility and for nothing more, marks a
willingness to accept the slighter observances and pleasant courtesies
of society in the room of deeper moral qualities. 'Verite' is at this
day so worn out, has been used so often where another and very
different word would have been more appropriate, that not seldom a
Frenchman at this present who would fain convince us of the truth of
his communication finds it convenient to assure us that it is 'la vraie
verite.' Neither is it well that words, which ought to have been
reserved for the highest mysteries of the spiritual life, should be
squandered on slight and secular objects,--'spirituel' itself is an
example in point,--or that words implying once the deepest moral guilt,
as is the case with 'perfide,' 'malice,' 'malin,' in French, should be
employed now almost in honour, applied in jest and in play.

Often a people's use of some single word will afford us a deeper
insight into their real condition, their habits of thought and feeling,
than whole volumes written expressly with the intention of imparting
this insight. Thus 'idiot,' a Greek word, is abundantly characteristic
of Greek life. The 'idiot,' or [Greek: idiotas], was originally the
_private_ man, as contradistinguished from one clothed with office, and
taking his share in the management of public affairs. In this its
primary sense it was often used in the English of the seventeenth
century; as when Jeremy Taylor says, 'Humility is a duty in great ones,
as well as in _idiots_.' It came then to signify a rude, ignorant,
unskilled, intellectually unexercised person, a boor; this derived or
secondary sense bearing witness to a conviction woven deep into the
Greek mind that contact with public life, and more or less of
participation in it, was indispensable even to the right development of
the intellect, [Footnote: Hare, _Mission of the Comforter_, p. 552.] a
conviction which would scarcely have uttered itself with greater
clearness than it does in this secondary use of 'idiot.' Our tertiary,
in which the 'idiot' is one deficient in intellect, not merely with
intellectual powers unexercised, is only this secondary pushed a little
farther. Once more, how wonderfully characteristic of the Greek mind it
is that the language should have one and the same word ([Greek: kalos]),
to express the beautiful and the good--goodness being thus contemplated
as the highest beauty; while over against this stands another word
([Greek: aischros]) used alike for the ugly to look at and for the
morally bad. Again, the innermost differences between the Greek and the
Hebrew reveal themselves in the several salutations of each, in the
'Rejoice' of the first, as contrasted with the 'Peace' of the second.
The clear, cheerful, world-enjoying temper of the Greek embodies itself
in the first; he could desire nothing better or higher for himself, nor
wish it for his friend, than to have _joy_ in his life. But the Hebrew
had a deeper longing within him, and one which finds utterance in his
'Peace.' It is not hard to perceive why this latter people should have
been chosen as the first bearers of that truth which indeed enables
truly to _rejoice_, but only through first bringing _peace_; nor why
from them the word of life should first go forth. It may be urged,
indeed, that these were only forms, and such they may have at length
become; as in our 'good-by' or 'adieu' we can hardly be said now to
commit our friend to the Divine protection; yet still they were not
forms at the beginning, nor would they have held their ground, if ever
they had become such altogether.

How much, again, will be sometimes involved in the gradual disuse of
one name, and the coming up of another in its room. Thus, little as the
fact, and the moral significance of the fact, may have been noticed at
the time, what an epoch was it in the history of the Papacy, and with
what distinctness marking a more thorough secularizing of its whole
tone and spirit, when '_Ecclesia_ Romana,' the official title by which
it was wont at an earlier day to designate itself, gave place to the
later title, '_Curia_ Romana,' the Roman _Church_ making room for the
Roman _Court_. [Footnote: See on this matter _The Pope and the Council_,
by Janus, p. 215.] The modifications of meaning which a word has
undergone as it had been transplanted from one soil to another, so that
one nation borrowing it from another, has brought into it some force
foreign to it before, has deepened, or extenuated, or otherwise
modified its meaning,--this may reveal to us, as perhaps nothing else
would, fundamental diversities of character existing between them. The
word in Greek exactly corresponding to our 'self-sufficient' is one of
honour, and was applied to men in their praise. And indeed it was the
glory of the heathen philosophy to teach man to find his resources in
his own bosom, to be thus sufficient for himself; and seeing that a
true centre without him and above him, a centre in God, had not been
revealed to him, it was no shame for him to seek it there; far better
this than to have no centre at all. But the Gospel has taught us
another lesson, to find our sufficiency in God: and thus 'self-
sufficient,' to the Greek suggesting no lack of modesty, of humility,
or of any good thing, at once suggests such to us. 'Self-sufficiency'
no man desires now to be attributed to him. The word carries for us its
own condemnation; and its different uses, for honour once, for reproach
now, do in fact ground themselves on the innermost differences between
the religious condition of the world before Christ and after.

It was not well with Italy, she might fill the world with exquisite
specimens of her skill in the arts, with pictures and statues of rarest
loveliness, but all higher national life was wanting to her during
those centuries in which she degraded 'virtuoso,' or the virtuous man,
to signify one skilled in the appreciation of painting, music, and
sculpture; for these, the ornamental fringe of a people's life, can
never, without loss of all manliness of character, be its main texture
and woof--not to say that excellence in them has been too often
dissociated from all true virtue and moral worth. The opposite
exaggeration of the Romans, for whom 'virtus' meant predominantly
warlike courage, the truest 'manliness' of men, was more tolerable than
this; for there is a sense in which a man's 'valour' is his value, is
the measure of his worth; seeing that no virtue can exist among men who
have not learned, in Milton's glorious phrase,' to hate the cowardice
of doing wrong.' [Footnote: It did not escape Plutarch, imperfect Latin
scholar as he was, that 'virtus' far more nearly corresponded to
[Greek: andreia] than to [Greek: arete] (_Coriol. I_)] It could not but
be morally ill with a people among whom 'morbidezza' was used as an
epithet of praise, expressive of a beauty which on the score of its
sickly softness demanded to be admired. There was too sure a witness
here for the decay of moral strength and health, when these could not
merely be dissevered from beauty, but implicitly put in opposition to
it. Nor less must it have fared ill with Italians, there was little joy
and little pride which they could have felt in their country, at a time
when 'pellegrino,' meaning properly the strange or the foreign, came to
be of itself a word of praise, and equivalent to beautiful. [Footnote:
Compare Florio's Ital. Diet.: 'pelegrino, excellent, noble, rare,
pregnant, singular and choice.'] Far better the pride and assumption
of that ancient people who called all things and persons beyond their
own pale barbarous and barbarians; far better our own 'outlandish,'
used with something of the same contempt. There may be a certain
intolerance in our use of these; yet this how much healthier than so
far to have fallen out of conceit with one's own country, so far to
affect things foreign, that these last, merely on the strength of being
foreign, commend themselves as beautiful in our sight. How little,
again, the Italians, until quite later years, can have lived in the
spirit of their ancient worthies, or reverenced the most illustrious
among these, we may argue from the fact that they should have endured
so far to degrade the name of one among their noblest, that every glib
and loquacious hireling who shows strangers about their picture-
galleries, palaces, and ruins, is called 'cicerone,' or a Cicero! It is
unfortunate that terms like these, having once sprung up, are not again,
or are not easily again, got rid of. They remain, testifying to an
ignoble past, and in some sort helping to maintain it, long after the
temper and tone of mind that produced them has passed away. [Footnote:
See on this matter Marsh, _On the English Language_, New York, 1860, p.
224.]

Happily it is nearly impossible for us in England to understand the
mingled scorn, hatred, fear, suspicion, contempt, which in time past
were associated with the word 'sbirri' in Italian. [Footnote: [Compare
V. Hugo's allusion to Louis Napoleon in the _Chatiments_:

'Qui pour la mettre en croix livra,
_Sbire_ cruel!
Rome republicaine a Rome catholique!']]

These 'sbirri' were the humble, but with all this the acknowledged,
ministers of justice; while yet everything which is mean and false and
oppressive, which can make the name of justice hateful, was implied in
this title of theirs, was associated with their name. There is no surer
sign of a bad oppressive rule, than when the titles of the
administrators of law, titles which should be in themselves so
honourable, thus acquire a hateful undermeaning. What a world of
concussions, chicane and fraud, must have found place, before tax-
gatherer, or exciseman, 'publican,' as in our English Bible, could
become a word steeped in hatred and scorn, as alike for Greek and Jew
it was; while, on the other hand, however unwelcome the visits of the
one or the interference of the other may be to us, yet the sense of the
entire fairness and justice with which their exactions are made,
acquits these names for us of the slightest sense of dishonour.
'Policeman' has no evil subaudition with us; though in the last century,
when a Jonathan Wild was possible, 'catchpole,' a word in Wiclif's time
of no dishonour at all, was abundantly tinged with this scorn and
contempt. So too, if at this day any accidental profits fall or
'escheat' to the Crown, they are levied with so much fairness and more
than fairness to the subject, that, were not the thing already
accomplished, 'escheat' would never yield 'cheat,' nor 'escheator'
'cheater,' as through the extortions and injustices for which these
dues were formerly a pretext, they actually have done.

It is worse, as marking that a still holier sanctuary than that of
civil government has become profane in men's sight, when words which
express sacred functions and offices become redolent of scorn. How
thankful we may be that in England we have no equivalent to the German
'Pfaffe,' which, identical with 'papa' and 'pope,' and a name given at
first to any priest, now carries with it the insinuation of almost
every unworthiness in the forms of meanness, servility, and avarice
which can render the priest's office and person base and contemptible.

Much may be learned by noting the words which nations have been obliged
to borrow from other nations, as not having the same of home-growth--
this in most cases, if not in all, testifying that the thing itself was
not native, but an exotic, transplanted, like the word that indicated
it, from a foreign soil. Thus it is singularly characteristic of the
social and political life of England, as distinguished from that of the
other European nations, that to it alone the word 'club' belongs;
France and Germany, having been alike unable to grow a word of their
own, have borrowed ours. That England should have been the birthplace
of 'club' is nothing wonderful; for these voluntary associations of men
for the furthering of such social or political ends as are near to the
hearts of the associates could have only had their rise under such
favourable circumstances as ours. In no country where there was not
extreme personal freedom could they have sprung up; and as little in
any where men did not know how to use this freedom with moderation and
self-restraint, could they long have been endured. It was comparatively
easy to adopt the word; but the ill success of the 'club' itself
everywhere save here where it is native, has shown that it was not so
easy to transplant or, having transplanted, to acclimatize the thing.
While we have lent this and other words, political and industrial for
the most part, to the French and Germans, it would not be less
instructive, if time allowed, to trace our corresponding obligations to
them.

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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