10th Jan 2010
You don’t say
I am a logophile. So, I was looking forward to reading Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language by Patricia T. O’Connor and Stewart Kellerman.
I like O’Connor’s approach (it’s her voice used in the book), since she knows her stuff but comes down firmly on the side of “the English language is changing and will always change, so we might as well get used it”, and she’s not afraid to tell sticklers to relax.
There were a lot of etymologies and word stories in this book that I already knew about (perhaps making me a word snob already, hmmm). In any case, there were a few items that I either chuckled at or realized that I had to revise my own misconceptions.
- Best street name (though it’s been renamed since): Gropecuntelane. If you guessed it was a red light district of sorts, you’d be right.
- The annoying quotation usage of the word “like” (as in She was like, I don’t know. And I was like, dude!) is a perfectly acceptable though recent development of the language that is here to stay.
- The more proper pronunciation of “comptroller” is “controller” (the first spelling being an introduction into the language as an illegitimate spelling in the 15th century. O’Connor prefers the “pure” pronunciation, but I think she contradicts her advice elsewhere in the book to keep things simple, so if it says “omp”, then you probably should pronounce it.
- “Female” has nothing to do with “male”. It’s etymology is from the Latin “femella”, whereas “male” comes from a different Latin root: “mascalus”. So no need to try to revise it as femyn or any other thing (except, I guess, “femella” if you want).
- “Grandfather clause” has racist origins. It got started as a Jim Crowe law in the south, a group of laws requiring poll taxes and literacy to be able to vote, with an exception being if your ancestors were able to vote before the Freedom Act, and this right to vote could be passed down to sons, grandsons, and so on. Great way for illiterate whites to be able to vote, but not so much the black people of the time.
- “Moot” means both “of no interest” and “debatable” or “worthy of discussion” (actually, the older meaning of the two). Only one example of many where we allow a word to hold opposite meanings.
- One last one, and one where I disagree with the authors: “they” as a singular pronoun. As they note, “they” was used as “he” or “she” or a singular person as early as the 1300s (Chaucer, even), but then it was restricted to the plural use after that and for a long time. In a departure I don’t really understand, since she argues for a democracy of language most other times, O’Connor is left at the end not wanting to use the singular “they” and concluding that we need another word to get around the awkward “he or she”. “They” is perfectly suitable to my mind, and if it has a pedigree for that usage from old times, all the better.
The style of writing in the book is accessible, and I like that they give anecdotes about how word citations are found in obscure newspapers, popular culture, and so on.
If you like words, you’ll probably enjoy the read.