Over the River and through the Alley

Purlieu (it sounds like purview, but means something entirely different) is a word with an interesting origin. In English it originally meant the areas on the perimeter of the forest that were exempted from forest laws and owned by private individuals. It is now used more often to refer to a place a person visits often or regularly. Colloquially we might call it a haunt.

Purlieu comes from the Anglo-French "puralee" (an nobody doesn't love puralee) which comes from the Old French word spelled the same way but with an accent, so why bother? The Old French word comes from puraler, which meant "to go through". Apparently when you went to the forest you would hit the puraler first, then the forest. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the puraler. It's pretty easy to see how puraler could derive from the Latin words per- (through) and aler (to go). There is another word we get from aler: alley; except that the definition of alley says that it comes from the Latin word ambulare, which means to walk and from which we also get ambulance even though ambulances have almost nothing to do with walking. (Go figure.) The explanation is that aler is a contraction of ambulare, although I couldn't (another contraction) contract ambulare into aler. But then I'm not French or Latin.

A similar word that refers to something that is regular or daily is quotidian. Its qu becomes a "c" when it went through Middle English, at which time the word was cotidian. The Middle English, as they often did, got the word from French, which got the word from Latin. The most direct Latin word is quotidianus, which is a form of quotidie, which means daily. So while the spelling has transmuted (coming Wednesday to a blog near you) the meaning has not.

One interesting (to me at least) sidelight: quotidie comes from quot, which means "as many as" and idie, which means "day". From quot we get quote and quotient, even though they're very different meanings from each other and from quotidian. Sometimes where you end up isn't where you think you're going.

I mentioned purview earlier. It comes from the Middle English word purvue which comes from the Anglo-French legals term purveu est which means "it is provided" or purveu que "provided that". The Old French word purveu is where the phrases originally came from. There is no older root, which means it's the most recent root word today, dating to only about 1275.

Purview still retains a legal meaning, indicating the legal scope of a bill or law. It has expanded its meaning to include any scope or range of control. So if I say it's out of my purview, that means it's out of my range or scope of my control. I could control it if allowed, but my authority doesn't extend that far. My purview's only as far as the purlieu, at least on a quotidian basis.