I'm No Aristotle, Part 3

Let me begin by addressing how I ended last week’s blog. Busker is a word I’d never seen before, but found when researching the word peripatetic. It turns out that it is a word much more common in England and even in Canada. A busker can be a street entertainer in England or a person making a showy or loud appeal in Canada. What is interesting in researching the word is that none of the dictionary definitions provide any linkage to peripatetic activity. It is etymonline.com that links the two.

It etymonline’s explanation of the word, it refers to an “itinerant entertainer”, hence its connection to peripatetic and itinerant (3/4/12 blog). Its etymology is uncertain, but etymonline suggests several sources:

• In the 1660s it had a nautical use, referring to tacking or “beat to windward”. This use would have come from the obsolete French word busquer, which meant to shift, filch, or prowl. Busquer is related to the Italian word for filching and prowling, buscare and the Old Spanish word boscar.
•  In 1841 it was used in “in reference to people living shiftless and peripatetic lives.”
•  In 1851, (according to Mayhew) its figurative sense came “perhaps from busk ‘to cruise as a pirate.’”
•  In 1857 a source suggests it was formed from the verb busk which meant “to offer goods for sale only in bars and taprooms.”

Because buskers would often go where the people gathered (streets, bars, theaters) to perform, several of these etymologies make sense.  Someone who has their circuit of entertaining in public in hope of making money would be a busker.

So how do our final two words, errant and arrant, fit? Well, errant is the connection to other words on moving around, and arrant is sometimes confused for errant.

Errant came to English in the mid-14^th century from the Anglo-French word erraunt. Erraunt was formed from two Old French words, errant (the past participle of errer) and errant (the present participle of errer, which meant “to travel or wander”).  These words came from the Late Latin iterare, which came from the Latin word iter from which we derive itinerant (see 3/4/12 blog).

While most dictionaries I consulted define errant as meaning straying from a proper course or simply roaming, some dictionaries tie it to what I’ve found to be its most common usage: the errant knight. These days we would call them “free agent knights” because they would travel around looking for adventure or love.

Very quickly (before the 15^th century arrived) the word errant evolved into another word: arrant. At first it was “merely derogatory”, referring negatively to someone who wanders about, or roams; a vagrant. By the 1540s it acquired the meaning of “thoroughgoing, downright, notorious.” While there may have been arrant knights, most of those who weren’t tied to one particular state or adventure were errant.

And while my travelling is not anywhere near finished, this finishes our three blog posts on it.