Words from The Plague and The Patient

I noticed the title to a recently rebroadcast episode of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Palimpsest. I ran across the word in two books I’ve read this year, also: In the Wake of the Plague, an interesting book by Norman F. Cantor, and The Private Patient, an enjoyable mystery by P.D. James. In fact, each book generated several words for my blog. Along with palimpsest, In the Wake of the Plague gave me words like demesne, hypostatize and salubrious, while The Private Patient generated uxuorious, minatory, mullion, and a few others. We won’t get to all of these this week, but let’s get started.

Palimpsest, the catalytic word, is a noun for a parchment (in particular) or similar document from which writing has been erased to make room for other text. Kind of like those paintings that were painted over another painting, these are documents where words have been removed and other words written over them. With the dawn of technology that allows for correcting texts easily, such palimpsests are less prevalent.

Palimpsest came to English in the 1660s through the Latin palimpsestus from the Greek palimpsestos, which means “scraped again.” The Greek word was formed by combining palin, which means “again” and psen, which refers to the rubbing smooth of something. Palin is also the source word for palindrome, a word that describes a word or phrase that reads the same backwards as it does forwards (like my brother’s name – Bob – or “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.”) Palindrome came to English in the 1620s.

Demesne was an entirely new word to me, perhaps because it came from English feudal law. It was, according to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the word used for “that portion of a manor not granted to freehold tenants but either retained by the lord for his own use and occupation or occupied by his villeins or leasehold tenants.” That clears it up, doesn’t it? Dictionary.com defines it as “possession of land as one’s own” primarily, but a second definition is “an estate or part of an estate occupied and controlled by, and worked for the exclusive us of, the owner.” The third definition it gives is “land belonging to and adjoining a manor house.” Back in feudal times, when there were various arrangements by which people worked and lived on land owned by the lord, demesne was land and property not given over to such use.

Demesne came to English sometime around 1300, and was originally spelled demeyne. It came from the Anglo-French word demesne or demeine, which came from the Old French word demaine, which the Old French got from the Latin word dominicus, which means “belonging to a master” and was formed from the root word dominus, which is the word for lord. An interesting note in etymonline.com tells that the word was respelled demesne by the late 15^th century by Anglo-French legal scribes, who were influenced by the Old French word mesnie, which referred to a household, since the concept of demesne referred to land attached to a mansion. But etymonline.com also says that Anglo-French legal scribes (those wild and crazy guys) had a “fondness for inserting –s- before –n-.” 

So why aren’t they Asnglo-Fresnch?