Why Did French Courtiers Grow Their Left Little Fingernail Longer? It Was De Rigueur

Finishing up some loose ends, I have one word from last week to cover: polemics. Polemics is described in one dictionary as “the art or practice of disputation or controversy.” To which I respond “huh?”

Polemics is (polemics can be used as a singular or a plural noun) when someone presents a reasoned and contrary view of a belief or a doctrine. It comes from the French word polémique, which also referred to a controversial argument. The French likely got it from the Greek word for relating to war, polemikós. Its use in English can be traced back as far as the 1630s.

While we’re talking about French words that made their way to English, I used the phrase de rigueur in the blog post title on Sept. 1 and never explained it.

De rigueur is one of those phrases that has become so common in English that it is questionable whether it should be italicized or not. (I italicize foreign words – is de rigueur still foreign or not?) The French means literally “of strictness”, and has been used in English since 1849. But its meaning has become strictly required by fashion, usage, or etiquette.

The word rigueur in modern French is the source of our word rigor. The Old French word was spelled rigor, and that is the spelling adopted in the late 14^th century when the English first used the word that now means severity, strictness, or harshness. Its original meaning of hardness is retained in the Latin phrase rigor mortis, the stiffening of the body after death.

The Latin verb for hardness or stiffness is regere, and is the source of rigor. But the adjective is rigidus,  from which English got our word for stiff or hard, rigid, in the 15^th century. Same source word, different form.

A final French word that’s made its way into English is one used in the definition of de rigueur: etiquette. In 1750 the French word etiquette meant “prescribed behavior,” and if you can imagine the French court in the 1750s it’s easy to imagine how prescribed behavior had become. (It is said that King Louis XIV’s etiquette prescribed that anyone wishing to speak with the King could not knock on his door; he had to use the little finger on his left hand and gently scratch on the door. Rumor has it that courtiers grew that fingernail longer than the others.)

The Old French word is estiquette, and means ticket or label. The main sense relates to the behavior instructions written on a soldier’s billet for lodgings. One can easily see how, given the relation between behaving properly and keeping one’s head attached, those who were part of the French Court would have written “cheat sheets” to make sure they remembered how to behave while at court.

And you thought it was all music and dancing. 

Catching Up is Not Anathema, or Maranatha

I ran across the word anathema recently, and was surprised to find out that its origin is from the church concept of being excommunicated. It came to English in the 1520s from the Latin word spelled identically, which meant “an excommunicated person; the curse of excommunication.” Latin got the word from the Greek word transliterated anathema, which means “a thing that is accursed.” Originally it meant something devoted, and literally meant “a thing set up (to the gods).” Anathema was created by combining the Greek words for “up” (ana-) and “to place” (tithenai). 

Anathema has developed a broader meaning, although the usage I have heard most often is in the phrase “anathema to me”, meaning something to be avoided. It has gone beyond meaning just something worthy of divine punishment to something to be detested or hated, hence avoided.

An interesting biblical usage is found in I Cor. 16:22, where anathema is followed by the word maranatha. While in the King James Version it is rendered (untranslated) as Anathema Maranatha, in the New Internation Version it is translated as “…person be cursed! Come, Lord!” Maranatha, according to etymonline.com, “is a misreading of the Syriac maran etha, which means ‘the Lord hath come.’”

Maranatha has become an interjection used in English to mean “O Lord, come.” Etymonline.com suggests it could also be a false transliteration of the Hebrew words “mohoram atta,” which means “you are put under the ban.” While that fits the sense of I Cor. 16:22 better, it seems a bit of a stretch to me; I prefer the Aramaic maran atha, the Aramaic form of the Syriac phrase. Coming up with another source and meaning seems to be pushing it too far.

While I’m catching up on words encountered lately, one of those words is one I associate with William F. Buckley: athwart. One of his earliest and best known quotes was used in “Our Mission Statement” in National Review in 1955: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”  Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley, Jr. Omnibus.

Athwart is (not surprisingly if you know much about Mr. Buckley) a nautical term, referring to anything that is at a right angle to the line going from fore to aft (front to back), or to the wind. Think of it as standing crosswise to the direction or winds of history, in National Review’s case.

Of course, the Buckley Omnibus brings up a couple of other words (we’ve already discussed animadversion): omnibus and polemics.

Omnibus in the sense used in the title has an interesting history. In about 1820 Jacques Lafitte (the Parisian banker during the French Revolution, not the Formula One racer, and not related to the pirate Jean Lafitte) is credited with using the word to refer to the carriages that were available to everyone, which in French is voiture omnibus. Omnibuses came to London in 1829, and eventually we shortened the word for the public transportation vehicle to simply a bus.

The word was used in 1842 to describe legislation that contained many different items or objects (as in omnibus bill). From that sense came the idea of a collection of different works by one author or a group of works related in theme or interest.  

Polemics will have to wait until next week. 

Don't Get All Verklempt - The Final in Our Series on Yiddish Words

I’ve been relating Yiddish words adopted into English, after reading Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008), and ran out of room last week for one word, so let’s begin with that: schlong.

Schlong (schlang in Yiddish) is another word for snake that was adopted in Yiddish to refer to the penis, the meaning carried over into English. While schmuck came from the Old Polish word for snake, schlong comes from the German word for snake, which in Middle High German is schlange. It is the most recent of the Yiddish words for penis to come into use in English, only having arrived in 1969. (Although I think I heard its use earlier, in high school in the 1960s, my memory may be wrong, but it is always the case that a word is used in spoken language a while before it appears in written works.)

Now, time for some non-sexual words from the book. (Finally, you say?) Wex says (on page 208), in talking about Mob (criminal) Yiddish words, while talking about words for prison:

The original meaning of the word khayder [Hebrew school] is “room,” hence its use in this context. Yeshiva is literally “a sitting.” Lokh is the Yiddish word for “hole.” Kan is a Hebrew adverb that means “here.” I’ve been unable to determine with any certainty if this is the source of can as prison (“he’s in the can”) in English.

While that’s possible, I also wonder if it’s the source of the “I’m in the can” meaning when someone is in the bathroom (loo, WC or water closet in England). The word “can” comes from the Old English word canne, which meant a cup or container. There are similar words for a container in many Germanic languages, and with the creation of canned food in the middle-19^th century, the word “can” was adopted in 1867 to describe those containers. The use of “can” for toilet came in about 1900, a shortening of “piss-can,” so its tie to the meaning of “room” as in “I’m in the can” is not likely either. No mention is made of its use for jail, but I found that its use to describe the buttocks (whether callipygian or not) is from about 1910. While “can” is also a verb with several meanings, primary of which is “to be able to,” that use is so old (before 900) and so basic to many languages (German, Norse, Gothic kann) that it has little we can (See how I used it?) gain from more on it here.

Our final word from Yiddish is schlock, which means cheap or trashy. Wex (p. 211) explains how it came from the Yiddish shlak:

…technically, a shlyak, but try to say it quickly – a tailors’ term for selvage, the protective edge of a fabric that the tailor cuts off and throws away before using the cloth….So shlock, a term that entered English through the rag trade, originally meant crap that should have been tossed away but that you were trying to unload – for money.

Schlock came to English at least by 1915 as a noun, but within a year was being used as an adjective. In the 1960s schlockmeister appeared (to describe the seller) and a different adjective form, schlocky, also came into use. 

There are other words to come into English from Yiddish, but these are all we'll cover at this point. I know that will make you all verklempt.

From Job 8:15 to Li'l Abner - in Yiddish

As promised, today we look at some of the sexual words that have come to English from Yiddish, as I discovered in reading Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008).

Let’s begin by recounting an interesting story about a biblical reference that provides the Yiddish phrase for impotence that is literally “someone who leans against his house.” How does that mean impotent? Wex explains on page 232:

His real problem is impotence, thanks to the standard Yiddish trick of quoting only the first half of a biblical verse to whose second half you’re making reference. Yishooen al bayseh, “He leans against his house” is the beginning of Job 8:15, the rest of which reads “And it does not stand up. He takes hold of it, but it does not rise.”

Now, to the words putz, schmuck, and schlong.

Putz, schmuck and schlong all have Yiddish origins, and all refer to the penis. It’s interesting how the words for the male sex organ have come into use in English, while words for female genitalia do not; female parts are a subject to be avoided, to such an extent that the most common word for vagina (VA-GEE-NEH with a hard G in Yiddish) is simply dortn, which means “there.”

Putz (pots in Yiddish) in English is used of a fool or a jerk. The word has been used in several ways, according to etymonline.com:

Since at least 1873 it has been used by the Amish (Pennsylvania Dutch, as my ancestors are known) to describe the “Nativity display around a Christmas tree.” This use was based on the German word meaning of finery or adornment, so the nativity adorned the tree.

In 1934 the word was used in the Yiddish sense of penis in the Henry James novel Tropic of Cancer, which was banned in the United States until the Supreme Court declared it wasn’t obscene in 1964.

In 1964 the word took on the more acceptable English meaning of an obnoxious man or a jerk.

A schmuck is an obnoxious or contemptuous person, although the uses I’ve heard (generally of me…) were less severe than the definition indicates. “You’re such a schmuck” is commonly used as a somewhat friendly/humorous reference to someone’s non-sexual actions of a fool. But it’s etymology is sexual. Schmuck, or shmok in Yiddish, is considered a quite obscene reference to the penis, much stronger in Yiddish than in English. Its first written use in English was in 1897, and probably originated in the Old Polish word smok, which is used for a grass snake or dragon (the connection to penis becomes obvious). Leo Rosten (in The Joys of Yiddish, 1968) wrote it was so vulgar its use was taboo, and the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce’s use of it on stage on the West Coast got him arrested.

An interesting development of the word is that it became euphemized as schmoe, a word that is less objectionable and is used of a foolish person. Its first appearance in English was in 1948. The cartoonist Al Capp also began using it in 1948 for a creature in his cartoon strip “Li’l Abner,” the schmoo.

We’ve gone on [sch]long enough that schlong will have to wait until next week. 

It's Labor Day, So Yiddish is De Rigueur

I just finished reading a book on Yiddish (see my Goodreads post) called Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008). Many common words come from Yiddish. Some I knew (should I just say nu?) and some I was not aware were Yiddish in origin.

The first word I encountered in the book (p. 10) was schmooze, about which Wex writes:

A SHMOOS... (the Yiddish rhymes with loose), a real conversation, begins with the idea of partnership. It’s no accident that shmoos…comes from a Hebrew word that means “tiding, rumor”; something that you’ve heard rather than something that you’ve said. Shmoozing is based on listening, on the idea of responding to what you hear and being answered in turn by someone who has been listening to you.

Schmooze in English usage (which first entered English as a verb in 1897, and added a noun sense in 1939) has a more general meaning of genial conversation, with a hint of ulterior motive – to cozy up to someone through conversation or polite banter. Listening is not as prominent a part of schmoozing in English as it is in Yiddish.

The second word today is nudnik, defined as a boring and dull pest. My dictionary calls it an Americanism, acknowledging its Yiddish roots. Etymologically it comes from either the Polish or Russian word for boredom or boring (nuda or nudnyi), and has only been in common usage in America since 1947.

The Yiddish term has a more nauseous sense to it, according to Wex, p. 56:

English has lost the gut-wrenching physicality that Yiddish – ever mindful of its speakers’ stomachs – never fails to stress; the basic meaning of nudnik, usually translated as “bore” or “pest,” is “person who provokes vomit in another; agent of upchuck.” NUDZHEN, an alternative version of nudyen, gives us the English noun and verb nudge, as in “Quit nudging,” “Don’t be such a nudge” – i.e., “shut up before you make me sick to my stomach.”

The aforementioned meaning of nudge, a secondary definition in my dictionary, is the most recent English transplant of today's words, having arrived in English in the 1960s. 

The primary definition has a different meaning: to push slightly, particularly with the elbow. It arrived as a verb in the 1670s, from one of the Scandinavian languages (in Norwegian the word for rub is nyggje while in Icelandic it is nugga.)

Our final word today is also associated with digestion, but you would not likely guess its association. Schmaltz (shmalts in Yiddish) is literally “melted animal fat.” So how did it come to mean exaggerated sentimentalism, a meaning it’s had in English since 1935? You have to go back to a time when it was common experience to take the fat of animals like sheep and cattle, and render (melt) it until it becomes the “essential ingredient in candles and soap” according to Wex. Shmalts “is regarded as one of the greatest goods.”  It could in past times have made someone wistful, reminiscent of “Mom and matzoh pie.” Hence the sentimentalism, relating to two basic staples of the old home.

Next week we’ll go from food words into more sex-related words from Yiddish.