WORD-SPINNING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20668, 13 September 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

WORD-SPINNING.

A UNIVERSAL OCCUPATION.

BY SIATANGA

A magistrate has read a constable a rather sovere lesson on ® witness-box decorum, objecting strongly to the importation there of tho word " cobber." Forthwith a defenco of tho reprimanded constable has been made, and incidentally tho offending word has been traced to " copain " in tho French. The dcfenco is not convincing: it is capable of being turned into a justification of " cop " as meaning " a friend that sticketh closer than a brother," and no constable, unless gifted with a keen senso of humour, would welcomo so cordial a description of his vocation in life. But that by tho way. What is of more than casual interest is tho tracing of the parentage of a common wort! to a somewhat aristocratic

source. There is a perennial attraction in tho growth of words. Language is not made in books, whatever youthful minds may think about Nesfield and glossaries. It is alive in tho lounge and the marketplace, as well as on a battle-front. Wordspinning is boing done moro or loss by us all, as it was by our forefathers, in all generations, back to primitive and relatively wordless times. The actual time and occasion of many additions can bo found, but usually that is difficult, oviJn impossible. Who said it first? Who wrote it first? Where was it printed first? As a rule, these questions cannot be answered, but there is no doubt that each new word had an originator, who either mado or borrowed it. Some happy hit, a chance of fortune, was enough to introduce tho characteristics of the stranger. It became recognised, accepted, established, to be given a place in the " Burke's Peerage " of reputable language. Yet it was not thereby mado immune from changes of fortune, for so long as a language continues to be spoken it " nevor continueth in one stay." An interesting instance of this ceaseless flow is a word now treated as slang, for it shows that, a3 is claimed for " cobber," a term ranking as slang in ono of its uses may come from quite lordly lineage. It is the word " mob." In Stuart days tho common peoplo, held to bo easily moved by ignorant rumour and unworthy emotion, were derided in high places as the " mobile vulgus," and it was not long before the phrase was contemptuously shortened to " mob." Similar instances may be supplied from movements in our own time.

Pellets ol History. This constant word-spinning, requiring no great skill and often performed almost unawares, is exemplified in many a term now securely embedded in good English. Each manifests the absorptive capacity of speech. Some of them aro little bits of history, telling to alert minds many a tale otherwise easily forgotten. Curfew is the Old French covrefeu (to cover fire); in thraldom is a memory of the day when it was customary to thrill or drill the ear of a slave; signature goes back to the general making of a sign or mark; calculation tells of the use of calculi (pebbles) in counting; expense is reminiscent of the ago when money was weighed; in the first syllablo of estimato is £es, the first metal (brass) used as money by the Romans; and in other money terms, such as pecuniary, fee and rupee, there is a reminder that cattle were once employed as currency. Now we take a journey without limiting it to a day, and a journal, curiously enough, may make its appearance weekly or monthly, while our volume is no longer rolled up as of old, although the word implies that. The smith once had to smite often and strenuously. Our candidates do not wear a white toga in announcemeut of the purity of their motives, but it was so in old Rome. Trivial things naturally formed the staplo of conversation of loiterers where three cross-roads met. The pagan was the man of the distant village, outside the city's culture. The heathen was he whoso home was amid the wild heaths. A miscreant was once, as the word tells, a misbeliever, before he was thereupon held to be a rascal. We fret, forgetting that the word literally means to eat away; it comes from a telescoping in of " for-eat," where the first half is an ancient English particle of privative force. •„ Perpetuation of Names.

What a host of words comes from the names of persons! An atlas reminds us of the mythical giant supporting our world. An epicure is one whose tastes recall, though from a somewhat misleading distance, the pleasant philosophy of Epicurus. Academy goes back to Plato's grove, and so to the name of a monarch. In a philippic we have such a discourse as Demosthenes onca hurled against Philip of Macedon, the arch-enemy of Greece. Cicero lives in every cicerone. A Lazarus of old, smitten with leprosy, originated our lazaretto. From Simon Magus ("thy money perish with thee!") is got our simony, with a difference. Mausolus, a king of ancient Caria, is the maker of all our mausoleums.

Our dunces may he comforted to know that they descend from Duns Scotus, tho famous schoolman. A negro sorcerer of Surinam has his name preserved in quassia. A physician, Dr. Nicot, introducing the soothing tobacco plant to Europe, brought us nicotine. A colonel of Queen Anne's dead day first mixed our negus, and we use his name with every mention of the hot stimulant. Whether wo prefer a mackintosh or a spencer, we must needs recall him who brought either into fashion. We should thank a certain nobleman every time we eat a sandwich, and a celebrated French dealer when we see a doyly, though our American cousins, prorio to take liberties in commerce, have l, v a change of spelling done his memory injustice. When we como across macadam we should recall tho pioneering road engineer of that late eighteenth century which was in sore need of his services. To mesmerise wo are verbally dependent on a Viennese scientist of the samo age: and, to make a steep descent to sordid things, an infamous murderer taught us how to burke a question. Recovering, we find many a botanist, in a flower. To he quixotic is lo emulate a very valorous but incompetent Spanish knight. Faded Metaphors. There is a deal" to be said for Jeart Paul's description of many words as faded metaphors. In our tribulation is the old Roman flail, the tribulum; desultory gives us a picture of leaping from crag to crag; and our caprice embalms the like habit of the goat whose Latin caper goes on down the years. In many of our most familiar flower-names there are beautiful metaphors. English has borrowed much—more than it has repaid, or been able to repay. This seems to have given us a useless multiplying of words. In reality, it has enriched arid developed our thought. Here is a whole family of words, though their family likeness is only in meaning: trick, device, finesse, artifice, stratagem. The first is old English; the second wo took from Italian, the third from French, the fourth from Latin, tho last from Greek. But, though they fundamentally mean the same thing, we have employed a useful process of discrimination, putting each word to a specialised use. Have wo not well invested what we have borrowed?