Art. VI.—Kerns and Serifs.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 29, 1896, Page 95

Art. VI.—Kerns and Serifs. By R. Coupland Harding. [Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 23rd September, 1896.] Students of language have only of late years fully recognised the value of the rarer and more despised words of a language. Among the humbler forms, unknown in literature, but surviving in provincialisms, in slang, and in workmen's technical terms, may be found important key-words, opening up relationships otherwise untraceable. Therefore, to the philologist no word is common or unclean, and he has a just ground of complaint against those lexicographers—and they constitute the majority—who from prudery or fastidiousness as to classical forms pass over not only rare and special words, but many terms quite familiar to every ear in vulgar speech. Not only the student of language but the moralist has ground of complaint, for mock-modesty and pedantry of any kind never tend to elevate, but always to debase, the verbal currency It is not my intention, however, to touch on any “risky” questions of language. I have to direct attention to two old and curious words in use by all English printers—words which have baffled all etymological research—and to offer some suggestions thereon. I know how dangerous is the ground, and that it savours of presumption to offer any theory upon words which have been the despair of etymologists, with all the equipment that scholarship can give. Therefore I will not be so unwise as to dogmatize, but will confine myself to suggesting what seems a possible and not improbable origin of each of the words in question. While every trade and profession has its special lingo, unintelligible to the uninitiated, the printing trade is specially distinguished for the richness of its technical vocabulary. Several dictionaries and glossaries of the trade have been published, and I have all of any importance; but not one—not even the latest, the fine work published by the Howard Lockwood Company of Philadelphia in 1891—94—attempts to trace the derivation of the words; nor is one of them complete, numerous words in common use finding no place as yet in any collection. Printers' argot may be divided into two well-defined sections: First, the ancient words, originated by workmen who were one and all classical scholars and members of a recognised liberal profession; secondly, the terms coined by the modern workmen-homely, often coarse, and mostly unmitigated slang. In the former class is that curious group of

ecclesiastical terms, showing the close association between the printers and the other foremost scholars of the fifteenth century—the clerical scribes—who were gradually superseded by the printing press. Thus we have in sizes of type, “brevier,” “pica,” and “canon”; in the office arrangements the “chapel,” with its “father,” and the “devil”; while the black smudges and grey patches in bad presswork are respectively “monks” and “friars.” Even where there was no such allusion, we have in the word “quadrates” (shortened to “quads” by the modern workmen), applied to the large blanks used to fill out a line, a wholly different method of nomenclature from that which in late years has given us such forms as “bridging,” “hammering,” and “slating”—slang expressions well understood in the trade, wholly meaningless to an outsider, and which, so far, have never figured in any glossary. The difficulty of tracing a technical term to its root was well illustrated lately by an interesting discussion as to the origin of the word “flong”—the name by which the moulding material in the papier-mache process of stereotyping is universally known. It is only about forty years since the process was invented, but the derivation of the word is uncertain. One ingenious writer, finding that “flong” was an old English form of the verb “fling,” suggested this obsolete word as the original of the term, the mould being “flung” on the type, and beaten down (Swedish flenga) with a brush. But modern workmen do not hunt up forgotten Teutonic forms wherewith to coin technical terms. “With greater probability another suggested the French flan, “a thin, soft cake or custard” (English form, “flawn”), to which the moulding material bears some resemblance. This theory met with wide acceptance, the process having been first followed in France. Another, and I think the correct, suggestion is simpler still, that “flong” is merely a corruption of the French fluant, “blotting-paper,” of which the material is chiefly composed. If so much doubt exists as to the origin of a term not fifty years old, one must be cautious indeed in speculating about terms which came into being when printing was not only an art, but a mystery. First, I will briefly explain the words, for we must examine their meaning before we can hope to understand their origin. “Kern” is a word from the type-foundry, but is as old as the period when every printer cast his own type. Ordinary letters stand square within the four corners of the type on which they are cast, are fully supported, and do not overhang. But certain letters, especially those cast on the slope, like scripts and italics, overhang the body and overlap each

other. An italic capital F, for example, followed by an o, overhangs the smaller letter. The overhanging portion is ingeniously bevelled off, affording the greatest possible support, and at the same time clearing the blank portion of the type following. If it actually rested on the next type, no matter how slightly, it would snap off under pressure. The small f overhangs both at head and foot. The F has a “kern” or is “kerned”; the f is “double-kerned.” The word “serif” is more easily illustrated than described. The ordinary roman capitals (The) have serifs; the characters known to sign-painters as “block letters” (The) do not possess them, and are called by printers “sans-serif,” or without serifs, a form which would suggest a French origin were it not that in the fifteenth century “sans” was as good English as French. The etymology of the word is wholly unknown, and its uncertainty in this respect is emphasized by the fact that scarcely any two authorities spell it alike. I find it in all these forms, the first being the one adopted in the earliest printers′ dictionaries: “ceriph,” “cerif,” “seriph,” “serif,” “seriff,” “surryph,” to which I may add the form adopted by Dr. Adam Clarke, the learned commentator, “seraph.” Any one so inclined may introduce a few more changes, but six recognised forms is a remarkable number. I know of no other English word with so elastic an orthography. It is to Dr. Adam Clarke's note on the words “jot and tittle” (Matt., v., 18) that I am indebted for what I think is a clue to the real origin of the word. Our own word “tittle” does not assist us—it is merely a diminutive. It figures in all the seven historic versions, from Wicklif (1380) to the revised, version of our own times; in the authorised version of 1611, as in the Geneva version, it was spelt with one “t,” but Wicklif's spelling, “titil,” clearly discriminates the word from “title.” Curiously enough the identical word appears in Luther's German version, and in the Danish and Norwegian Bibles; in the Swedish, however, it is represented by another term, equally familiar to English eyes—“prick.” “Tittle,” being Saxon, is a translation; “jot,” on the other hand, is an untranslated Hebrew word in Greek dress, for the Hebrew names of the letters, though altogether foreign, were adopted in a very slightly modified form in Greek. Concerning “tittle,” Clarke says: “One tittle or point, κεραια, either meaning those points which serve for vowels in this language, if they then existed, or the ‘seraphs,’ or points, of certain letters, such as ד resh, or ד daleth, ה he, Or ח cheth (as the change of any of these into the other would make a most essential alteration in the sense, or, as the Rabbins say, destroy the world). Or our Lord may refer to the little ornaments

which certain, letters assume on their tops, which cause them to appear like small branches. The following letters only can assume coronal apices: צ tzaddi, ג gimel, ז zain, ג nun, ט teth, ע ayin, ש schin. These, with the coronal apices, often, appear in manuscripts.” It will be seen that the word κεραια, “tittle,” according to Clarke's second and most probable suggestion, closely corresponds in meaning with “serif”; and, moreover, he uses “seraph” almost as if it were a Hebrew word, which it greatly resembles in structure. Dr. Clarke's knowledge of Hebrew and other Semitic tongues was extensive and minute, and he uses the word so ambiguously in the passage I have quoted that I am not now certain whether he got the word “seraph” from Hebrew or Arabic, or from his printer. Rabbi Van Staveren, who has kindly assisted me in this matter, knows of no such word; the one he gives me as corresponding most nearly to the English “serif” is ץליס cilook. It is used to describe the slight projection distinguishing (for example) ד daleth from ו resh. But, though the word means much the same, the importance of the thing signified is vastly different in the two alphabets. The serif in the Roman letter is little more than a superfluous ornament, like the “coronal apices” in Hebrew to which Clarke refers, and to which the scribes attached peculiar and mystical meanings. In monumental inscriptions it is dispensed with for the sake of simplicity. An I without serifs is represented by one line, H by three; with serifs three and seven lines respectively are required to complete the character. Where special legibility is sought, sign-painters and printers alike use letters without serifs. Far otherwise was it in Hebrew. Neglect of these minute details by a scribe might most grievously corrupt the text. Hence such sayings as these by the Rabbins: “Should any one, in Ps., cl., 6, change ה into ח he would ruin the world”; “Should any one, in Exodus, xxxiv., 14, change ד into ו he would ruin the world.” In the one case the verb “praise,” in the passage “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord,” would be turned into “profane”; in the other, “Thou shalt worship no other God” would become “Thou shalt not worship the only God.” Examples like these, which could be multiplied, show the force of the passage that not one “tittle” of the law should be altered. I think (always supposing that no Hebrew original can be found) that the Greek word rendered “tittle,” κεραια, gives the key to the original idea. Kεραια signifies “a little horn.” The resemblance of these projecting points to horns is quite sufficient to warrant this fanciful use of the word, which, probably, was not confined to the Greek. And though

“serif” does not resemble κεραια, yet, through the ambiguous use of our letter c, numerous Greek words beginning with k are by us pronounced with an initial s, and “ceraia” certainly approximates to “ceriph.”* We have a good example from the same Greek root in the word “rhinoceros.” Murray's great dictionary, now in course of publication, gives the only discoverable suggestion as to the etymology of serif. In 1863 a writer in Notes and Queries suggested the Dutch and [Flemish schreef, “line, stroke,” but the editor is doubtful, and says, “historical evidence” is wanting.” I think my etymology is at least as probable. At the same time, the singular variety of spelling seems to suggest transfer from some such language as the Hebrew, where exact transliteration is not possible. I return to “kern.” I find only two suggestions as to its origin. The Encyclopædic Dictionary says, “Perhaps from crena, “a notch.” This I think exceedingly unlikely. A kern is not a notch, nor does it resemble one. All types have notches—a most important feature—but these are technically “nicks.” Another, in a later dictionary, is attributed to Mr. Thomas MacKellar, a celebrated typefounder of Philadelphia, who thinks that the word may be derived from the Celtic quern, a hand-mill; but the connection of ideas is not obvious, nor does the word seem to have been one likely to have been adapted to this use by the early printers. Just as the serif is a “horn,” so, I suggest, is the “kern.” In one case the horn is a feature of the impressed character, in the other of the type which gives the impression. The “serif,” then, comes from the Greek κεραια; the “kern” from the Latin equivalent, cornu; and, if this be the case, two English words diverging as widely as the two I have been considering—“kern” and “serif”—spring from a common root. The vowel-change need give us no concern, for we find exactly the same in “corn” and “kernel.” I must add that my friend Sir James Hector has suggested another possible derivation of “kern,” much more probable than crena, and deserving of consideration. He thinks it may be a form of “cornice,” and the overhanging portion of the type might very fairly suggest the comparison. In this case we also go back to the Latin; but we find the root not in cornu, but in corona, “a crown,” and the analogy to the Hebrew would be found not in Dr. Clarke's “seraphs,” but in his “coronal apices,” in which the ancient scribes displayed their skill. And once again, to anticipate possible criticism, I repeat that I put forward these etymologies only as suggestions, “to my mind more probable than any that have hitherto been made public.