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A TASTE OF ONIONS
It's not surprising that a man named Onions became interested in how things got their names. Dr. Charles T. Onions was the last editor of the original Oxford English Dictionary, and for a long time the reigning authority on English lexicography. He is best remembered for peeling layers of meaning in the famous Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
There's no point in undertaking such a massive enterprise (1024 crowded pages), or even picking it up, for that matter, unless you're going to be serious. Getting a firm hold on the abbreviations (OE, MDu, OHG, ME, OS, ON, etc.) is a task in itself. Other books offer more readable guides to the origins of our language. But this is unquestionably the last word on words, at least until the next edition, and not the least of its pleasures is catching the omniscient Dr. O. on an off day. Let's take two examples, on subjects close to my heart.
Silly, according to Onions, was considered in the 15th century to mean 'deserving of pity'. When we learn it lost some of its sense of 'weakly' and 'simple or ignorant' in the 16th century and came to mean just 'feeble-minded and foolish', we can see its modern meaning taking shape. Then, surprisingly, he muddles (wallows in mud, makes muddy, (hence) confuses) the whole thing by revealing that silly had evolved from 'seely,' from the Old English saelig, meaning happy or blessed, in turn related to the Old High German salig, meaning luck or happiness! Have we missed something here? What had happened by the fifteenth century to change the word's meaning so drastically? Onions feels no responsibility to account for the radical shift. Word lovers, I take it, were invited to speculate freely on what happened. Friends have suggested I am just the man to get to the bottom of Silly.
My research took me back to a cheerful, prosperous English family in Bristol in the fifteenth century, known locally as the seely Footes. How could this happy clan suddenly become 'deserving of pity,' and on their way to being feeble-minded and foolish? It seems that Edward Foote's father, Jack, had distinguished himself at Agincourt, and been rewarded by Henry V with a fiefdom in France. He refused, telling the King fiefdoms were feudalistic anachronisms, and upon release from the Tower became a prosperous innkeeper in Bristol. Edward grew up a seely child, putting toads down the blouses of little girls, and pushing his little brother Alfred in the way of stray cattle. His twenty-first birthday party, lavish on a scale befitting the richest family in the county, was interrupted with news of the burning of Joan of Arc. "Some might say a toast at this time is in questionable taste", said his father Jack, hoisting a tankard. "But this is a sign that my boy Edward, and England itself, are destined for a seely future." The old warrior grew sentimental. "This scepter'd isle - we seely few..." Some protested that 'seely' sounded French, or Italian, and proposed that Edward, and England, deserved a more English-sounding toast. "All right then, here's a new sound all the rage in London," said Jack, raising his tankard aloft, like Henry's sword at Agincourt, "we silly few - wish a silly birthday to my son, and unending silliness for England down through the centuries to come......"
But Edward's future was not to be as silly as his father hoped. He recklessly expanded his father's business into occupied France, opening a string of SillyBangers roadside stands that collapsed as the English were pushed back to Calais. Those who tasted SillyBangers believed they had provoked the French to fierce resistance. In England, the family faced ruin and disgrace, and soon the neighbors' references to 'the silliest family in town' took on a mocking, sarcastic tinge. Their fall was so dramatic no one in England ever wanted to be silly again, and that's how the meaning of the word changed from happy to "deserving of pity."
Twaddle. Another way to deserve pity, of course, was to speak twaddle. It first appeared, with its meaning of "senseless or trifling talk," in the 18th century. There was a trendy rage for twaddle under George IV, but common sense tells us they didn't invent nonsense. I can hear gentle readers asking, and who can blame them, "What was it called, pre-twaddle?" Dr. Onions seems to have exhausted his interest by the time he traced it back to 'tittle' in the 14th century. It was given new life in the 16th by John Skelton, poet-laureate of both Cambridge and Oxford and tutor of Prince Henry (later Henry VIII) who, inspired by the Low German titel-tateln, formulated 'tittle-tattle', a delightful complement to the contemporary 'prittle-prattle.' But I fail to understand how Onions and others have overlooked a tie to titillation, on the scene since the 15th century. With its origin in the Latin titta for teat, and its meaning of '(pleasurable) excitation,' it explains the brief vogue for 'titillating tittle-tattle', that is, before 'tickling' began to edge out titillating among tittle-tattlers. Skelton's inspiration, tittle-tattle, gradually ceded ground to the lamentable 'twittle-twattle,' then 'twiddle-twaddle,' happily condensed at last to the more serviceable 'twaddle'. The word has fallen into disfavor, but to say it has lost its relevance to today's public discourse, especially the speech of our politicians, would be, how shall I put it,..... silly twaddle.
© Russell Connor
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