ETYMOLOGY

ETYMOLOGY

Y A K O V M A L K I E L
Emeritus Professor, Department of Linguistics and
Romance Philology Program,
University of California, Berkeley

CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 1993

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Malkiel, Yakov, 1914-

Etymology / Yakov Malkiel
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 32338 x (hardback). ISBN 0 521 31166 7 (paperback)
1. Language and languages — Etymology — History. I. Title
P321.M341993 412 - dc2092-20773 92-20773 CIP

ISBN 978-0-521-32338-3 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-31166-3 Paperback

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CONTENTS

Preface ix

1 The nineteenth century 1

2 The first half of the twentieth century 41

3 The second half of the twentieth century 105

Conclusion 167

References 173

Indexes 209

vn
 PREFACE

The choice of an accurate and, at the same time, appealing title for this
book has, I confess, cost me considerable headaches. The point is that
etymology (unless one is willing to equate it with some such indifferent
rendering as "the discipline of word origins'), has tended to mean, in its
actual applications and, above all, implications, entirely different things to
successive generations of scholars and laymen alike, from Antiquity to the
concluding years of the twentieth century.
In certain remote periods, the literal meaning of a given proper name and
the messages encoded into it (especially but not exclusively in reference to
proper names of persons) meant incomparably more to an average member
of the speech community in question than the provenance of any common
nouns. After all, parents in many places enjoy the privileges, within the
framework of tradition, of selecting, for their newborn children, names not
infrequently endowed with special messages or associations. Conversely,
few individuals are invited, encouraged, or allowed to coin novel designa-
tions for, let us say, dishes or pieces of furniture. In the second half of the
last century, which was marked by a new enthusiasm for science, accurate
etymologizing mattered chiefly to those eager to reconstruct a plausible
evolutionary chart of sounds and forms, viewed across the ages, since their
development, as was then firmly believed, was governed by strict laws, best
discoverable by those familiar at first hand with reliably established starting
points for word trajectories. About sixty years ago, those fine French
scholars Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet gave their unsurpassed etymo-
logical dictionary of Latin the revealing subtitle histoire des mots, i.e., 'word
biographies'. They were lucky enough to find imitators. If one looked at the
biographical vicissitudes of the lexical units in that perspective, then the
'cradle' of each word was not necessarily of more compelling significance

ix
Preface

than its subsequent transmutations, identified with heightened attention to

its meaning and to the specific place it occupied within its family. For a
while, the intoxicating success of 'dialect geography' compelled some of its
devotees to reserve an equal share of attention to a word's temporal odyssey
and to its sometimes astonishing travels through space, by way of land or
sea. At that juncture one can invoke the spatio-temporal approach to
etymological probing.
I myself initially toyed with the idea of smuggling into the title or subtitle
of this book the phrase 'lexical archaeology". In the first instance this indeed
seemed defensible at that juncture, not least because it might discourage
some potential readers lacking any flair for the past, any eagerness to
engage in piecing together events and linking them in terms of cause and
effect as closely as possible. What in the end prevented me from obeying
that hunch was the disappointing discovery that archaeology is basically
expected to concern itself with tangible objects as concrete witnesses to the
zigzags of material civilization. (To be sure, no one denies that it can serve
other, secondary, purposes as well, for example, by unravelling mytho-
logical knots or by helping one to reconstruct the zigzagging course followed
by the various techniques of writing.) By blindly adopting the role of a
verbal archaeologist, the student of historical (or 'diachronic') linguistics
would almost unavoidably agree to lean towards concentration on pic-
torially representable nouns, a hazardous imbalance which, as has become
clear in critical retrospect, was the chief fault of the various spokesmen for
the Central European school of Worter und Sachen (i.e., of tangible objects
and of the labels for them) - an approach deservedly influential half a
century ago, but also dangerously one-sided and ceaselessly running the risk
of exhausting itself. After all, pronouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions,
etc. are those ingredients of practically every language's lexis which are
most likely to stimulate the imagination of any red-blooded linguist.
Conversely, 'individual growth in lexis" (or, somewhat more loosely,
'individual growth in languages') underlines the legitimate and rhetorically
effective contrast to 'pattern' or 'structure' or 'system', i.e., the key
expressions for what represents the grammarian's delight and constitutes
his principal tool of analysis, without (to revert to 'individual growth')
adversely colouring this voluntary retrenchment or spontaneous limitation
of the scope and style of his presentation.
Perhaps the moment has now at long last arrived for stating rather bluntly
what this book has not been designed to accomplish. It does not aim to serve
as a manual, as a pedagogically flavoured instrument of indoctrination,
advancing from the relatively simple to the admittedly sophisticated. Nor
 Preface

will it lend service as an easily manageable 'How to . . . " book, furnishing

helpful bits of advice on how to learn to use certain reputable etymological
dictionaries; how to ferret out relevant book reviews; how to conceive and
formulate a truly original etymological idea ('guess', 'conjecture', 'hypo-
thesis'); how to prove one's predecessors wrong or to disarm one's potential
future critics; how to find a niche for a note or an article of one's own on an
etymological issue in some highly esteemed learned journal; and the like.
To use, I trust justifiably, a fairly trite phrase: etymology is going through
an unprecedented crisis of self-contradiction at present, on both sides of the
Atlantic (but the drama is conceivably more visible in the New World). Let
me cite a few paradoxes that seem to support my contention. With the rarest
of exceptions, the best of our universities hesitate to offer at any level
lecture courses or seminars on etymology, although they make a calculated
effort to initiate the neophyte into the fundamentals, or even the intricacies,
of phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, or else pragmatics; and the same,
grosso modo, holds for special linguistic summer institutes. Several influen-
tial journals, including those which do not hesitate to include in their scope
research in historical linguistics, nevertheless, either programmatically or,
at least, in their day-to-day routine, hesitate or flatly refuse to publish
perfectly legitimate inquiries into etymological issues, and so on. When a
busy journal editor's attention is drawn to this disquieting state of affairs, he
or she is apt to remark that some of the greatest linguistic scientists of the
past, e.g., Jespersen, Sapir, Bloomfield, displayed scant excitement about
etymological discoveries or controversies - a contention which, as a matter
of fact, is not inaccurate but proves nothing. Should an inadequacy rank as a
merit?
Disturbingly, while this policy of rejection goes on, tone-setting publish-
ing houses in English-speaking countries and elsewhere, in revising and
bringing up to date certain classics among the dictionary ventures they have
sponsored, announce loose bits of etymological information or even intro-
ductory essays on etymological subjects as a newly added prestigious
feature. Multi-volume etymological ventures, whether they concern lan-
guages living or dead, widely-known or obscure, acknowledge support
received from government agencies or private foundations, and so on.
Inevitably, amid such conflicting circumstances, the questions arise; who
really needs etymology, and for what purpose? And, what positions are
such linguists as practise etymology (or, far more advisably, include
etymology in their many-pronged daily practice) expected to occupy in
the world of organized scholarship, particularly as regards teaching and
publishable research? For alphabetic dictionaries, however great the need

xi
Preface

for them, contrary to appearances happen not to be the logical outlet for
advanced experimental research in etymology.
Affirmatively speaking, the purpose of the present book is, then, to
ventilate these basic questions and, by so doing, to fill a gap in the
information immediately available. It has been conceived as a series of three
medium-sized essays, of chronologically determined scope, each of which a
broadly educated 'lay' reader - whether previously exposed to the tricks of
technical linguistics or not - should easily be in a position to assimilate in a
few hours. The absence of footnotes, a deliberately planned feature, serves
the same purpose. However, plentiful (and, one hopes, up-to-date)
bibliographic information has been provided, both for those readers who
are anxious to ascertain the writer's own sources of information, and for
those who are eager to expose themselves to further intellectual stimulation.
It remains for me to record my sincere gratitude to those infinitely
forebearing and understanding members of Cambridge University Press
who have patiently borne with my inconsistencies and caprices, especially
Judith Ayling and the indexer Fiona Barr, as well as to a string of part-time
student assistants, all of them loyal and some of them talented, who have
helped me to survive in the years 1985-93, notably Dawn Ellen Prince and
Anne McCormick. Finally, I acknowledge with deep gratitude the help
received from my colleagues and friends Anna Laura and Giulio Lepschy in
handling the page proofs and in answering editorial queries.

Berkeley, California

xn
 The nineteenth century

In different times and at different places, etymology has meant slightly or

entirely different things to the few or many people who, under varying sets
of circumstances, have used that word, applying it to their own spheres of
interests. Basically, etymology always meant something approximating to
the paraphrase 'original meaning, or use, of a given lexical unit or proper
name'. But the cultural implications of this lame descriptive statement can
be entirely different. The core meaning of a word can be imagined as
something wholly independent of the passage of time and endowed with
magic messages or mystic overtones.
The appeal to etymology in a magic context may well have started with
proper names and be so old as to have its roots in prehistory. Parents, by
giving their newborn child a name whose 'real' meaning is wholly transpa-
rent to those familiar with the given language (like Spanish Dolores,
Consuelo, or Amparo, or Hebrew Rachel), or transparent only in part, or
else to experts alone, may to some extent be motivated in their choice by
this chance to encode a wish for the child's future well-being or expected
character (standard of behaviour), even though several alternative motiva-
tions may prevail. To the extent that the real meaning of a name titillates
the speech community's, or certain outsiders', curiosity, the etymology
comes close to resembling the riddle, and the etymologist, in being called
upon to solve or clarify it, acts like a magus or a magician. Particularly
relevant in this context are meliorative changes of names late in life,
sometimes by order of a deity, inasmuch as they may involve a reward for
past accomplishments, or a programme of character-building in the future.
The mystic approach to etymology was peculiar to medieval Europe;
involved in it was the widespread belief in symbolism and the practice of
parables, literally 'juxtapositions'. Just as a visual symbol stands for
Etymology
something else (e.g., the cross for 'salvation' or 'Christianity', the half-
moon for 'Islam', 'Solomon's seal' - according to other authorities, 'David's
shield' - for Judaism, the Hammer-and-Sickle sign for Socialism, etc.), so
the outer shape and meaning of a word may conceal a distinctly deeper or
more relevant ingrained message.
With the gradual move of linguistic curiosity in the direction of time-
dominated disciplines, principally history, a word's etymology began to be
tantamount to 'previous meaning', or 'earlier actually attested meaning', or
else 'earliest reconstructable meaning', without the concomitant pretence
that modern scholarship is invariably in a position to piece together
primeval meanings, or, for that matter, pristine forms. Etymology thus
changed its direction, aiming at the new status of a strictly identificational
discipline; words and names were henceforth divested of any residual mystic
or magic essence. Persons eager to satisfy their etymological curiosity
consult an etymological dictionary, which tells them not what to do at
present or what to expect from the future, but what shape the word at issue
once possessed, with what principal meaning it was endowed, and, occa-
sionally, through what intermediate stages of form and denotation it went
after shedding its initial and before acquiring its present appearance. (Only
under very special circumstances has etymology in the twentieth century
been called upon to act not cognitively, but as an active force - as when
certain poets fond of polysemy want the 'etymological meaning' to blend
with other semantic shades of the word pressed into service.)
The discovery of the time factor and the adaptation to linguistic material
of theories, methods, and techniques germane first to history and, later, to
the evolutionary sciences represented only one of two relevant major
advances of modern times. The other side of the progress achieved has been
the discovery that certain words, perhaps the majority of lexemes, have the
built-in capacity to migrate from one locus, or one speech community, to
another - as parts or particles of the general cultural heritage. A few words
seem to be continuously on the move (and have therefore been properly
called migratory); so are the objects (usually merchandise), the concepts,
the institutions, and kinds of people which they designate. Strictly speaking,
the discovery represents nothing revolutionary. The ancient Romans, unless
they were hopelessly stupid, easily recognized isolated Greek words (Grae-
cisms, Hellenisms) absorbed into the flow of Latin speech that surrounded
their lives. With the advent of travel and foreign-language teaching, and
with the wide spread of bi- and multi-lingualism in many modern societies,
there has been in the air a keen awareness of the fact that countless words in
 The nineteenth century

one's own language not only have a significant time-depth, but have also
been adopted from a whole spectrum of foreign tongues - ancient or
modern, neighbouring or distant, cognate in content and structure or exotic.
As had been the case in Antiquity, the presence of lexical diffusion (perhaps
a better label than 'borrowing') is being dimly felt even by the less
sophisticated twentieth-century person, no less than the aforementioned
power of time, together with the capacity for causing attrition or distortion
inherently attached to both of them.
The systematic exploration, from the vantage point of modernity, of
those earliest stirrings of etymological curiosity has not consistently been in
the hands of the same groups or coteries of researchers. Originally, it was
classicists, biblical scholars, and conventional comparative linguists (among
them the especially versatile and erudite Heymann Steinthal) who busied
themselves with such issues, and part of that heritage is unquestionably still
alive. Over the last half-century, however, literary critics, from Ernst
Robert Curtius in Bonn to R. Howard Bloch at Berkeley, have also
manifested active curiosity about those aspects of etymology in its infancy
which were doomed not to survive into later periods, marked by more sober
approaches.
One step towards organized knowledge was the collection of loosely
floating legends about the more exciting cases of word origins into a sort of
corpus or inventory. As far as the West is concerned, this feat was
accomplished by a brilliant figure, Isidorus, the Bishop of Seville, who,
standing at the threshold of the Middle Ages yet having free access to
numerous sources of Late Antiquity in part no longer available to us today,
found the necessary leisure, among his feverish activities as a theologian,
moralist, law student, and historiographer, to compile a priceless volume of
antique etymologies concerned chiefly, as one would expect, with Latin, the
so-called twenty books of Etymologiae, sometimes referred to as Origines.
Few books throughout the following centuries were so avidly read and so
studiously copied by trained scriveners in several European countries
(including Germany) as was this Isidorian treatise. In addition to providing
small capsules of knowledge - by no means devoid of value if measured by
the standards of the time - the Isidorian Etymologiae also stimulated other
influential figures to emulate the great initiator. When, in the third quarter
of the thirteenth century, Alfonso X (called the Learned), King of Castile
and Leon, assembled at his court a number of scholars, 'scientists', and
translators to prepare historiographic, legal, astronomic, and other accounts
capable of sating a truly encyclopaedic range of curiosity, part of the
Etymology

responsibility of this private academy attached to the royal court was to

learn how to intersperse their writings with parenthetic remarks on the true
meaning and extraction of certain key words and key names.
One can liken this gradual systematization of scattered etymological
insights into treatises to the slow emergence of glossaries, both monolingual
and bilingual, through consolidation of individual glosses - at the outset,
marginal or interlinear annotations of difficult words found in literary
texts entering into the prescribed curriculum - into initially modest and
haphazardly compiled glossaries, out of which, little by little, our better-
balanced vocabularies and dictionaries were allowed to develop. As a matter
of fact, by eventually merging these two genres, the collections of etymo-
logical hypotheses and the bare glossaries, the West finally hit on a new
genre of erudite writings, which has survived unimpaired to this day: the
etymological dictionary.
The transmutation of strings of guesses and anecdotes - which frequently
suffered from the further disadvantage of mutual overlapping - into a
tightened and increasingly respectable body of knowledge has had to
overcome a battery of obstacles. Not everywhere, to begin with, was
etymology equated with the systematic search for word origins. In Eastern
Europe, for example, where scholarship was presided over by inveterate
Byzantine traditions, etymology came to mean what we call morphology
and, in particular, inflection, with heavy stress laid on declension and
conjugation. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, paradoxically enough, etimolo-
gija was so interpreted on the secondary-school level. Accordingly, the
teaching of grammar to teenagers fell traditionally into two halves (with
separate textbooks produced for appropriate exercises), etymology and
syntax, apparently to the exclusion of orthoepy. At university level,
however, etymology, entering into a programme of philological training,
meant much the same thing as in the West, and etymological dictionaries,
starting with those devoted to the Russian language (e.g., the one compiled
by A. G. Preobrazenskij, originally published in 1910-16), pursued much
the same goal as in the rest of the civilized world. Through a further twist of
irony, present-day Russia happens to be one of the very few countries that
has a learned periodical devoted to etymology exclusively (Etimologija,
founded in 1963, in addition to a slightly older venture Etimologiceskie
issledovanija . . . , devoted to the Russian language alone).
To revert to the West: until fairly recently there was little understanding
of the kind of etymological scholarship that was cultivated between roughly
1500 and 1800 in several advanced European countries. That scholarship.
 The nineteenth century

with all its faults and limitations, was merely one thread in a whole strand of
tentative linguistic explorations, which were not always forcefully defined or
skilfully co-ordinated. There were language students, during those three
centuries of preliminary gropings, who were mainly concerned with the
ultimate provenance of individual words of their own tongue - the etymo-
logists par excellence. There were others who were passionately involved in
discovering the roots of their language as a whole, and who drew the
illustrations for whatever turned out to be their favourite thesis from
individual identifications of ancestral prototype and contemporary product,
to the exclusion, as a rule, of all and any intermediate stages. Also, there
were those, perhaps least conspicuous as a group and, as a result, sometimes
overlooked by later historians of linguistic science, who prepared miniature
historical phonologies, striving to equate certain sounds (which they would
call 'letters') of their tongue, e.g., of French, Italian, and Spanish, with
those of the reputed parent language - in the given cases, of Latin. Other
groups of trail-blazers were active in those years - e.g. missionaries compi-
ling word-lists for exotic languages or carrying out urgently needed transla-
tions of catechisms, etc. - but they are, in retrospect, of less concern to us.
Among 'pure' etymologists one may mention, in early seventeenth-century
Spain, Sebastian dc Covarrubias (H)orozco and, in mid-seventeenth-
century France, Gilles Menage. Among authors of treatises on the origins of
particular languages (as distinct from those philosophical minds that were
ruminating on the genesis of human speech, in the most general terms
possible at that time), we note the early-seventeenth-century Spaniard
stationed in Italy, Bernardo Aldrete, and, towards the middle of the
following century, that erudite Spaniard of transparently Catalan stock,
Gregorio Mayans y Siscar (their respective treatises were titled: Del origen y
principio de la lengua castellana o romance, 1606, and Orfgenes de la lengua
espanola, 1737). Finally, the clumsy miniature 'phonologies' were not
sufficiently extended to qualify as separate book ventures, but were,
typically, hidden away as introductory chapters to normative grammars and
dictionaries, or as parts of other sections, starting with a few relevant
pages in Antonio dc Nebrija's tone-setting Gramatica castellana (1492).
The important thing to remember is that pioneering etymologists did not
yet deem it advisable or mandatory to test their proposals, or any earlier
conjectures of which they were cognizant, against any sets of phonetically
phrased correspondences, or laws, or rules, precisely because those
equations, apart from being very poorly phrased, were not recognized as
binding, i.e., endowed with sufficient probatory force to militate for or

5
Etymology
against acceptance of an etymological conjecture still left pending. What
did etymological operations, as conducted between c.1500 and 1800,
actually look like?
It is important to realize that most of the Renaissance and post-
Renaissance etymologists were (measured by the standard of their time)
men of considerable learning, eager to absorb a good many facts about as
many languages as possible and equally anxious to consult the erudite
writings of their contemporaries and predecessors, several of them available
only as manuscripts (not a few of which have, in the meantime, been
irretrievably lost). In addition to Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew they
strove to acquire adequate insight into languages cognate to their own (thus,
the Frenchman Menage had a respectable command of Italian and a
commendable knowledge of Spanish). Moreover, be it only for the sake of a
certain intellectual piquancy, Covarrubias, as a participant in the Spanish
Golden Age maurofilia ('enthusiasm for things Moorish'), made a point of
familiarizing himself with Arabic lexis, perhaps under the tutelage of Pedro
dc Alcala's record of Granadino speech (1504?), whereas Menage, with
equal justification, being aware of the Celtic character of Brittany and also
of what Caesar as well as the historians and geographers of Antiquity had
reported about most of pre-Roman Gaul, became one of the first victims of
celtomania. We can thus credit the 1500-1800 period with (a) some
widening of horizons, as regards possible source languages outside the
Graeco-Roman world, and (b) a willingness to cull rival hypotheses from a
variety of eagerly collected earlier treatises (which, unfortunately, its
representatives were in the habit of leaving unidentified in each single
instance). The trouble, once we look at things and judge values from our
vantage point, was that these pioneers seldom, if ever, sized up those rival
conjectures in a truly critical vein, stating which looked more persuasive or,
at least, more promising than the rest and, if this was the case, why. Their
ineptness about applying phonological criteria - the chief cause of certain
absurdities of which they made themselves guilty and which later exposed
them to ridicule - should, however, be balanced against their impressive
flair in ferreting out borrowings. Covarrubias, for example, was particularly
deft at catching Italianisms in Spanish, Menage not infrequently captured
Castilianisms and Italianisms in Classical French and even assembled whole
lists of them in supplements to his dictionary. Towards the end of the
eighteenth century, Tomas Antonio Sanchez, in glossaries appended to his
pioneering editions of medieval Spanish texts, even believed he had
recognized the Old Provencal provenance of certain Old Spanish lexical
items.
 The nineteenth century

As the crowning flaw of those early ventures one may finally single out a
certain absence of any sense of proportion. If awareness of some colourful
myth or entertaining fable was deemed useful to explain a word-origin at
issue, a scholar of Covarrubias' calibre would not hesitate to narrate the
whole story, including its less relevant details, over a total of two or three
pages, barely reserving a few lines for the genetic identification of less
amusing words.
The late nineteenth century, known for the rigidity of its prominent
theorists ('Neo-grammarians'), was particularly pitiless in exposing and
condemning the amateurishness of pre-1800 pioneers. Tracing French
fermer 'to close, lock' to fer (or its Latin prototype ferrum) 'iron', rather
than to firmdre 'to make firm, fast, lasting', was deemed irresponsible and
unforgivable nonsense. Today's attitude tends to be a shade less conde-
scending. To be sure, fermer basically echoes firmdre, but the fact that the
meaning 'to lock' emerged from further development makes the association
of the activity with an iron lock, or bar, or latch in the minds of that group of
speakers highly probable. One could even invoke ferrum as a secondary
etymon or, at least, as a collateral evolutionary factor. Moreover, there are
several other word histories in Romance confirming the role of ferrum as an
intruder, as when Latin veruculum, literally 'small javelin', was allowed to
develop into ferrolho, rather than 'ideally correct' verolho, in Portuguese.
The fact that firmdre, without some support from ferrum, was apt to evolve
in a radically different direction is revealed by the state of affairs in Italian,
where fermare, in transitive and reflexive uses, actually means 'to stop". So
the old etymological treatises, irritatingly bad as they are, need not be
rashly discarded. Here and there they do contain tiny grains of useful
information or molecules of ideas that lend themselves to cautious salvag-
ing.
With the advent of the nineteenth century, historico-comparative lingu-
istics came into its own. Its birth, during the Napoleonic Era, coincided with
the rise to unprecedented prominence in linguistics (or in linguistic science,
Sprachwissenschaft, as it was admiringly called henceforth) of Germany and
the Scandinavian countries. The new chain of events was apt to influence
the further course taken by etymological explorations, but the impact was
not immediately felt. One conceivable reason for the delay was that two
among the most prominent advocates of the new approach, namely Rasmus
Rask in Denmark and, shortly thereafter, Jakob Grimm in Germany, tried
out their forces and tested the validity of the new subdiscipline by attacking
morphology (Formenlehre) first, and in so doing placed heavier emphasis on
inflection than on affixation or composition, not to mention morphosyntax.
7
Etymology
Only in revising his Deutsche Grammatik (which means 'Comparative
Germanic', rather than 'German', Grammar) for a second edition did
Grimm invert the sequence of morphology and phonology, thus creating a
widely imitated model for posterity. The upshot of the new schema was that
the bonds between etymology and historical grammar, as reinterpreted in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, were measurably tightened.
Diachronic phonology, especially as it was conceived in the last century,
fundamentally involved the pairing off of words assumed to have been
essentially the same lexical units seen at different evolutionary stages, as
when present-day English desk and, through a strange coincidence, dish are
both traced, albeit through different channels, to Latin discus, itself an
adaptation of Greek diskos (SIO-KOS), from dikein 'to throw'. The third
reflex of the Graeco-Latin word in English, and a far more technical one, is
disk, or disc, and the fourth is discus. In Antiquity, disk-os I disc-us
principally designated a 'quoit', i.e., an implement for exercise in gym-
nastics. Only secondarily did it refer to a 'dish", or to a 'sundial', on account
of the similarity of their roundish shapes. A quick look at English disk
(= disc), discus, desk, and dish suffices to show that the first two forms,
details apart, involve the unaltered adaptations of the core of the Graeco-
Latin prototype; and that the fourth form deviates more radically from the
first two than does the third, mainly because dish has only three sound units
(/dis/) instead of the four in /disk/, /desk/. While disk, I repeat, is merely
a learned adaptation of disc-us (and discus is hyperlearned), desk and dish
differ from one another as a result of radically different conduits of
transmission, which exposed the word at issue to different conditions, or
constraints, or pressures customarily associated with changes. Scholars now
believe that desk is merely a post-medieval adaptation of Italian desco,
which indeed had descended in a straight line from discus. Dish, conversely,
though in the last analysis also credited to infiltration of disc-us into English,
boasts a far more complicated biography. As scholars have gradually pieced
together its biography, dish goes back, via Middle English (Chaucerian)
dish, to Old English (Beowulfian) disc 'plate', which - in the company of
Old Saxon tisk 'table' and of Old High German toe 'dish, table' (cf. modern
Tisch) - goes back to a reconstructed, i.e., unrecorded, archaic parent
language, conventionally known as West Germanic which, two thousand or
so years ago, indeed appears to have borrowed the very same Graeco-Latin
word, against a background of favourable conditions of contemporary
material civilization.
To understand this complicated process one should, consequently, have
familiarized oneself with archaeology and with conventional history as well
8
 The nineteenth century

(namely with the record and character of protracted contacts between

Roman and Germanic civilizations). One should next have acquired some
knowledge of the history of writing and spelling, e.g., of the widespread
interchangeability of the letters c and k, as carriers of the sound /k/. But,
above all, one needs a firm grasp of the - temporally and spatially
limited - transmutations of relevant speech sounds: the relation of word-
initial /d/ and Ixl, or word-final /sk/ and Is/, or else word-medial Id and l\l or
hi, as among individual languages, and as among successive stages of,
basically the same languages. These fluctuating relations are, in the
aggregate, precisely the province of diachronic phonology.
Given this exceptionally close connection between the history of words
and the history of sounds, it becomes clear that the newly refined and
expanded diachronic phonology was bound to revolutionize etymology, by
occasionally suggesting new solutions to old riddles, but, even more
frequently, by weeding out as untenable certain pedigrees that had been for
millennia accepted as unadulterated truth.
There were, at bottom, two possibilities left to a new generation of
etymologists to adjust their favourite discipline to a new climate of opinion
and to an arsenal of new tools. Either these scholars would aim at being
all-round language historians, capable of alternating the writing of historical
(especially historico-comparative) grammars, with self-immersion in ety-
mological investigations, often conducive to the preparation of a fully
organized etymological dictionary; or, though imbued with the new know-
ledge expounded in historical grammars, they would prefer to concentrate
on etymology (or, as some soon preferred to term it, word history)
cultivated for its own sake, not infrequently in the closest attainable
connection with broad-based cultural history. These two groups of investi-
gators, not necessarily antagonistic to each other or irremediably divided,
simply corresponded to two diverse temperamental categories of explorers.
The former approach, which deserves to be known as integrative, because
it tends to combine etymology with historico-comparative grammar, can be
illustrated with a brief survey of the writings of two near-contemporaries
and compatriots, Franz Bopp and Friedrich Diez.
Bopp (1791-1867), the father of Indo-European comparatism, manifests
in the ensemble of his publications a much heavier commitment to grammar
than to lexis and, accordingly, etymology. It can be shown, step by step,
that his primary interest was strictly grammatical and that his secondary
concern with etymology gradually branched off from grammatical preoccu-
pations, without ever succeeding in overshadowing them. In a nutshell, his
career started with an 1816 monograph (later revised in an English version
9
Etymology

of 1820) that dealt with the conjugational system of Sanskrit viewed in

comparison with Greek, Latin, Persian, and Teutonic or Germanic, aiming
to 'show the original identity of their grammatical structures'. Despite
Bopp's self-immersion in Sanskrit over the next two decades, he managed,
between 1826 and 1832, to present five short memoirs to the Berlin
Academy, which were jointly devoted to the comparative 'dissection'
(Zergliederung), i.e., analysis, of Sanskrit and cognate languages. The
specific topics on Bopp's agenda were, at that stage, functional words lying
at the intersection of purely grammatical and lexico-etymological lines of
curiosity: (a) personal pronouns of the first and second person; (b)
reflexives; (c) demonstratives in their relation to case endings; (d) certain
radicals of demonstratives and their connection with miscellaneous preposi-
tions and conjunctions; and (e) the influence of pronouns on word-
formation. Highly characteristic of this period of transition was another
monograph, Vokalismus (1836), critical in tone and scope, whose peculiar-
ity consisted in its discussion of two earlier books of great prominence, one
of them grammatical, the other lexical in content: J. Grimm's Deutsche
Grammatik and E. G. Graff's Althochdeutscher Sprachschatz. This picture
is completed by a shorter piece of the same period (1835), which deals with
Indo-European numerals and thus likewise straddles the realms of gramma-
rians and etymologists. Bopp was now ready for his vast syntheses. The
years 1833^12 witnessed the appearance of the original four-volume edition
of Bopp's trail-blazing Vergleichende Grammatik, which embraced Sanskrit,
Zend (i.e., Avestan), Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Palaeo-Slavic (or Old
Slavonic), Gothic, and older stages of German. The publication of the
comparable etymological venture took place in 1828. It was written in Latin,
and its title was distinctly less pretentious, advising the reader that this was
essentially a Glossarium Sanscritum, in which all widely used Sanskrit roots
and vocables were explained, with some attention reserved for comparative
references to Greek, Latin, Germanic, Lithuanian, Slavic, and Celtic
counterparts. Interestingly, the pioneering edition of Bopp's grammar was
promptly translated into English, by Edward B. Eastwick (1845-53), while
the revised second German edition (1857-61), which - by way of innova-
tion - paid some attention to Armenian, was translated into French by a
major fellow-scholar, Michel Breal (1866-74). Both adaptations were later
re-issued. In contrast, Bopp's dictionary until the end remained available in
Latin alone.
Diez's ceuvre reflects a comparable, but somewhat more advanced and,
above all, better balanced state of affairs in regard to the relationship

10
 The nineteenth century

between the two disciplines here focused upon. A minor poet, a translator,
and an historian of literature at the start of his career, Diez (1794-1876),
after specializing in Old Spanish and Old Provencal poetic texts, began to
toy with problems in straight diachronic linguistics in his exegetic annota-
tions to selected medieval poems. By the mid-1830s, his plans for an
all-embracing historico-comparative grammar of the Romance languages
thus far identified were ready. It appeared before long (1836-44), trailing
Bopp's initial Indo-European venture by the narrowest of margins. From
the outset, phonology occupied a pride of place, making Diez more modern
in his architectural design than Bopp and Grimm had been at the outset.
Indirectly this arrangement also countenanced the cause of etymology.
However, the opening volume also had its share of flaws and limitations.
The matter of level of transmission (vernacular vs. learned) was still
disregarded throughout, and the perspective chosen, invariably leading
from the parent tongue to the corona of daughter languages, was one-sided.
A sharp reversal of the tide occurred in 1853, when Diez's complementary
project, the Etymologisches Worterbuch der romanischen Sprachen, ran off
the press. On that occasion, the author's debt to his predecessor Bopp
became inconspicuous; it showed, at most, in the choice of a 'privileged'
daughter language, except that, where Bopp had elevated Sanskrit to that
rank, Diez, for reasons no longer held valid today, enthroned Italian,
assigning a slightly more modest position to French and Proventjal as well as
to Spanish and Portuguese, while relegating Romanian to the rear of the
gradually emerging landscape. This bizarre detail apart, Diez offered a real
string of miniature analyses of each etymological problem selected for
inclusion, paying full and understanding attention to earlier pronounce-
ments by pre-1800 trail-blazers. More significantly, in revising his grammar
for a second edition, he enriched it with new insights gained on his
etymological safari, adding, for example, a whole section on ancestral
(Graeco-Latin, Germanic, Arabic) sources of innovative Romance sounds,
such as certain sibilants and affricates. The next edition of the dictionary
(1861) and its sequel (3rd edn, 1869-70), in turn profited from the grammar
having been properly brought up to date (3rd edn, 1870-72). This brilliantly
executed zigzag movement lasted until the end of Diez's life, and placed
grammatical and etymological analyses on comparably high pedestals,
unlike Bopp's scale of values. Incidentally, one not unimportant side-effect
of the newly awakened curiosity about language history repeated itself in
the case under study: Diez's comparative grammar was translated, albeit
late, into French (by A. Brachet, G. Paris, and A. Morel-Fatio, 1874-6),

11
Etymology

and the long introductory section was translated into English by C. B.

Cayley (1863). No such token of attention can be reported concerning the
etymologicum.
There exists an opposite side in the community of professional students of
language, namely those disinclined to subordinate etymology almost rou-
tinely to the exploration of historico-comparative grammar, or to place the
two disciplines on the same level. Even though such linguists may have gone
through a period of intensive, rigorous training in formal diachronic
phonology, they might appositely be called separatists. Less felicitous by far
would be the label isolationists for this splinter group, because it would fail
to do justice to one crucial circumstance. Although somewhat luke-
warm - chiefly for temperamental reasons? - to the structuring of gramma-
tical edifices, scholars of that ilk often excel at bracketing their private
conception of linguistics with ethnography, mythology, and other disciplines
towards which grammarians and semi-grammarians, in turn, display less
open-mindedness, not to say total antipathy.
One paradigmatic example of that converse attitude was August Friedrich
Pott (1802-87), a student of Bopp's in Berlin, but one ever more strongly
attracted to, and influenced by, that Originalgenie, Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Already in his early thirties Pott began swerving from the prescribed course
of academic respectability by plunging into an ambitious two-volume
project, Etymologische Forschungen aufdem Gebiete der indogermanischen
Sprachen (1833-6), which a critic as perspicacious as Georg von der
Gabelentz, in his many-splendoured necrological essay on Pott (1888),
called the actual lexico-etymological counterpart to the near-contemporary
original version of Bopp's comparative grammar. Be that as it may, Pott,
just appointed to a professorship in Halle, was cautious at the outset,
adding, by way of subtitle, the lengthy qualification 'with special reference to
the sound shift[s] (Lautumwandlung) in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian,
and Gothic'. The second and last edition, sweepingly expanded into a
six-volume venture (1859-76), exhibited greater daring on the author's part.
The strong allusion to the primacy of sound shifts was altogether omitted (at
the very juncture at which younger scholars began toying with the rigidifying
concept of 'sound laws'). As if in compensation, the corpus of raw data
tapped was energetically expanded, so as to include Avestan, Persian,
Slavic, Germanic (rather than Gothic exclusively), and also Celtic. The
indexes to this monumental enterprise, compiled by H. E. Bindseil, dealt,
characteristically enough, with roots, words, proper names, and units of
lexical meaning. Even this did not exhaust Pott's commitment to the
rehabilitation of a neglected perspective, a special favourite of his. In 1863

12
 The nineteenth century

there appeared a 100-page monograph from his pen, on etymological

legends that had circulated in Antiquity, written with all the more authority
as the author already had a book of studies on Greek mythology to his
credit.
The way von der Gabelentz painted the intellectual portrait of Pott, the
Halle professor must further rank as the forerunner, or founding father, of:
(a) onomastic studies; (b) onomasiology interpreted as the reverse side of
semasiology (or lexical semantics); and, conceivably most memorably, (c)
sound symbolism (or phonosymbolism). All three approaches were inti-
mately interwoven with traditional etymology, yet were by no means
irrevocably divorced from newly acquired, i.e., historico-comparative,
grammatical knowledge. A brief comment on each of these breakthroughs
may be in order. Pott's research in proper names culminated in a 900-page,
cross-linguistic inquiry into anthroponyms or personal names (2 vols.,
1853-9), which paid special attention to family names and gave full
consideration to toponyms or place names. As if this stiff quota were
insufficient. Pott also wrote shorter monographs on Basque and Old Persian
names, thus firmly bringing the study of proper names into the fold of
etymology and, on balance, of diachronic linguistics as well. Although the
concept of onomasiology was alien to Pott and his generation (the term was
minted by Adolf Zauner as late as 1902), he began early to experiment with
that approach, which lets its practitioners start out not from a given form, or
cluster of forms, but from a given meaning, then collects across the board
the words serving to convey that meaning (i.e., cross-language synonyms
and near-synonyms), while seeking to draw conclusions from identity of
message as against diversity of forms. Pott thus studied numerals (and, in
the process, paid attention to discrepant systems of numbering, e.g.,
quinary vs. vigesimal) on two occasions (1847, 1868), but also became
fascinated by the implications of the names of fingers (1847) and crossed
over into the realm of zoonymy (including the names of the elephant)
before any one else thought of the advantages of such investigations. Pott's
ability to pre-empt phonosymbolism has been inferred from the title and
slant he gave to a whole series of articles - a sort of common denominator
vaguely reminiscent of Roman Jakobson's thinking in our own time 'about
the diversity of linguistic expression along the axes of sound and concept'.
In addition to all these accomplishments, slanted almost without excep-
tion in the direction of etymology and of disciplines germane to it, Pott
included in his purview numerous modern non-Indo-European languages
(especially South and Central African), Old Egyptian, Javanese, and
Japanese. As a theorist, he bridged the gap between Humboldt (whose
13
Etymology

philosophy, cast in the so-called Sapir-Whorfian key, he espoused) and

Steinthal, operated with both genetic and areal groupings of languages,
setting off, inter alia, the whole of Europe as one such territory (Sprach-
verschiedenheit in Europa, 1868; Zur Litteratur der Sprachkunde Europas,
1887), and launched successful inquiries into the long-elusive language of
Gypsies (1844—5), thus paving the way for Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1865),
Francisco Adolfo Coelho (1892), and many others - inquiries which, with
astonishing foresight, he called 'geographico-linguistic'. To be sure, there
were also darker sides to Pott's performances - one is reminded of his
insufficiently polished and compressed style of writing, of certain mono-
graphs of his being programmatically polemic, of his disquieting burst of
enthusiasm (1856) for Count Gobineau's controversial (to say the least)
writings on human races. But, all told, it is Pott who deserves the credit for
having laid the cornerstone for modern-day 'pure etymology'.
In yet another respect Pott's Etymologische Forschungen represents a
landmark. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, issues in etymology
were ordinarily laid out in special dictionaries alphabetically arranged, so
that they could be consulted with relative ease by sophisticated laymen and
by fellow-scholars alike. To be sure, certain variations on this pattern were
possible. Such dictionaries could be programmatically selective, such as
Ramon Cabrera's posthumous Diccionario de etimologias . . . (1837), or
they could be inadvertently lacunary. Some were ushered in by methodolo-
gical treatises, as with the long section on the rudiments of etymology
preceding Pedro Felipe Monlau's Diccionario etimologico . . . (1856), or by
miniaturized language histories, as with the aforementioned treatise by
Aldrete prefixed to the second, posthumous edition of Sebastian de
Covarrubias' Tesoro. A few were eventually revised by other scholars, a
hazardous undertaking in the case of a discipline as highly subjective as
etymology has been traditionally (here Benito Remigio Noydens' 1674
Supplement to Covarrubias' thesaurus comes to mind). In Cabrera's
experiment, a selective sketch of diachronic phonology was designed to
balance a dishful of etymological titbits. Whatever the varying circum-
stances, the underlying shape of a reference work remained clearly
recognizable. With Pott's Etymologische Forschungen, that frame of refe-
rence was abandoned. We have before us a string of case histories of
assured concern to the specialist alone, and this adds a new dimension of
dignity and a quota of autonomy to etymological anatomy. Before long,
imitators would join Pott, one's thoughts wander off, for example, to the
Berliner Karl August Friedrich Mahn's Etymologische Untersuchungen auf

14
 The nineteenth century

dem Gebiete der romanischen Sprachen, which made its appearance in

twenty-four freely assorted specimens or instalments (1854-64).
Yet this is only part of the profound changes that set in around 1850, in
the heartlands of the Old World and, ten to twenty years later, at its
periphery and in the New World - changes as regards channels through
which the fruits of one's own etymological thinking, as well as one's critical
reactions to other qualified persons' thinking, could be appropriately
offered. To the pre-existing category of academy memoirs and bulletins
there was added, starting in the 1840s, a host of new periodicals (typically,
quarterlies sponsored by learned societies), an innovation which made it
possible to publish smaller chunks, and even crumbs of newly acquired
etymological knowledge in the form of articles, notes, mere page-fillers,
and, above all, formal reviews of all sizes concerned with etymological
dictionaries and monographs. There were also, under exceptional cir-
cumstances, meek replies to unfavourable assessments or angry, sarcastic
rebuttals (provoking counter-rebuttals). In a matter of two or three
decades, the tone of etymological probing was radically revised.
It might be tedious to offer here a catalogue of all the newly launched
humanistic periodicals that encompassed in their offerings significant ar-
ticles and bits of serious criticism concerned with historical linguistics,
including its etymological ingredient. Any complete inventory of this kind
would also suffer from being overburdened with items that were destined to
perish after a few experimental fascicles or volumes, whatever the specific
reasons for the decline and eventual demise in each individual case.
Ferreting out today scraps of valuable material from those early and, more
often than not, ephemeral ventures is something of an art even if the sources
themselves are within fairly easy reach. For one thing, many pioneers -
especially those toiling in the German-speaking countries - had the strange
habit of identifying, in references, the budding journals not by their full
titles, but, misleadingly, by the names of their editors. Thus, the venerable
Zeitschrift fiir vergleichende Sprachforschung, which exists to this day, was
long advantageously known as Kuhn's Zeitschrift, in tribute to Adalbert
Kuhn, a second-rate scholar who had started it in 1852. (There also existed a
mysterious Techmer's Zeitschrift, etc.) Furthermore, the scope of certain
journals blessed with longevity has changed radically over the years. Thus,
the American Journal of Philology has served, of late, so consistently as a
mouthpiece for classical learning that few dedicated students of, for
instance, Romance etymology would reckon with the possibility of detecting
articles and book reviews pertinent to their own interests in its early

15
Etymology

volumes (from which such items were actually by no means absent). A

student of Italian linguistics, a discipline known or notorious for its
deep-seated etymological flavour, even bias, is fully expected not only to
have ascertained what periodical is masked by hermetic references to
Bezzenbergers Beitrdge (the answer is: Beitrdge zur Kunde der indogerma-
nischen Sprachen, 1877-1906), but also to stand prepared to pick morsels of
information directly or indirectly valuable for the study of Italian from the
opening volumes of the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen Gesell-
schaft (1847-), which later became more careful about toeing the line of
strictly oriental themes.
But, all such amenities and eccentricities apart, etymological research
almost overnight became a scholarly endeavour which required the constant
use of academy bulletins, the files of miscellaneous, sometimes unpredic-
tably uneven journals, on occasion even daily newspapers, and the like. This
sort of increasingly heavy-handed research clamoured for an appropriate
locale - preferably a generously stocked university or seminar library. Only
at its preliminary or initial stages could it be undertaken and, for a while,
conducted at the practitioner's home, provided that this home happened to
be equipped with a superb library, its shelves bursting with reprints received
from fellow-scholars. And the successful practitioner of the new-style
etymology, on average, was no longer some assiduous and imaginative
aficionado or, basically, a litterateur who, like Gilles Menage, had chosen
the elucidation of word origins as a genteel pastime, a side interest, or
hobby, or plain intellectual divertissement. In most instances, he was
henceforth either a celebrated university professor, or at least a professional
librarian attached to an academy or a major research library; on increasingly
rare occasions, he was a university-trained teacher active at a respected
lycee, or Gymnasium, or college. The transmutation of etymology into an
esteemed and even admired academic discipline was thus, to be sure, not
exclusively, but to a large extent, due to this rapid expansion of its academic
underpinning, which made progress time-consuming and subject to con-
trols, and thus sharply curtailed the margin of free-wheeling, spontaneous
guesswork.
The existence of sharp divergences in assessing the role of etymology in
linguistic practice, coinciding as it did with a dramatic increase in the
number of media available to all language historians (etymologists
included), led to an utterly confusing situation by the middle of the
nineteenth century. To illustrate this imbroglio, I shall report on three
radically discrepant attitudes towards the quest for word origins, struck by

16
 The nineteenth century

that same group of influential European students of language, and try to

add an extra touch to the picture by briefly reporting on the American scene
a decade or two later.
The comparatist August Schleicher (1821-68) was a man of many talents
and of diversified interests, and there is a certain irony in the fact that
lexicology remained for him evenly divided between diachronic phonology
and morphology (basically, inflection), while etymology pursued for its own
sake was almost wholly absent from the range of his active interests. He
compiled a few glossaries, but these were doomed to remain ancillary to
other pursuits. A glossary, for example, serves as a key to a chrestomathy
which, in turn, accompanies a grammar of Lithuanian of slightly earlier
vintage (1856-7). Then again, almost exactly one half of Schleicher's edition
(1865) of the poems of Christian Donalithius (1714-80) - again a Lithua-
nian - was reserved for a glossary. Furthermore, the sample texts
('Schriftproben'), in an impressive variety of Indo-European languages,
assembled in Schleicher's posthumous Indogermanische Chrestomathie
(1869), were accompanied by a battery of exegetic glossaries; but these had
been contributed, in large part, by Schleicher's collaborators and intellec-
tual heirs - H. Ebel, A. Leskien, and J. Schmidt. Schleicher was by no
means a one-sided or 'dry' person - his active curiosity encompassed, for
example, folk poetry, down to the musical ingredient of both Lithuanian
and Thuringian folk songs (1857,1858). But, as the very title of his magnum
opus, a two-volume comparative grammar of Indo-European, immediately
reveals (Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen
Sprachen, 1861-2, 2nd edn, 1866), his purpose was to compress diachronic
phonology and morphology into highly concentrated treatises ('kurze
Abrisse'), conducive to the reconstruction of the proto-language, which was
all-important to him; and this aim, he doubtless felt, could be reached with a
modicum of secure lexical illustrations. Contributing to succinctness was
also the use, first experimented with by Schleicher, of an asterisk in lieu of
all sorts of lame paraphrases to signal neatly the conjectural (or hypo-
thetical) character of a form adduced in a grammatical context. The fact that
Schleicher impressed his contemporaries, primarily (and perhaps to the
point of one-sidedness) as, preeminently, a grammarian follows from the
circumstance that D. Pezzi, in preparing for a Turin publisher a translation
of his principal treatise, made a point of pairing it off with a parallel
translation of Leo Meyer's lexicon of Indo-Italo-Greek roots, as if to restore
the balance between grammar and lexis. Only in the least familiar of
Schleicher's far-flung publications, for example, his periodic contributions,

17
Etymology

phrased in Russian, to the Memoirs (Zapiski) of the St Petersburg Academy

of Sciences, may the author's repressed lexico-etymological concerns have
come to the fore.
Schleicher's almost studied aloofness from any personal commitment to
monographic research in etymology did not prevent at least one of his
followers from using the master's classificatory schema for the Indo-
European language family in coming to grips with a large-scale etymological
venture. The case alluded to is August Fick's - for a while, remarkably
successful - Vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen
(1870-1; 3rd edn, greatly expanded, 1874-6), which operated with such a
system of cleavages within the asssumed family tree as allowed the analyst at
once to assign the lexical unit at issue either to the parent language ('the
trunk'), or to one of the branches, or sub-branches. So there was no dearth
of potentialities for advanced, innovative etymologizing within Schleicher's
system. But the system itself was arrived at through the author's dialogue
with Darwin, Haeckel, and other leading naturalists of his time, with a
modicum or minimum of independent etymologizing.
Almost the opposite side of the mid-century spectrum of opinions on
etymology was occupied by the Grundzuge der griechischen Etymologic by
Georg Curtius (1820-85), the climactic point in the career of an unusually
prolific classicist and comparatist. The original publication dates of the two
volumes were 1856 and 1862, even though the editions preferably consulted
today are the fourth (1873) and the fifth (1879), which had the benefit of an
unusually thorough revision by the noted Celticist Ernst Windisch, a close
friend of the author, and are further available in a translation into - slightly
quaint - English. Upon opening the heavy tomes, an unforewarned reader
will be confused at first, for, after skipping the lengthy introductory section
(Book I), devoted to Indo-European as a whole, he is bound to discover
that Book II, running to c. 350 pages, is devoted to a well-organized
succession of processes normally dealt with in historical phonology, with a
much larger dosage of attention here reserved for consonants than for
vowels. Only then will he recognize that the same section is, additionally,
subdivided into 619 etymological miniatures, each item mandatorily revolv-
ing around some Greek word, but also taking into account as many
congeners as had by then been ascertained. The individual etymological
discussions are arranged, then, in such a manner as to illustrate the highest
possible number of points whose aggregate constitutes the edifice of
Indo-European historical grammar, with emphasis on Greek. Book III
shows an even higher degree of atomization. Here an ensemble of as many
as 400 pages, reserved for a long chain of irregular, or sporadic, changes,
18
 The nineteenth century

also dissolves into an analysis of unnumbered, but doubtless even more

numerous, etymological case histories. There is, then, a strident discre-
pancy between the arrangement and the content of the book. While
topically it is indeed concerned with neatly individuated word histories, in
each of which Greek is allowed to sound the dominant note in a chorus of
voices, the collocation of these etymological anecdotes has been so
planned as to illustrate not the various patterns of lexical transmission, as
visible through the prism of the divergent vicissitudes of the core
vocabulary, but the scheme of sound shifts. Only the inclusion of very
generous indexes, running to c.100 pages, brings one back entirely to the
lexico-etymological domain announced by the title of the book.
The third mid-century event worth reporting here as a contributing factor
to the growing confusion about the exact status of etymology was the
appearance, in 1852, of a slim article by a Germanist who was just beginning
to make a name for himself, namely Ernst Forstemann (1822-1906), on
'German Folk Etymology'. The paper lacked any potentially unsavoury
overtones which a piece so titled might have acquired had it been published,
perhaps ninety years later, in a politicized academic milieu. Nevertheless,
despite its unquestionable analytical brilliance, the paper managed to cause
confusion, introducing as it did into the terminological toolkit of a linguist
the previously unheard-of label Volksetymologie. In addition, making its
appearance as the opening piece in Vol. I of the trail-blazing Zeitschrift filr
vergleichende Sprachforschung, it produced a real 'splash'.
To put it briefly, the author proposed to reserve for cognitive or scientific
inquiries into word origins the ponderous composite label gelehrte Etymol-
ogie, while applying the alternative tag Volksetymologie to, fundamentally,
two unequal situations: (a) the transfer, within the bounds of a given
language, of some isolated word, occasionally opaque, from its residual
(moribund) lexical family to some other, more vigorously thriving family;
and (b) the assignment of borrowed words or names (or else of bare
fragments of such items) to appropriately similar native word families
enjoying unimpaired health - at the cost, not infrequently, of some seman-
tic stretching, or even of a comic effect, deliberate or unintentional. Thus,
the elements -dam(m) and -burg of the Central European toponyms
Potsdam, Brandenburg, and Merseburg, involve reinterpretations, through
rapprochement with familiar German common nouns, of originally Slavic
words or word segments. Similarly, the hydronym Bodensee 'Lac Leman'
(situated at the Swiss-German-Austrian frontier) contains a Celtic unit
gone astray and later embroidered upon in much the same way, through
playful association with German Boden 'bottom'.

19
Etymology
Had a more experienced and cautious Forstemann used for his purpose
some such neutral words as, if I may repeat myself, 'transfer' or 'reinterpre-
tation', or else 'adjustment', he would have wrought no harm. But his
romantically inspired idea of picturing the entire speech community as a sort
of collective brain performing analytical operations seems, in retrospect,
severely misleading. The resulting damage increased when the celebrated
book carved out posthumously from Ferdinand de Saussure's lectures
(Cours de linguistique generate, 1916) turned out to contain some sparkling
pages on folk etymology, contrasting with its dogmatic refusal to include
genuine etymology within its purview. The situation scarcely improved
when Anglophone linguists, in an effort to assimilate Volksetymologie to the
arsenal of their own tools, began to toy with such ambiguous terms as
'popular etymology' or, worse, 'false etymology'.
Finally, there arose, approximately at that juncture, the self-
contradictory situation of a many-sided linguist putting, qua theorist, a
premium on etymological inquiry while practising that scholarly art on an
astonishingly modest scale. This slightly paradoxical description fits rather
neatly the performance of the pioneering Yale scholar William Dwight
Whitney (1827-94). Thus, that classic - popular and, at the same time,
sophisticated - from Whitney's prolific pen, namely The life and growth of
language (1875), contains the following memorable passage, entirely une-
quivocal in its endorsement of etymology:

The whole process of linguistic research begins in and depends upon

etymology, the tracing-out of the history of individual words and
elements. From words the investigation rises higher, to classes, to parts
of speech, to whole languages. On accuracy in etymological processes,
then, depends the success of the whole; and the perfecting of the
methods of etymologizing is what especially distinguishes the new
linguistic science from the old. The old worked upon the same basis on
which the new now works: namely on the tracing of resemblances of
analogies between words, in regard to form and meaning. But the
former was hopelessly superficial. It was guided by surface
likenesses . . . it was heedless of the sources whence its material came;
it did not, in short, command its subject sufficiently to have a method.
A wider knowledge of facts, and a consequent better comprehension of
their relation, changes all this. (pp. 312ff.)

Yet, as one scans Whitney's many-faceted oeuvre (disregarding, for the

purpose of this inquiry, the elementary grammars and readers of English,
French, and especially German, often prepared in collaboration with
others, as well as annotated collegiate editions of plays), one discovers at its
20
 The nineteenth century

core a magnificent Sanskrit grammar (1879), which pays sustained attention

to the classical stage of that language and to older Vedic, with a bulky
supplement volume (1885) inventorying 'roots, verb forms, and primary
derivatives'. There are also a few exegetic editions of Sanskrit texts, and a
collection of companion articles; two - slightly overlapping - wide-ranging
introductions to linguistics; and one polemical tract against a - briefly
influential - Oxford scholar, Max Miiller (1892). But, all told, there is
amazingly little that qualifies as etymological spade-work, except where it is
inextricably interwoven with grammar. One might mention the incidental
fact that the Compendious German—English dictionary (1879, 1887) which
Whitney compiled with the assistance of A. H. Edgren was equipped,
according to the title page, 'with notations of correspondence and brief
etymologies'. Also, among his scripta minor'a, we detect one rather un-
characteristic item, on 'A botanico-philological problem' (1877), which
qualifies for classification as a contribution to creative etymology. It
discusses the Indo-European dendronyms for 'beech', 'oak', and 'fir', yet is,
unfortunately, marred by an excess of polemic against Max Miiller,
Whitney's arch-opponent. Even by throwing into the balance Whitney's
thirty-page review (1873-4a) of the revised edition of John Peile's Introduc-
tion to Greek and Latin etymology, one falls short of restoring the balance.
Theodor Benfey must have had a sort of premonition when, in 1869, he
published his bulky history of linguistics and Oriental philology in Germany
because, precisely in that country, the relevant course of events began to
change radically just a couple of years later. A loosely organized contingent
of younger scholars known under the nickname of 'Neogrammarians'
(Junggrammatiker) began to assert itself dynamically, aspiring to place
historical linguistics on a firmer, more scientific foundation. The group, at
the start, comprised mostly Germans; the few foreigners included lived
under the aegis of German culture (thus Karl Verner, a Dane, was attached
as a researcher to the Dresden Library). The vigour of this movement
cannot be separated from the general upswing of Bismarckian Germany in
the early 1870s, while the scientific pretensions of Neogrammarianism
echoed the esteem in which exact sciences, notably chemistry, were held by
German society at that juncture.
How did etymology (and the etymologists) fare under this new regime?
The emphasis that Neogrammarians placed on phonology is widely known.
If Forstemann, by 1852, had invoked 'severe, strict sound laws' (strenge
Lautgesetze), these laws, real or alleged, two decades later, became
'exceptionless' (ausnahmslos). Morphology, in particular the study of
declension and conjugation, also continued to enjoy prestige, witness the
21
Etymology
slant of Hermann Osthoffs investigations. Etymology was tolerated to the
extent that it allowed researchers to sift out the core vocabulary of a given
speech community from later admixtures, through borrowings from neigh-
bours or, alternatively, through culturally conditioned deliberate adoptions
from an earlier ('classical') stage of the language under investigation.
Within the core vocabulary, a neat distinction was to be drawn between
such lexical units as had developed through the sheer interplay of sound
laws, regular to the point of predictability, and those in whose growth
extraneous forces ('analogy') had intervened. The latter part of the total
material invited constant re-examination, since one could hope to identify,
through careful scrutiny, certain recurrences of minor sound changes in such
a slightly amorphous mass. In that eventuality, the researcher could expect
to transfer such lexical items as displayed a certain evolutionary res-
emblance that had previously remained hidden to the more attractive pile of
pieces that had passed muster, in terms of scientific analysis. Thus a new
scale of values gradually developed - one decidedly less than favourable to
the cause of etymology.
The influential members of this - informally constituted - school of
thought never signed any manifesto, making it unfair for anyone to lump
together their individual philosophies and sets of preferences. But certain
informal agreements do stand out, in free variation with more personal
tastes. Thus, Hermann Paul (1846-1921), a distinguished Munich professor
of Germanics, in the end did consent to busy himself with applied
lexicography; but particularly the early editions (1896-7,1908) of his superb
Deutsches Worterbuch pay a minimum of attention to the provenance of
entries, contrasting in this respect with Friedrich Kluge's earlier, but more
frequently revised, Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache.
How did Neogrammarian doctrine, specifically, affect etymological ana-
lysis, apart from stimulating its converts to segregate relative newcomers to
the lexicon (the aforementioned layers of borrowings) from the ingredients
transmitted by word of mouth from time immemorial? The common
denominator of etymological decisions among Romance scholars attracted
to the Neogrammarian stance was, for example, a distinctly higher reliance
on a given word's form than on its meaning. Antoine Thomas was willing to
disregard the semantic factor altogether, on account of its elusiveness, if
essential identity or resemblance of shape sent a strong message; see the
three collections of his articles and notes: Essais de philologie frangaise
(1897); Melanges d'etymologic frangaise (1902, 1927); Nouveaux essais de
philologie frangaise (1904). According to that philosophy, Italian cansare 'to
avoid, eschew' (at present a mere by-form of scansare) and Spanish/
22
 The nineteenth century
Portuguese cansar 'to fatigue, wear out', must be cognates and, as such, go
back to the same prototype. Then again, Wilhelm Meyer-Lubke, in the two
editions of his comparative Romance etymological dictionary (1911-20,
1930-35), bracketed certain forms so as to mark their learned or semi-
learned transmission - indiscriminately so, even when of the, let us say, five
criteria to be used in judging such an issue, four militated in favour of
normal development and only the fifth pointed to the learned (or retarded)
channelling.
The Neogrammatical approach was beneficial in a negative way, by
forewarning the analyst that something must, or may well, be 'special' about
a word history where some deviation from a widely accepted norm was
involved. In this way, hundreds of previously accepted cross-temporal
equations were discarded upon careful re-examination of the evidence.
Conversely, the Neogrammarians, from today's vantage point, appear to
have been disappointingly weak in dealing with general phonological shifts
(dissimilation, haplology, and the like) and with the effects of phonosym-
bolism, to the extent that etymologizing was concerned. They failed to do
full justice to individual word histories and, in particular, paid woefully
insufficient attention to the imagerial side of semantic history, to the
localization of words on the geographic map, and to social dialects, as well
as to the extended co-existence of variants, not to mention matters of 'style
in language' and levels of formality.
On balance, the aforementioned Hermann Paul represented, within
Neogrammarianism, the more liberal, humanistically coloured current, so
that etymologists to this day can draw on his Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte
(1880). The second edition (1886) contains, for example, two chapters of
crucial relevance for advanced etymology, going far beyond the narrow
corridor 'sound laws' vs. 'analogy'. One deals with the shifts in the
configuration of etymologically bracketed word families, the other with
spontaneous creation ('Urschopfung'), which exceeds the realm of ono-
matopoeia. This is not all. In the Preface the author confesses that, after
some wavering, he decided against including a separate chapter on the
dichotomy of regular sound shift (independent of the word's meaning or
function) vs. the reshaping of a given word in response to its function
('Scheidung des Lautwandels von den durch Rucksicht auf die Funktion
bedingten Umgestaltungen der Form'), referring the reader instead to an
earlier journal article from his pen on the subject. As the reason for having
extricated himself from his previous plan he cited, without giving away the
names of the culprits, the studied indifference or hostility of certain critics;
'in which camp?', one might ask.
23
Etymology
Other members of the group displayed a certain ruthlessness in pushing
through their ideology and programme, and succeeded in creating the image
of an 'establishmentarian' type of diachronic linguistics, in which etymology
and disciplines inherently akin to it were relegated to the very periphery.
This prevalent scale of values had a discouraging effect on not a few
potential linguists, whose imagination the new regime of withering austerity
failed to kindle. Gustav Grober, for exampler, a first-rate Romance
philologist, cultivated in the 1880s a perfectly legitimate and judicious kind
of lexical reconstruction, piecing together, by the hundreds, Vulgar Latin
bases from Romance reflexes ('Vulgarlateinische Substrate romanischer
Worter', 1884-9), but before long gave up any active involvement in
linguistics for the sake of medieval Latin literature. Other scholars over-
reacted by writing titillating articles, pamphlets, and books on the very
topics that were apt to irritate those policing the newly marked-off domain.
Thus, Karl Abel (1837-1906), for a while popular on both sides of the
Atlantic, philosophized on the origin of language; the semantic polarization
of pristine words; the kinship between Old Egyptian and Indo-European;
the discrimination of synonyms; expressing the concept of 'love' in lan-
guages old and modern; and language as the expression of national modes
of thought.
To the minds of staunch establishmentarians, Hugo Schuchardt
(1842-1927) was the implacable opponent, the scourge par excellence, of
Neogrammarianism. It might be more reasonable to view him not only as
one of the most brilliant, but also as one of the most eccentric, linguistic
scholars of all time. Certainly his slim, whimsical pamphlet of the year 1885,
which earned him the above-cited reputation, namely Uber die Lautgesetze.
Gegen die Junggrammatiker, lacked any pivotal importance. What actually
makes the protean Schuchardt's many-pronged oeuvre appear as a seductive
(according to others, dangerous) alternative to the Neogrammarians' theory
and practices is the fact that, starting with a certain cut-off point in the
mid-1870s, when he was still in his early thirties (and just embarking upon
his long academic career at Graz University in southern Austria), he,
privately, tended to find boring what almost every one else in the profession
was proclaiming, pledging, and practising, while the others, conversely,
were taken aback by his daring eccentricities. Not for nothing did one of his
concluding academy memoirs (1925a) discuss Individualism in Linguistics'.
This attitude of an outsider can easily be demonstrated with special
reference to etymology.
The start, though hardly conventional, was relatively smooth, inasmuch
as Schuchardt, bowing to the Zeitgeist, was willing to subordinate individual
24
 The nineteenth century

word history to the delineation of sound developments, as he did success-

fully (a) in his three-volume Der Vokalismus des Vulgiirlateins (based on
newly published epigraphic evidence, 1866-8); (b) in his professional thesis
(Habilitationsschrift), accepted by a university as demanding in those years
as Leipzig, Uber einige Fdlle bedingten Lautwandels im Churwdlschen
(1870); and (c) in an invitational journal article (bizarrely titled Thonetique
comparee'), in which he riveted attention to the unstable word-initial
consonants in certain Sardic and South-Central Italian dialects (1874).
Soon thereafter his prime interest veered in the direction of word bio-
graphies pursued for their own sake - not merely conceived as a tool
serving to fill residual gaps in historical grammars. One can comfortably
follow this new development by examining, one by one, the volumes of the
newly founded, prestigious journal Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie,
which absorbed many of his shorter, yet increasingly extensive contributions
on this theme.
Even though Schuchardt knew at all times how to resort to such
conventional weapons as regular sound correspondences, he excelled at
trying different approaches, which were not at all times mutually compa-
tible. For one thing, he succumbed to the fascination of migratory words,
paying special attention to sources infrequently tapped by the average
'modern-language man', as when he explored Romance words that had
percolated into Berber (1918) or examined the reciprocal influences exerted
between Basque (one of his favourite hunting grounds) and, again,
Romance (1906). For another, he began to concentrate on 'spontaneous
creation' (Urschopfung), a category which, we recall, even the more
conservative Hermann Paul had unhesitatingly endorsed. In addition, he
became aware of the degree to which the shape of material objects (their
sharpness, obtuseness, angularity, roundness) and their impact on our
sensory faculties (through display of softness, harshness of surface, etc.)
could co-determine the names we are apt to attach to them. Little by little,
the study of realia behind the world of words began to loom as not one whit
less exciting than the austere formal analysis of labels alone. Etymological
studies from his pen started making their appearance equipped with graphic
illustrations - either drawings or photographs - of characteristically con-
toured tools, containers, dwellings observable in rural life, past or present.
They also, I repeat, grew in length from statements running to a few lines to
standard-sized articles or beyond. This development reached its peak in
Schuchardt's consecutive Vienna Academy memoirs, Romanische Etymol-
ogien, of the years 1898-9. In preparing the second of these monographs,
which discussed the provenance of French trouver 'to find', a celebrated
25
Etymology
etymological crux, Schuchardt, who leaned towards turbdre as the source of
the elusive word (muddying the water being one of the widespread
techniques used by fishermen as a preparation for catching, i.e., 'finding',
the fish), is rumoured to have temporarily transformed one of the rooms of
his home into a small-scale museum of fishing gear. Two years later, he
wrote a shorter piece on 'Sickle and Saw, Sickle and Dagger', whose slant is
self-explanatory.
Not surprisingly, when Schuchardt encountered Rudolf Meringer (seven-
teen years his junior), the two dissenters before long joined forces.
Meringer, an Indo-Europeanist and Germanist by earlier specialized train-
ing, was representative enough of that group of scholars to have been
entrusted by a highly respectable publishing house with preparing a
turn-of-the-century introductory account of ongoing Indo-European res-
earch for the tone-setting Goschen Series, an assignment he conscientiously
fulfilled. Yet, his heart was beating for all sorts of innovative and unortho-
dox approaches. Thus, with Karl Mayer he published, as early as 1895, a
'psycho-linguistic inquiry' into saying the wrong thing and misreading.
Thirteen years later, he chose an excellent title for a book apt to circum-
scribe the range of his maverick curiosity: Aus dem Leben der Sprache:
Versprechen, Kinder sprache, Nachahmungstneb, i.e., freely translated,
'Speech observed in its dynamics: making a twist of the tongue, children's
talk, drive for imitation'. An independent line of anthropological curiosity
prompted him to examine rural material civilization, especially the regional
layout of German peasant homes. By 1909, Schuchardt and Meringer had
pooled their intellectual resources and launched their own journal, Worter
und Sachen, i.e., 'Words and Objects [designated by them]', which was to
revolutionize one dimension of etymology, by linking it henceforth to
archaeology and ethnography, rather than to historical grammar.
The reverberations of Schuchardt's (and, to a smaller extent, Meringer's)
thinking continue to hold our attention. Meanwhile, the preponderance of
Central European scholarship, as shown not least in the sheer massiveness
and assertiveness of the productions rolling off German printing presses,
need not seduce us into overlooking relevant work done elsewhere, on a
more modest scale.
France and Belgium plunged into historical linguistics generally, and into
etymology and related disciplines in particular, shortly after 1860, i.e., after
a delay of over forty years, through the initial efforts of a small group of
devoted workers, most of them with strong ties to Germany. As the senior
member of this group one may single out Emile Littre (1801-81), not a
career university teacher, but a highly respected intellectual, with strong
26
 The nineteenth century

attachments to tone-setting philosophers (e.g. Comte) and physicists (e.g.,

Ampere). Littre's Dictionnaire de la langue frangaise, in four volumes
(1863-72), immediately became a classic; it was not meant to be genuinely
historical, but, for most entries, had a built-in historical dimension ('la
partie historique . . . l'etymologie'). Thus it dramatized the importance of
etymology for broadly educated readers. This dimension gained in pro-
minence in the revised edition (1875-89), which included a separate
Supplement Volume featuring Marcel Devic's etymological vocabulary of
exotica, Dictionnaire etymologique de tous les mots d'origine orientale, a
model for future ventures tried out in Spain by Eguilaz y Yanguas and in
Germany by Lokotsch. Littre's prestige made him a frequent contributor to
elitist journals with a strong appeal to professionals and non-professionals
alike (Journal des savants, Revue des deux mondes, Journal des debats).
Some of his articles concerned toponymy and lexicology, and included a
trail-blazing essay on the health, as against ailments, of certain words
('Pathologie verbale, ou lesions de certains mots dans le cours de l'usage'),
which paved the way for the later approach of dialect geographers. The
influence of these shorter writings increased after they were assembled into
a sturdy volume (Etudes et glanures . . . , 1880), designed to flank another
major work from Littre's pen, namely his Histoire de la langue frangaise.
A new generation of academics before long showed appreciation of
Littre's pioneering role, Michel Breal, easily the most influential among
their ranks, published, in 1888, an annotated posthumous edition, in book
form, of his predecessor's essay, Comment les mots changent de sens. Thus
etymology, launched as a quest for ultimate word origins, began to change,
at the hands of a small coterie of talented Parisian scholars, into a
piecing-together of mosaics of word histories.
Auguste Brachet (1844—98), in retrospect, appears as a dynamic reformer
of the teaching of grammar at secondary-school level, through his injection
of historical perspectives. As a precocious younger man, he was, until c.
1875, also esteemed as a scholar. His easily assimilable Dictionnaire
etymologique de la langue frangaise, prefaced by the classicist Emile Egger
and launched in competition with a similarly superficial piece by the Belgian
Auguste Scheler (1862), was even translated into English (1873), as had
been previously his Grammaire historique de la langue frangaise (c. 1868).
While these gropings have become mere 'curios' today, Brachet's slim
monograph of doublets, i.e., on words transmitted through two or more
socio-educational channels (Dictionnaire des doublets, ou doubles formes de
la langue frangaise, 1868; Supplement, 1871), contained potentialities for
progress in etymology which were later exploited by scholars of distinctly
27
Etymology

higher stature, e.g., Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos in Germany and U.

A. Canello in Italy. Michel Breal immediately applied Brachet's idea to
Latin, in a transactions volume (Memoires . . . ) of the newly founded
Societe de Linguistique de Paris.
Gaston Paris, the founder of a major school of Romance Philology in
Paris, practised etymology only at intervals; but when he engaged in it, he
did so with gusto and consummate skill, demonstrating a mastery of
methods and techniques developed in German-speaking countries - witness
his skill in dissecting the innovative Romance designations of the 'liver' (in
lieu of Latin iecur), minted in a culinary context, in a piece written for the
Ascoli Testimonial (1901).
As an out-and-out Indo-Europeanist and a devotee of anthroponymy,
Michel Breal, appropriately enough, started his career with a slim disserta-
tion on Old Persian proper names in Greek disguise (1863). Later, he
pooled resources with Anatole Bailly in issuing collegiate dictionaries of
Classical Greek and Latin in which formal (genetic, etymological) classifica-
tion of entries was balanced by a semantic counter-system. Only at the ripe
age of sixty-five did he produce a work that deserves to rank as a classic, the
first foundation of what one is tempted to call, at present, 'lexical
semantics': Essai de semantique (science des significations), which was
promptly translated into English under the title Semantics: Studies in the
science of meanings (19()0). The book had its roots in B real's earlier
collaboration with Bailly, but its preparation also tied in with Littre's
aforementioned essay, Comment les mots changent de sens (1888), in whose
posthumous publication Breal, we recall, had a prominent share.
Of all late ninteenth-century scholars who clustered around the 'grandes
ecoles' of Paris, Arsene Darmesteter (1846-88), an indefatigable worker,
probably more than any fellow-researcher, had a knack for deftly striking a
balance between grammar and lexicology. Small wonder that the rules
presiding over word-formation, both in descriptive and in historical projec-
tion, before long became his favourite hunting-ground. Regarding syn-
chrony, he specialized in contemporary patterns of word coinage (1877).
With respect to diachrony, he authored the first major treatise on word-
compounding in French (1874) and, that same year, salvaged the manus-
cript of a closely related monograph by L.-F. Meunier (left unfinished by
that short-lived colleague). These and similar involvements took Darme-
steter to the threshold of etymology proper. He made the decisive leap in
1887 through a book. La vie des mots etudiee dans leurs significations, that
was not only recognized almost at once as a masterpiece, but also was to
enter, with Littre's slightly earlier essay and with Breal's somewhat later

28
 The nineteenth century

book venture - each already mentioned - into a sort of triptych of Paris-

sponsored studies tending to change etymology into a genuinely historical
discipline rather than an exercise in reconstruction. This goal all three could
expect to reach by transmuting a collection of conjectures, however
sophisticated, into a series of fleshed-out word biographies. In connection
with the suddenly fashionable biological metaphors, observe the contrast
between A. Schleicher who, fascinated by the vogue of Darwinism, toyed
with likening the 'lifespan' of an entire language to that of an organism, and
the group of Parisians who merely invoked the vicissitudes or fortunes of
individual lexical units.
Independently, Darmesteter, by the time he died, left either completed
or in a state of advanced draft his quota of work on a new-style dictionary of
French which he had undertaken for a private publisher in collaboration
with A. Hatzfeld, the celebrated Dictionnaire general, which was to offer a
challenge to Littre's bulkier model. The circumstantial sketch of a historical
grammar to be prefixed to the dictionary proper had already been finished
by 1885, while for the revision of etymologies (earmarked for accompanying
the individual entries, with formulaic brevity), Antoine Thomas had to be
called in by way of an emergency solution. (Meanwhile, Hatzfeld was, and
remained, responsible for sketching in the relevant ramifications of mean-
ing.) The manufacture of a first-rate dictionary with this peculiar distribu-
tion of responsibilities among its editors was something of a novelty and
subsequently served as a model for certain twentieth-century experiments in
etymological dictionaries (e.g., mutatis mutandis, those by Bloch and von
Wartburg, and by Ernout and Meillet).
Having watched Antoine Thomas (1857-1935) casually cross our path on
two occasions, we owe him a formal introduction. Not unlike Gaston Paris,
he was by training primarily a medievalist who concentrated early on
conventional history as well as on the history of literature, to the extent that
they applied to France (and also, on a small scale, to Italy). In addition, his
early teaching career at Toulouse University acquainted him thoroughly
with Occitan, old and modern. Between the late 1880s and the opening
lustrum of the twentieth century he rose to prominence in Paris and, at the
same time, experienced a change of heart, becoming immersed in lexico-
etymological studies. His speciality became sharply pointed etymological
vignettes, each running typically to a printed page or two, which he astutely
alternated with somewhat longer inquiries into derivational affixes. These
miniatures, originally published in journals, were, we recall, eventually
assembled in three volumes. As a rule, the items chosen for identification
were selected haphazardly, rather than serving to test a questionable sound

29
Etymology

correspondence or in the context of some group tied together by semantic

bonds. Thus, Thomas practised etymology for etymology's sake, rather than
for some ulterior purpose. His strength lay in his enviable command of
mediaeval sources, in his palaeographic skill, which enabled him to propose
emendations, and in his virtuoso ability to extract maximum information
from scores of dialect glossaries, a genre of semi-scholarly literature
favoured by well-intentioned and sometimes knowledgeable amateurs. His
weaknesses lay in his incapacity to handle languages and dialects other than
Gallo-Romance, in his refusal to come to terms with fieldwork-style
inquiries and with the projection of their results onto maps, and in his
apparent hesitation to attack broader problems or to draw bolder con-
clusions from the small-scale discoveries he was ceaselessly making as a
talented miniaturist. Despite these shortcomings, Thomas' precise methods
produced a long string of model etymologies, based on studies of dialect,
which placed far heavier reliance on form than on meaning.
Before long, Antoine Thomas' slightly precious Van pour I'art approach
to etymology, including its presuppositions, encountered severe criticism. It
ran foul of the attitude of devoted dialectologists, who, apart from siding
with Schuchardt in matters of theoretical orientation, seemed to prefer solid
data-gathering through fieldwork to aloof armchair etymologizing; and it
irritated generalists and comparativists of the calibre of Maurice Grammont.
Thomas, after 1904, continued publishing valuable articles in the quarterly
Romania, but these were no longer assembled in handy volumes, with or
without revision.
To conclude: Darmesteter's lectures on historical grammar were issued
posthumously and even translated into English, but easily the most original
ingredient of his lexico-etymological commitment, namely his work on Old
Judaeo-French rabbinical glosses, was carried on, with elan, by the Balti-
more scholar David S. Blondheim, rather than by anyone in his own
environment.
Gaston Paris was getting old. Clearly, the generalities established in
writings such as La vie des mots or Essai de semantique made for stimulating
reading, but offered no concrete problems, or riddles, into which younger
scholars responsive to etymology could confidently sink their teeth. Thus,
around 1900, the first French school of etymology was facing a lull.
A certain latent lay curiosity about word origins (particularly those of the
'colourful' order) has been extant in the British Isles for a long period of
time. Suffice it to thumb through the parenthetic etymological remarks with
which the early Hispanophile Captain John Stevens interspersed, or spiced,
his New dictionary, Spanish and English, and English and Spanish (pub-
30
 The nineteenth century

lished in 1726, the year of his death). But it took a distressingly long period
of time for this sort of titillation to harden into a truly professional
performance. The finest pioneering example of mature, unhurried work
taking into account whatever had in the meantime been accomplished on
the European continent is, indisputably, the first edition (1882) of Walter
W. Skeat's An etymological dictionary of the English language, a genuine
classic. The seriousness of the author's preparation, which transcended by a
wide margin his sheer expertise in English (or even in German, note the
author's 1876 pamphlet on 'English words, the etymology of which is
illustrated by comparison with Icelandic"), shines forth in the many auxiliary
sections either preceding the dictionary proper or appended to it. These
include such items as: notes about the languages cited (xiii-xx); canons for
etymologies (xxi-xxii); books referred to in the dictionary - a bibliography
remarkably complete for its time (xxiii—xxviii); lists of prefixes and suffixes
(727-8); a list of Aryan (i.e., Proto-Indo-European) roots (129-47); distri-
bution of words, i.e., a grouping of lexical items by their common descent
(English proper, Old Low German, Dutch, Scandinavian, etc.), all the way
to hybrids and to words of unknown extraction (747-61); examples of sound
shifts, i.e., samples of diachronic phonology (761); a list of homonyms
(762-71); a list of doublets (772-4) - apart from a more conventional
section of errata and addenda. Clearly, this book marked a bold and
respectable attempt to integrate etymology with a whole range of language
sciences. Moreover, being aware of the randomness of the dispersal of
lexical material in an alphabetically arranged reference work, Skeat recast
the sum total of his knowledge in a more systematically arranged counter-
view, namely his two-volume Principles of English etymology, with one half
of the venture being reserved for 'the native element' and the other for 'the
foreign element", i.e., borrowings. If we add to this inventory of
accomplishments a string of toponymic monographs concerned with geo-
graphic sections of England, in addition to extended philological inquiries
into selected older English literary texts (an activity which, by way of fringe
benefit, doubtless gave him a much firmer grasp of the denotations and
connotations of countless lexical units), we will begin to recognize the
magnitude of Skeat's breakthrough.

Of course, not all the extra features of Skeat's dictionary were equally
innovative, or turned out to be equally fruitful. The laying-down of 'canons
for etymology' strikes one, in our Age of Theory, as a major step in the right
direction. However, as early as 1856 Pedro Felipe Monlau had included a
far more extended section titled 'Rudimentos de etimologia' in his Spanish-
language Diccionario etimologico, while the idea of balancing a selective list
31
Etymology
of cameo-sized word biographies against a still very primitive outline of
sound shifts can be traced, once more in Spain, to Ramon Cabrera's
posthumous Diccionario de etimologias (1837). Skeat's decision to compile
a list of 'Aryan' roots turns out, upon closer inspection, to be more an
archaism than a bold innovation, reflecting as it does a common mid-
nineteenth-century attitude, which failed to distinguish between the needs
of, for example, a classicist and those of a student of medieval and modern
languages; as a random example, one may cite Giovanni Bolza's quaint
Vocabolario genetico-etimologico della lingua italiana (1852). Still, Skeat's
stamp of approval and the quality of his information and workmanship
served to prolong traditions which rapidly perished in neighbouring
domains. Thus, the American heritage dictionary, in general tailored to late
twentieth-century tastes and needs, has nevertheless resumed the (con-
ceivably pointless) tradition of a separate major section titled 'Indo-
European Roots' (written by an expert of the rank of Calvert Watkins, pp.
1505-50), in addition to briefer sections on 'Indo-European and the
Indo-Europeans' (pp. 1496-1504) and, entering into the preliminary matter,
'The Indo-European Origin of English' (xix-xx), from the pen of the same
Harvard scholar.
Skeat's dictionary made its appearance (1st edn, 1882) when the author
(1835-1912) stood at the zenith of his life. He lived long enough thereafter
to witness and no doubt savour its success (2nd edn, 1884, 4th edn,
1909-10). He had to his credit a number of shorter companion studies, e.g.,
A glossary of Tudor and Stuart words, especially from the dramatists (1914),
posthumously published (repr. 1968), in addition to miscellaneous items
channelled principally through the Transactions of the Philological Society
(e.g., 'Notes on English etymology', 'Words of Brazilian/Peruvian/West
Indian origin', 'A rough list of English words found in Anglo-French') and
eventually assembled in a sturdy volume (1901), all of which adds to his
stature, but hardly explains the failure of a British school of etymologists to
arise. Henry Sweet (1845-1912), to be sure, was a major figure, but he
impressed his contemporaries and posterity chiefly as a leading practitioner
of phonetic sciences, even though (especially in the years 1879 to 1885) he
had diligently practised Old English etymology. While his experiments
along that line ultimately became accessible through absorption into the
Collected papers (1913), it is not irrelevant to remind oneself that they were
originally published in two German periodicals, Englische Studien and
Anglia.
There are many other symptoms of thwarted growth, despite tokens of
goodwill displayed by undaunted individuals. As regards etymological desk
32
 The nineteenth century

dictionaries of English composed by Englishmen, the appearance, in 1921,

of An etymological dictionary of Modern English by Ernest Weekley
(1865-1954) marked something of an anticlimax. Weekley's venture gave
the impression of being a pruned version of Skeat, divested of its forerun-
ner's antiquarianism, but otherwise failed to offer anything significantly
innovative. True, it would be unfair here to omit mention of the fact that
Weekley's dictionary lacked the centrality to his entire ceuvre that Skeat's
earlier and weightier experiment had had to his own. After 1921, he
remained as active as ever, publishing in rapid succession collections of
notes tastefully phrased and easily assimilable, including Words, ancient and
modern (1926), More words, ancient and modern (1927), Adjectives - and
other words (1930), Words and names (1932), Something about words
(1935). Perhaps it is proper to call him the major popularizer of the
discipline in the United Kingdom.
The tale of woe continued with Alan H. Gardiner's Theory of speech and
language (1932). During World War I, the noted Egyptologist became
intensely concerned with the gradually emerging new discipline of 'general
linguistics' (initially also known under the name of 'general philology' in
Great Britain), and after reading Steinthal, Paul, von der Gabelentz,
Wundt, Saussure, Meillet, Kalepky, and Biihler, he embarked on a
two-volume venture of his own on the subject. The projected second volume
might have been - at least indirectly - relevant to etymology, because it
was to 'deal mainly with the word and its kinds, as well as with various
extensions of the word', so the author announced in the Foreword to Vol. I
(p. 13). Unfortunately, the second volume was never written (or, at least,
never appeared), unlike the revised second edition of the first (1951). This is
a pity, because Gardiner, as the author of the 'controversial essay' The theory
of proper names (1940, 1954; see also his Ancient Egyptian onomastica,
1947), might have had something worthwhile to contribute. The few British
scholars who, before 1950, felt attracted to etymological puzzles usually
followed in the wake of foreign models. Just as Henry Sweet, a century or so
ago, for a while, we recall, leaned on German patterns, so Harold Orton
(Leeds), a word geographer and a spokesman for the Wdrier und Sachen
approach, operated with a basically German-Swiss scheme, while John Orr
(Edinburgh), fascinated by clashes of homonyms, sailed comfortably in the
wake of Jules Gillieron's methodology.
The turn of the century seems to be the right cut-off point for terminating
this introductory chapter. Many relevant things were then in a state of flux,
thus arousing heightened expectations. The continued hegemony of Central
Europe in everything that related to historical linguistics - including its
33
Etymology

etymological dimension - continued unchallenged, with Austria (Graz,

Vienna) competing for attention more and more with Germany, and with
German Switzerland (especially Zurich) just beginning to strike out in
original directions. Paris, if not the whole of France, showed how intelligent
management even of limited human resources can yield high dividends in a
discipline that is not yet fully established, such as etymology.
The comparative method, of such crucial importance for progress in
etymology, had of course been devised long before. But the period around
1900 witnessed, in rapid succession, the rise of various novel, or newly
organized, subdisciplines whose growth turned out to be beneficial for the
crystallization of a new style of etymological inquiry: (a) (lexical) semantics,
as represented by Breal; (b) biologically flavoured lexicology, spearheaded
by Darmesteter; (c) synonymies or onomasiology, especially when con-
cerned with certain tightly ordered real-life domains (kinship terms,
chromonyms, numerals, names for the parts of the body); (d) dialect
geography, especially to the extent that it was word-oriented rather than
remaining sound-oriented; (e) approaches and techniques (including ico-
nography) devised to bring together facts of language and the near-parallel
evidence of material civilization (Worler und Sachen).
Conceivably even more significant than the alliances between etymology
and these relatively new approaches, enthusiastically pursued in those
years, was the discovery being made in the concluding quarter of the last
century that the compilation of etymological dictionaries was necessarily the
highest goal, or, worse, exhausted the possibilities, of imaginative etymolo-
gical research. Hugo Schuchardt's experimental mood and insouciant
attitude toward stale academic traditions - coming, true enough, in the
wake of Pott's distinctly earlier pioneering work - was exactly what was
needed (in addition, of course, to the newly gained availability of numerous
learned journals) to develop, among a younger set of linguists, a taste for
cultivating individual word histories as a separate and highly rewarding
genre. The transition was marked by the appearance of articles concerned
with whole clusters of pending etymological issues, sometimes wholly
unrelated, each running perhaps to a half-page on the average. Romanists
will remember such composite studies, traceable to the 1880s and 1890s,
from the pens of G. Baist and C. Michaelis de Vasconcelos. These became,
before long, the prototypes for incomparably more extended and sophisti-
cated monographs, each devoted preferably to the vicissitudes of a single
word which had proved refractory to previous genetic analysis. Preparing
such a monograph, by the same token, presupposed more and more an
insightful combination of art and science (in the humanistic vein).

34
 The nineteenth century

While we have, repeatedly and on good grounds, stressed the potential

complementarity of etymology and historical grammar, no account of the
gropings of nineteenth-century etymologists would be complete without, at
least, some passing mention of three other recurrent instances of disciplin-
ary solidarity. There was a prolonged close alliance between etymology, on
the one hand, and, on the other, (a) folklore, (b) mythology, and (c) the
systematic study of proper names (a scholarly endeavour for which there
seems to exist no cumulative technical label): anthroponymy, toponymy,
hydronymy, etc. Apart from being separately related to different phases
and facets of etymological inquiry, these three humanistic endeavours also
display strong mutual affinities among themselves. In the past century, it
was by no means uncommon for representative practitioners of etymology
(or of historical linguistics as a whole, including grammar) to cultivate with
identical and comparably generous apportionment of time and resources
any imaginable combination of these disciplines, which were equally
prestigious at that juncture; while shortly after 1900, and especially in the
concluding half of the present century, the likelihood of such ranges of
active involvement has gradually receded.
One can almost randomly cite names, titles of books, monographs, or
articles, and dates to hammer home this interlocking pattern. Among
pioneers of historico-comparative linguistics whose paths we have already
crossed, Fick was more concerned with names than with myths or legends.
As an accomplished Hellenist, he became immersed early on in anthropo-
nymy (1874) and, towards the end of his lifetime, in toponymy (1905, 1909),
operating with the noteworthy concept of "system of names' in the former
monograph, while stressing the importance of place names for substratum
research in the latter. Also, he believed he had discovered the category of
"namelike formations' in Ancient Greek (1876). Mahn supplemented his
experimentally oriented Etymologische Untersuchungen . . . (1854-64) in
the Romance domain with the more narrowly based Etymologische Unter-
suchungen u'ber geographische Namen, of almost identical vintage
(1856-64). The monumental edifice of Pott's far-flung, many-tiered ceuvre
contains at least three mythologically slanted items which quickly succeeded
one another (one harking back to 1859, two to 1863), in addition to a
slightly earlier 'groGer Wurf on all sorts of proper names, with heavy
emphasis placed on surnames (1853). Also, in his old age he tossed off one
shorter piece on Basque family names (1875). Examples can be multiplied
almost indefinitely. In contemporary Paris, a many-sided prolific scholar of
the calibre of Michel Breal (who was also an able spokesman for the cause
of dynamic scholarship) not only started his career, we recall, with an

35
Etymology
inquiry into Old Persian names in Greek garb but also that same year
(1863), submitted as a companion thesis a monograph geared to 'compara-
tive mythology', on Hercules and Cacus. Breal's later publications include a
successful miscellany, characteristically titled Melanges de mythologie et de
linguistique (1877; 2nd edn, 1882) and also, in collaboration with Anatole
Bailly, an innovative Dictionnaire etymologique latin (1885; 10th edn, 1992),
with the programmatic subtitle, 'Les mots latins groupes d'apres le sens et
l'etymologie".
It is easy to guess what initially tied together these, in certain respects
disparate, lines of investigation. Close familiarity with folklore was helpful
for diachronists grappling with languages till then little known and hardly
boasting a major corpus of literature, such as Lithuanian. Thus Schleicher
(in whose programme of research etymology, we remember, was repre-
sented, at best, peripherally) fell back on Lithuanian proverbs, riddles,
songs, and even fairytales (thus walking in the footsteps of Jakob Grimm) in
an effort to supplement the meagre information supplied by normal literary
sources (1857). As a Germanist, he did not spurn the resources of
Thuringian folk culture either (1958). Mythology, on the other hand, in
addition to providing a treasure-trove of names awaiting etymological
analyses, was replete with fabulous accounts of the descent of tribes and of
their diversified tongues, with the ever-present possibility that the fables
might contain grains of historical truth and thus stimulate long-delayed
legitimate research.
By way of anticipation, let me state that, contrary to what we have so far
been observing by watching the strategy of the trail-blazers, it gradually
became more and more exceptional for a truly distinguished twentieth-
century linguist to extend his or her active curiosity to folklore and
mythology, two fields which simply drifted away from the area cultivated by
linguists, without losing in the process any of their original academic
respectability. Conversely, the study of proper names, which can of course
be conducted on a very high level of scholarly seriousness, in several
influential quarters (including the New World) has lost much of its erstwhile
professional standing, tending to function, at best, as an auxiliary discipline,
whose resources diachronically minded linguists and students of the history
of settlement can, to be sure, advantageously tap at intervals, but which
lacks a methodological and theoretical foundation of its own, despite Alan
Gardiner's attempt to prove the contrary. Its major appeal at present is to
well-intentioned, educated laymen, and its societies tend to thrive on a
sub-academic level. The contrast with the times of Forstemann, Skeat, and
especially Weekley could scarcely have been stronger. Offerings from the

36
 The nineteenth century

last-mentioned Anglicist's pen such as The romance of names (1914) and

Surnames (1916), along with certain writings by Albert Dauzat on the other
side of the Channel, for better or worse represent a sort of rearguard action.

Guide to readings
A classic in the early history of linguistics, which inevitably pays some
attention to etymological speculation, is Hcymann Steinthal (1823-99),
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Romern, mil
besonderer Riicksicht auf die Logik (Berlin: Dummler, 1863; rev. 2nd
edn, 2 vols., 1890-1; photostatic reproduction, 1961).
There is no dearth of briefer histories of linguistics at present. As a
rule, they arc fairly slim one-volume ventures. In the English-speaking
countries R. H. Robins ranks as the foremost expert in that line of
curiosity. For the older periods, his booklet Ancient and medieval
grammatical theory . . . (London. 1951) is relevant, despite its main
emphasis on concerns other than etymological. For a bird's-eye view of
other introductory manuals (including those by Milka Ivic, Giulio C.
Lepschy, Maurice Leroy - with a side-glance at Glanville Price's trans-
lation into English of his relevant book - and Bertil Malmbcrg, in
addition to Thomas A. Sebeok's parallel Portraits of linguists: a
bibliographic source book), see Yakov Malkiel and Margaret Langdon's
review article, 'History and histories of linguistics', in Romance Philo-
logy, 22:4 (May 1969), 530-74.
Some information on etymological analysis as part of an ensemble of
operations is shed by general introductions to historical (diachronic)
linguistics. This sort of information is apt to be more parsimonious in
items of fairly recent vintage than in some of the 'classics'. For a
bird's-eye view of newly launched textbooks and introductory volumes,
sec the review article by Carol F. Justus, 'The textbook of historical
linguistics: summary of the past or guide to the future?', in Romance
Philology, 33:2 (Nov. 1979), 299-309. covering experiments conducted
by James M. Anderson, Raimo Anttila, Anthony Arlotto, Theodora
Bynon, D. L. Goyvaerts, and W. P. Lehmann. Edgar H. Sturtevant's
Linguistic change: an introduction to the historical study of language
stands apart, inasmuch as, despite the new Introduction contributed by
Eric P. Hamp - an eager etymologist in his own right - to the edition
undertaken by Chicago University Press ("Phoenix cdn', 1961; 5th
printing, 1973), the book goes back to a distant past (1917) and thus
reflects the author's thinking before he reached the zenith of his long
life (1875-1952). It thus antecedes by a sizeable margin his Introduction
to linguistic science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947). Among

37
Etymology
the classics alluded to above, the one easily most generous with
information about techniques for identifying word origins was Hermann
Paul's Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (Halle: Niemeyer, 1880; rev. 5th
edn. 1920; 2nd edn translated into English, 1891).
On the negative side of the picture, the failure of several highly
respected linguists to arrange for separate chapters on etymological
methods in their influential summations has contributed to the disci-
pline's temporary loss of appeal, especially to the avant-garde. This has
been especially true, in Europe, of Ferdinand de Saussure's posthumous
(1916) Cours de linguistique generate, extracted from lecture notes
taken at the start of the century, and of Joseph Vendryes' Le langage:
introduction linguistique a I'histoire (Paris, La Renaissance du livrc.
1921, but finished by 1914; available in English in Paul Radin's
translation, 1925). It is also true, in North America, of the well-known
syntheses by Edward Sapir (1921), by Leonard Bloomficld (An intro-
duction to the study of language. New York: Holt, 1914; Language, New
York; Holt. 1933, and, as a result. Language history, extracted by
Harry Hoijer from the latter book, 1965); and by Charles F. Hockett (A
course in modern linguistics. New York, Macmillan, 1958). One minor
exception was the brief Chapter 10 ('Etymology and linguistic method:
the historical aspect of words") in Louis H. Gray's reputedly conservat-
ive Foundations of language (New York: Macmillan, 1939). Given the
chilly reception of that book by younger critics and readers, this
authorial stamp of approval actually sealed the flat rejection of ety-
mology by, and the blunting of etymological curiosity in. an entire
generation of potential enthusiasts.
The countertrend, so far only infrequently observable, began with
Emilc Benvenistc (1902-76), who, even though exposed to the most
tempting formulations of all manner of 'modernisms', nevertheless, in
his definitive book (Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeennes:
economie, parente, societe; pouvoir, droit, religion, cd. Jean Lallot,
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969; translated into several languages,
including English by Elizabeth Palmer, London: Faber & Faber, 1973),
managed to reserve for etymology an important niche as part of
lexicology - a point I have tried to make in my necrological essay 'Lexis
and grammar', in Romance Philology. 34:2 (Nov. 1980), 160-94.
One notes a regrettable scarcity of book-length initiations into the
theory, methodology, and techniques of etymology; also, the arrival on
the scene of this peculiar genre of scholarly-didactic literature was much
delayed. As regards the present century, one of the earliest among the
guides to the subject was Vittore Pisani's L'elimologia: storia, queslioni,
metodo (Milan: Renon, 1947; rev. 2nd edn, Brescia: Paideia, 1967) - a
relatively slim book when placed alongside certain monumental ven-

38
 The nineteenth century

tures by the same comparatist. Lecture courses dedicated specifically to

etymology (as against incidental allusions to etymological issues) have
likewise been few and far between - Vittorio Bcrtoldi used to offer a
few during the years of his professorship at Naples, and occasionally the
relevant lecture notes ("dispense") would ripen into a quotable book. It
would thus appear that Italy offered the best environment for introduc-
tory texts of this kind; the tradition has been continued of late (witness
the venture by a much younger scholar, Alberto Zamboni). Interest-
ingly, doctoral dissertations on narrowly circumscribed etymological
subjects have also been shunned in many quarters, possibly on account
of the risks involved for the candidate. As a result, the places where
methodological problems set in an etymological key have been typically
thrashed out have included: prefaces and introductory chapters to
etymological dictionaries; leisurely critical reviews of fascicles of etymo-
logical dictionaries and rebuttals occasionally provoked by sharply
worded criticism; lists of addenda to strings of dictionary entries; and
also initiations into related approaches, for example, into lexically
coloured dialect geography, starting with the volume of Jules Gillierons
essays written in collaboration with M. Roques (1912) and encompassing
the deservedly well-known introductory volumes of Ernst Gamillscheg
(1928) and Karl Jaberg (1936).
Several reasons can be offered for this remarkable restraint on the
book market: the notorious inherent subjectivity of the discipline, the
presupposition of considerable maturity on the part of the would-be
practitioner, and so on. Because Romance material, at the stage of
mere apprenticeship, may only confuse the budding Gcrmanist, and
vice versa, stray attempts have, of late, been made to prepare introduc-
tory manuals with more narrowly selected documentation. Examples of
this latest, not unwholesome, trend would be: Max Pfister. Einfiihrung
in die romanische Etymologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, 1980) and Elmar Seebold, Etymologie: eine Einfiihrung am
Beispiel der deutschen Sprache (Munich: Beck, 1981).

39
 The first half of the twentieth
century

So far, we have managed to describe the shifting positions of etymology, at

first outside the edifice of historical grammar and later on in close
connection with it, in splendid isolation from political events and social
changes as it were, with practically no reference to such real-life situations
as the Napoleonic Era, the Crimean War, or America's Civil War, to cite
three examples at random. In this undertaking we have received support
from the oft-cited fact that, between 1871 and 1904, Europe went through a
protracted period of relative peace - of respite from involvements in serious
wars and from all sorts of revolutionary concussions.
But as one approaches the next half-century, things begin to undergo a
radical change, not necessarily for the better. The period 1900-1950, at
present visible in clear retrospect, was marked by two world wars which
were not only exceptionally devastating, but were also characterized by all
sorts of ideological implications and by energetic reshuffling of centres of
intellectual prestige. Allusions to the impact of changes of such magnitude
can no longer be swept under the carpet. The fortunes of historical
linguistics and of etymology alike were very strongly and, I repeat, by no
means always favourably affected by the resulting redistribution of intellec-
tual ammunition.
It should suffice, in this context, to mention two influential cir-
cumstances. First, by 1900, the reputation of German scholarship, both
pure and applied, stood at its zenith the world over. German-born or
German-educated scholars, including those with heavy commitments to a
brand of 'linguistic science' deeply rooted in Central European traditions of
historicism, were in high demand on both sides of the Atlantic. One need
only refer to Max Muller's regime at Oxford, to Franz Boas' at Columbia, to
Maurice Bloomfield's at Johns Hopkins, and also to Rudolf Lenz's and
41
Etymology
Friedrich Hanssen's at Santiago de Chile. The peculiar pattern of 'Gei-
steswissenschaften', into which linguistics was supposed to enter smoothly,
was adopted almost everywhere, along with an idiosyncratic division of
academies of sciences into two branches and of universities into, typically,
four 'faculties', except that France, standing somewhat aloof, tried desper-
ately to assign to advanced linguistics, a relative latecomer to Paris, the
appearance of a social science rather than that of a purely humanistic
discipline.
With the weakening of German academic influence as a direct conse-
quence of World War I and its aftermath, linguistics either tended to decline
altogether in the given country or, to regain its severely weakened momen-
tum, had to fall back on those approaches to analysis and those styles of
research, starting with data-gathering, that showed a bare minimum of
dependence on no longer fashionable German models. As a result, etymol-
ogy, reputedly a quintessential^ German subdiscipline, rapidly receded
into the background of supply and demand. Thus, in the United States, the
vigorous resurgence of linguistic scholarship after the early 1920s is ordi-
narily associated with three almost charismatic names, those of Edgar H.
Sturtevant, Edward Sapir, and Leonard Bloomfield. Yet one practically
never hears even the staunchest admirers and supporters of these pioneers
assert that their idols were deft etymologists - a detail, they usually hasten
to add, of minor relevance, given the currently marginal status of etymology
in the alliance of linguistic disciplines.
The effects of World War II, its preludes and its unsavoury accompan-
iments, were different, yet even more disastrous for the well-being of
etymology. The misleading indoctrination associated with atrocities com-
mitted in connection with forced resettlement, segregation, extermination,
and the like began to throw singularly unattractive light on such dimensions
of research - previously held to be innocuous - as the study of toponyms
and anthroponyms, of certain layers of loan words, and so on. Before long,
such intellectual pursuits became distasteful to a whole generation of
potential Central European Wortforscher, not to mention their foreign
counterparts. An entire school of West German Romanists, based in Bonn,
under the leadership of Harri Meier, has after 1960 specialized in attempt-
ing - with varying success, it is true - to reassign characteristic ingredients
of Romance lexis to non-Germanic, preferably Latin, stocks. Such an
atmosphere, permeated by politically flavoured pro and contra sentiments,
seems unhealthy for the growth of impartial etymological research.
Economic considerations also gradually became a matter of unpre-
cedented concern. In the nineteenth century, a typical one-volume diction-
42
 The first half of the twentieth century

ary slanted in the direction of word origins could easily be sponsored by a

private publishing house catering for academics. Conversely, monumental
collections of words viewed in their phrasal contexts (thesauri, concor-
dances) - aiming at exhaustiveness by definition - were prepared by teams
of trained investigators and launched by generously endowed academies,
the prime examples being Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches
Worterbuch and the Munich Academy's Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Such
ventures were compatible with, at most, parenthetic etymological remarks.
After 1920, however, experiments began to be made with producing
mergers between, on the one hand, an etymologicum and, on the other,
some blend of a time-honoured historical dictionary and a new-style
dialectological treasure trove. These stirrings led to the creation of Walther
von Wartburg's sophisticated but overextended and, consequently, un-
wieldy Franzosisches etymologisches Worterbuch, which the Swiss scholar,
despite much help received from co-workers, left unfinished after half a
century of unremitting toil. As he has since found imitators, including Max
Pfister, there arises the problem of the optimum relation of a thesaurus and
an etymological guide; of the wisdom of engaging in an etymological
balance-sheet outlasting a half-century of concentrated labour and involving
numerous decision-makers; of drawing financial support under intellec-
tually defensible conditions; and of recognizing the best possible dividing-
line between a reference work and a series of individual monographs, each
geared in its structure and slant to the particular problem at hand.
The final non-scholarly issue enmeshed with our central problem is the
well-established fact that, in several influential and economically powerful
societies, the public at large, in a simplistic way, is titillated by colourful,
exotic, or amusing anecdotal word histories and by tantalizing clues to
certain haunting proper names, a state of affairs apt to create a less than
healthy demand for appropriately spiced etymological dictionaries. In
extreme cases, such pressure may produce hazardous imbalances by chal-
lenging budgetarily hard-pressed publishers to issue etymological diction-
aries unworthy of the reputation of their firms. Few laymen would dream of
buying copies of historical grammars or phonological treatises, with or
without embellishments. As often happens, the wrong sort of success
threatens to spoil the best-meant undertaking.
There has tended to emerge one more link of etymology's shifting
fortunes to real-life conditions and caprices. Because, in the joint estimate
of experts and outsiders alike, scholarly inquiry into word origins enters into
the ensemble of lexicographic and lexicological concerns, and because
cultivation of these word-centred disciplines, which place a premium on
43
Etymology
slow, patient long-range data-gathering, is all too frequently entrusted to
mature, even ageing scholars, it began to be widely assumed, after a certain
cut-off point, that the responsibility for etymological decisions should and
can be safely entrusted to the older generation. This view, understandable
even to those who happen not to share it, before long led to the untenable
belief that there cannot, plausibly, come into existence anything worthy of
being called etymological avant-garde, rebellion, or revolution capable of
attracting young and restless minds, since no intellectual upheaval can be
staged by an ill-assorted group of senescent men and women. One impor-
tant lesson that a close look at the segment of time here selected for
inspection, namely 1900-1950, teaches the unbiased observer is that pas-
sionate commitments to etymology, cultivated almost for its own sake, can
demonstrably develop under favourable sets of circumstances. A Jakob Jud,
if I may here evoke the memory of that great Zurich teacher (who, I dare
say characteristically, died in 1950, at the age of seventy) was nothing if not
a wholeheartedly dedicated etymologist, from the earliest awakening of his
curiosity about language and languages.
Let us return to the concluding decades of the nineteenth century, which
can be interpreted as having formed a prelude to the watershed date of
1900. The etymological article and, a fortiori, the etymological monograph,
as we know them, were not yet in existence, even at the most advanced
centres of learning. The book-length etymological dictionary - traceable,
we recall, to the pre-1800 years - continued to prosper, and was generally
held in high esteem. Journals, bulletins, and annual transaction volumes
contained either isolated etymological notes (in addition to whole clusters
or loose scatterings of such notes, geared sometimes to some ulterior
purpose), or, at best, full-sized articles dealing with features of recognized
disciplines (including historical grammar) in which dubious points of
etymology were incidentally touched upon or even thrashed out. But,
outside its faint visibility in such subordinate roles, etymology cultivated,
with zest, chiefly for its own sake was seldom, if ever, seen in action.
Illustrations can be cited by the hundreds. Let us examine from this
standpoint, for the sake of concrete documentation, the randomly chosen
volume for the years 1880-1 of a British venture, the Transactions of the
Philological Society, with less heavy emphasis on actual accomplishments,
as they emerge in critical retrospect, than on the various competing bends of
a nascent intellectual curiosity.
With this goal in mind, we can set off, as conducive almost directly tc
fresh etymological insights, J. P. Postgate's pithy note "Dare "to give", and
*-dere "to put'" (pp. 99-105). Since Russell Martineau, when at work on his
44
 The first half of the twentieth century

lengthy piece, 'On the Romontsch or Rhaetian language in the Grisons and
Tirol' (pp. 402-60), included in his survey sections on 'Non-Latin and
obscure words' as well as on 'Peculiarities of vocabulary", this piece, which
was doomed to being consistently overlooked on the Continent, may
contain a handful of etymologically relevant remarks. Beyond this point,
however, the chances of the material being genuinely useful to dedicated
etymologists begin to decline. Viewed as a mass of potentially helpful raw
data, and in deference to the writer's general prominence, Walter W.
Skeat's 'Rough lists of English words found in 13th—14th centuries Anglo-
French' (pp. *91—* 168) invites rapid scanning. There is an off-chance that
Walter R. Browne's twin papers on the distribution of place-names in (a)
England and (b) the Scottish Lowlands contain tiny bits of etymological
enlightenment. Any sustained concern with diachronic phonology, such as
is embodied in Charles Rieu's 'Remarks on some phonetic laws in Persian'
(pp. 1-22), is apt to offer fringe benefits for research in pure etymology,
whether the author did or did not intend to reach that secondary goal. But
the prime performer in that context, namely Henry Sweet, busied himself
with the issue of 'Sound Notation' (pp. 177-235). The Society's 1880-1
President, J. A. H. Murray, on two occasions entertained the membership
mainly with reports on spelling reform and on the progress made by the
Society-sponsored monumental dictionary, barely allowing Henry Sweet to
squeeze in a few fleeting remarks on the investigation of the Aryan
Ursprache: the Indo-Germanic vowel system' (pp. 155-62). Prince Louis-
Lucien Bonaparte's experiments with what we are tempted to call contrast-
ive synchronic phonology (Portuguese vs. an alliance of Spanish, Italian,
French, and English, and the ensemble of Slavic tongues vs. Scando-
Germanic) eclipse his atypical self-immersion in 'Neuter Neo-Latin substan-
tives' (pp. 45*-64*). The other studies, judging from a hasty inspection of
the topics they cover, are poles apart from any exercise of, or reasonably
close association with, etymological curiosity.
On the European continent, the drift, or calculated movement, towards
the gradual emancipation of individual etymological inquiries gathered
greater and quicker momentum. There were several convergent avenues of
approach to the goal of individuating more and more the separate word
biographies (a term, it is true, not yet appealed to a century ago). The more
deliberately selective the etymologist was from the start, the better were the
chances he stood of achieving a high degree of circumstantiality. Increased
concentration on the ingredient of peculiarity (and even of uniqueness)
could be aimed at, if not necessarily reached, if the etymologist was
prepared to confine his verdicts to a single ethnoglottal strain of the lexicon
45
Etymology

under study (e.g., to words of Germanic extraction in a given Romance

language); or to limit them to a single form-class, be it nouns or verbs or
prepositions; or else to circumscribe his objective in social terms (e.g.,
vocabulary known to have been favoured by peasantry or by college
students, and the like). With fewer items designedly under study, each one
could be focused upon in a more leisurely fashion and with far closer
attention either to formal variation and semantic nuances, to specific
conditions of spatio-temporal extension, or else to the inexhaustible supply
of real-life correlates. Moreover, the words selected for leisurely inspection
could very well have shared, as a sort of common denominator, the fact that
they occurred, predominantly or even exclusively, in the same literary text
(ideally, one of known authorship, or at least datable and localizable when
viewed through the prism of its manuscripts), or that their use invited
association with a particular literary genre.
Adducing a few examples should suffice, and the dates cited are not
devoid of importance in their own right. For a while there threatened to
develop a real rash of modern-language glossaries reserved for words of
oriental (principally Arabic) extraction. Nothing short of a classic in that
field was W. H. Engelmann's pioneering venture (1861) devoted to Spanish
and Portuguese, later expanded in collaboration with R. P. A. Dozy (1869),
who had independently studied Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, and
Turkish words in his native Dutch (1867). But L. de Eguilaz y Yanguas"
counterpart (1886), not restricted to Arabisms, and L. Marcel Devic's
application of the pattern to French (1876), through ingenious collaboration
with Emile Littre, are also worthy of mention. (Experiments conducted in
the reverse direction, i.e., through confinement of the survey to the
majority's source, are likewise on record, especially with regard to Roma-
nian-witness Sextil Pus,cariu's (1905) and J. Aureliu Candrea-Hecht/O.
Densusjanu's (1907) ventures, apparently undertaken after the last-
mentioned scholar's preliminary testing (1902) - but belong to a slightly
later period and failed to produce the effect here hinted at. They clash with
Alexandru de Cihac's spade-work (1870-9), which aimed at doing justice to
Romanian lexis as a whole.) So much for ethnoglottal strains. Confinement
to grammatically defined and controlled minorities of words is best illus-
trated with Rufino Jose Cuervo's idiosyncratic, if forceful and brilliant,
Diccionario de construction y regimen de la lengua castellana (1886-93, with
reverberations as late as the mid-twentieth century), a mere torso of a work
rich - counter to expectation - in etymology yield, but programmatically
limited to lexical entries abounding in syntactic implications, i.e., well-nigh
exclusively to verbs and prepositions. In Germanic studies, Friedrich

46
 The first half of the twentieth century

Kluge's monograph on German university-student slang (1895), wedged in

between the fifth (1894) and the sixth (1899) revised editions of his
influential etymological dictionary, exemplifies the planned isolation of a
sample along the socio-educational scale, while a later work from his pen
(1911), dealing with the lexis of German sailors over a protracted period of
time, concerned itself with a neatly detachable social dialect. An inventory
of German names of diseases (1899) by Max Hofler, a seasoned expert in
folk medicine, offers a different sort of specialization, equally welcome to
etymologists, namely, familiarity not with a privileged group of speakers,
but with a sharply delimited range of topics (cf. Dozy's 1845 monograph on
the Arabic names of garments). The late nineteenth-century flowering of
philology, which was moored to the critical interpretation of challenging
ancient texts, brought with it the preparation of etymological glossaries as
supplements to, or companion volumes of, elaborate editions, with the aim
of stimulating fellow scholars and goading students.
The range of possibilities was immense: the compiler of such a vocabulary
could afford simply to list the recommended etymon, perhaps in paren-
theses, alongside the page- and line-references for the given lexical unit, as
did Wendelin Foerster, leaning on Hermann Breuer for help, in the context
of his once seminal edition of Chretien de Troyes' romances; or he could
expand certain favourite entries almost indefinitely, at the risk of converting
them into miniature monographs, as was Ramon Menendez Pidal's decided
preference in the case of his edition of the venerable Cid epic (1908-11; but
the plans were laid out as early as 1898). Not infrequently, amid such
exegetic fervour, some investigator deemed it appropriate to publish, in the
guise of inescapably uneven journal articles, mixed miscellanies of textual
observations, half-grammatical, half-etymological (e.g., Jules Cornu in
1884), unaware of the damage to the causes they espoused that might accrue
from such a policy a century later. Another oddity imitated in America
somewhat later (Jeremiah D. M. Ford, 1911), was the spicing of glossaries
appended to anthologies with etymological bric-a-brac. Such eccentricities
have meanwhile receded - observe Lucien Foulet's praiseworthy restraint
in his model glossary of 1955 and the tendency, even among hard-boiled
Bcowulfians (Friedrich F. Klaeber, C. L. Wrenn), to relegate discreetly
camouflaged etymological hints to their notes rather than their glossaries.
Nevertheless, the highwater mark of commitment to often otiose etymo-
logical information, coinciding with the protracted absence of well-rounded,
engagingly worded etymological articles is certainly worth noting. The mere
sight of a Boston-sponsored book title (1898) such as English etymology: a
select glossary serving as an introduction to the history of the English

47
Etymology

language, by Friedrich Kluge and Fredrick Lutz, will serve to prepare us for
the later recoil.
Any approach or pretext that tended to single out certain words for
separate consideration in their historical dimension - for an analysis, that
is, more leisurely than the quota of attention accorded to others - directly
or indirectly paved the road for future etymological notes or sketches. Even
though the sporadic study of doublets was already practised in the late
seventeenth century, Auguste Brachet's more 'scientifically' grounded
Dictionnaire des doublets (1868) and a succinct supplement to it, issued that
same year, gave rise to a real vogue, not to say fad, which not very much
later led to the publication of monographs (concerned, at first, with related
languages) distinctly more sophisticated than their model, by Carolina
Michaelis de Vasconcelos (1876) and Ugo A. Canello (1878), spilling over
eventually into adjoining domains, including German Philology ('Dop-
pelworter', 'Zwillingsworter'). The situation, surveyed by myself in 1973
and 1977, need not be reexamined here in tedious detail. The implicit need
to etymologize with appropriate care, at least, the vernacular partner of
each pair or team of doublets greatly stimulated etymological curiosity and
thus spawned not a few notes on the subject. The accuracy of this projection
of cause and effect is shown by the splendid record of Carolina Michaelis de
Vasconcelos who, precisely after the cut-off date of 1876, became a
first-rate practitioner of etymology, writing series of almost invariably
persuasive notes. However - again wisely - she stopped short of compiling
any premature etymological dictionary of Spanish and/or Portuguese.
For three entirely different reasons, the etymological note (often running
to less than a half-page in its printed version), was favoured, as a
size-defined genre of linguistic research, over an etymological article, not to
mention a full-grown monograph, at the threshold of the present century.
For one thing, the extant etymological literature which had to be taken into
account was still anything but extensive. The proponent of some new
conjecture would, at most, mention two or three earlier guesses or
opinions - let us say, one culled from a pre-1800 dictionary abounding in
pronouncements on word-origins, one from a pioneering historical gram-
mar, and one more from a nineteenth-century book-length etymological
venture. To round out the expected modicum of documentation, a few bits
of older textual documentation could be adduced: a passage or two
extracted from a chronicle, an epic, or a ballad. After a brief hint at the
inconclusiveness or, worse, vulnerability of the previous commitment(s),
the new idea would be ventilated as crisply and, at the same time, as

48
 The first half of the twentieth century

engagingly as possible. There were few, if any, previous notes and prac-
tically no book reviews to be checked before the completion of the dossier.
The second reason, being less anecdotal, can be credited with a more
noteworthy set of implications. Since the recurrence (or regularity) of sound
changes began to be taken for granted in most responsible quarters, leaving
unconverted only a gradually thinning fringe of amateurs, and since the
chief advantage of proposing some new etymological explanation was the
strengthening it bade fair to provide for the weakly supported among such
'laws' (as sound correspondences were called in those days), the demonstra-
tion of the accuracy of the proposal was, in most instances, simple. Only the
slightly erratic trajectories of loan words or word histories disturbed by
analogical interferences invited somewhat more detailed discussions.
Again, a tightly worded note was all that was needed.
There was one more justification for relative parsimoniousness of word-
ing, namely the size and character of the readership aimed at. Any
prospective reader, whether stationed at Oxford, in Petersburg, or in
Boston, could be safely expected to boast almost the same level of
preliminary wide-ranging education, to be familiar, for example, with the
same three or four world languages, in addition to the classics. Thus it was
deemed advisable to skip the glossing of any Latin or Greek lexical unit
adduced. In addition, while readily allowing for certain glorious exceptions,
practically all participants in the glotto-historical game reckoned, more or
less explicitly, with the fact of academic life that any, let us say, Old English
word-studies would be examined carefully only by professional Anglicists,
while enigmas of Old Russian lexis might, at best, attract Slavicists, and so
on. The crossing of the dividing lines between the gradually congealing
specialities was made more and more difficult by increasingly desultory and
cryptic references to obscure texts, manuscripts, writers, copyists, editors,
and investigators, most details being withheld on the assumption that the
potential reader was well prepared for his task on the side of 'philology'.
The likelihood of a Romanist wanting to read, for example, some Scandi-
navian inquiry, or vice versa, for the sake of a typological analogy, simply
did not occur to those generations of workers, given the protracted absence
of any organized body able to represent the legitimate interests of general
linguistics, which are so readily understood and appreciated at present.
Through the coincidence of these three circumstances, the many pungent
notes produced during those years were indeed short, but, less gratifyingly,
make disproportionately difficult reading for any but the narrowest and
best-initiated specialists.

49
Etymology
Yet, in many quarters the urge to write clusters or constellations of notes
on disconnected issues in word origins seems, for a while, to have been
uncontrollable. A few examples can be cited from the Romance field. As a
rank beginner, Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke, in 1886, launched a twelve-pronged
congeries of such hypotheses, under the title 'Romanische Etymologien',
squeezing the whole into less than five printed pages of an influential
journal. The following year, under the still vaguer title 'Etymologisches', he
again tried to do justice to twelve problems (concerning French, Old and
Modern, in addition to Italian, Spanish, Franco-Provengal, etc.), spreading
out the discussion over less than eight printed pages.
At this juncture one is tempted to ask: what was the authors' aim in
releasing such ill-assorted collections of pithy etymological comments? Or,
to fall back on a more legitimate phrasing: how did they, at later stations in
life, manage, if at all, to make good use of such piles of motley material?
The answer is that, in not a few instances, there simply was no visible
intention on the writer's part, of transcending the stage of highly competent
and scrupulously documented notes. This applies, for example, to Paul
Barbier's concluding effort, 'Nouvelles etudes de lexicologie franchise'
(1947-55), as well as to the aggregate of his earlier attempts, which were
published in Leeds. (True, the material painstakingly collected was even-
tually used, with the authorization of Barbier's heirs, for certain fascicles of
Walther von Wartburg's thesaurus.) Some scholars of the first magnitude
were in the habit of writing scattered etymological notes, presumably to
acquaint themselves at first hand with a method or a technique; they then
allowed the material assembled to lie fallow for decades. Thus, one cannot
persuasively argue that a young Antoine Meillet's ten-page venture 'Notes
d'etymologie grecque' (1896) led directly to his Apercu d'une histoire de la
langue grecque (1913), still less that any bridge connects his discernibly
more advanced Etudes sur I'e'tymologie et le vocabulaire du vieux slave
(1902-5) with two masterpieces of his mature age, each dealing with a
cognate language, namely the Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine
(1928) and the Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine (1932), which
he compiled in fruitful collaboration with Alfred Ernout. Conversely, where
a lapse of just a few years separates a loose constellation of etymological
vignettes from a full-sized etymological dictionary, one can justifiably speak
of the notes being a harbinger of the future book. This condition holds, for
example, for Ernst Gamillscheg's gropings (A-F), in the very early 1920s,
vis-a-vis his subsequent etymological dictionary of French (1926-8) and, to
an even higher degree, for Juan Corominas' experiments conducted through-

50
 The first half of the twentieth century

out the 1940s (1941-2, 1942^, 1947-8) in relation to the original version of
his ambitious Spanish etymologicum (1954-7).
The prototypes, however, go back to the late nineteenth and the early
twentieth century. The classic example was furnished by Antoine Thomas.
Obviously, by the time that fine scholar (whose name has already figured in
the preceding section) was publishing his pioneering contributions (many of
them amounting to conglomerations of etymological notes) in the late
nineteenth-century volumes of the prestigious Parisian journal Romania,
neither he himself nor anyone else could have foreseen the subsequent
appearance of several volumes into which many of them were ultimately
absorbed: Essais de philologie frangaise (1897); Nouveaux essais
. . . (1904); Melanges d'e'tymologie francaise (1902). Nor could one have
foreseen the reappearance of the Melanges in a generously expanded form
(1927), still less the devolution of all etymological responsibility upon
himself for the Dictionnaire general, after Arsene Darmestcter's unexpected
death. Nor do we know for certain what adverse circumstances prevented
the later series of such journal notes (e.g., 1909, 1911, 1913), of equal or
even superior excellence, from being collected into easily manageable
volumes. It is a safe guess that researchers who, at the start of their careers,
a century or so ago, invested a good deal of their time and energy in such
explorations, were simply eager to build up a sort of intellectual bank
account against unforeseeable eventualities. Gottfried Baist, for one, who
for years specialized in this genre (as David A. Pharies' helpful bibliography
recently demonstrated), eventually skimmed from that "account" the hoped-
for interest when he was invited to prepare for Vol. I of Gustav Grober's
encyclopaedia (1888, 1904-6) two highly concentrated miniature sketches of
Spanish historical grammar. Ramon Menendez Pidal's first constellation of
etymological conjectures (1900) could have served him as a stepping-stone
to two bold projects that, in all likelihood, were already in his mind: an
authoritative book-length manual of Spanish historical grammar and a
wide-ranging glossary planned as a companion piece to his palaeographic
and critical editions of the Cid epic. Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos
candidly labelled some of her meatiest assemblies of etymological notes
(1908, 1910-1) as tentative contributions to a future etymological dictionary
(she discreetly refrained from stating by whom she expected such a synthesis
to be compiled).
While certain characteristics of etymological probing here at issue were
perhaps most vigorously pronounced in Romance quarters, they were by no
means confined to that corner of the edifice.

51
Etymology

One more concatenation of circumstances gave the almost haphazard

ensemble of stray etymological observations a privileged status and a strong
impetus in the 1875-1920 period: the apparently unlimited availability of
editorial space (especially in quarterlies, but also in monograph series and
the like) for lavishly detailed assessments of etymological dictionaries.
These verdicts, as a rule, reached their crowning achievement in innumer-
able counter-proposals which were almost impressionistically hazy in phras-
ing. The situation tended to get completely out of control when the (not
infrequently) offended authors insisted on placing in the same media their
(rarely exciting or convincing) rebuttals, which were similarly organized. As
a result of this dispersal of information and of its critical appraisal, not to
mention the ensuing chaos, the general esteem for etymology was not
destined to gain momentum.
Even a scholar as balanced in general as Friedrich Diez deemed it
necessary to issue a pamphlet (1858) against certain (he felt) prejudiced
critics of his dictionary (1853; 2nd edn, 1861). Interestingly, he did not stoop
to inveighing against any morose reviewers of his historico-comparative
grammar. It could even happen that the critics far surpassed the author of
the work reviewed in intellectual stature. Thus, in the Preface of his
etymological dictionary of Romanian (1905) Sextil Pu§cariu listed among
the assessors of the first two editions (1891, 1901) of Gustav Korting's
notoriously mediocre Lateinisch-romanisches Worterbuch such luminaries
as W. Behrcns, O. Densusjanu, E. Herzog, Wilhem Mcyer-Liibke, Carlo
Salvioni (twice), and J. Subak. Conceivably, the cause of scholarship would
have been better served had the publisher of Korting's ill-fated Lateinisch-
romanisches Worterbuch been persuaded to launch, in 1907, not a (lightly
revised) third edition, but a carefully indexed collection of improvements
suggested by those critics. The fashion reached its peak with the experts'
often discordant reactions to the original version (1911-20) of Meyer-
Liibke's Romanisches etymologisches Worterbuch. From the staff of a single
Madrid institute (the venerable Centra de estudios historicos) came, in
close succession, a book-length critique (actually, a single series of mostly
extra-short notes) by Vicente Garcia de Diego, the useful commentary by
Americo Castro (spread over several instalments), and the splendid
elaborations from the pen of Ramon Menendez Pidal (1920) which were
incomparably superior to that same polymath's earlier attempts of 1900. In
the concluding decades of our own century, this approach, though still
practised, in a friendly vein, by Kurt Baldinger with respect to a fairly recent
revision of the Bloch-von Wartburg venture and, above all, by Harri Meier

52
 The first half of the twentieth century

in relation to the Corominas-Pascual mammoth undertaking, has gradually

tended to acquire a slightly archaic tint.
The above remarks must not be misunderstood as a flat denial of the very
existence, over an extended period of time, of the genre of the etymological
full-length article, side by side with a liberal representation of pertinent
reference works, on the one hand, and on the other, of loose clusters of
(sometimes ill-assorted) notes. It suffices to demonstrate the temporary
atypicality and marginal status of the etymological article (despite the
availability of talent, of widespread curiosity, and even of the requisite
editorial space, in highly esteemed journals and bulletins), then to inquire
into the ascertainable causes of that protracted state of affairs. By way of
acid test we may switch our attention, once more, to the domain of
Palaeo-Indo-European studies (at that time at the zenith of their growth), as
cultivated mainly on the European continent at the turn of the century. We
can accomplish this, I submit, by subjecting to almost random scrutiny the
fat Vol. XXXVI, of the year 1900, of what was then easily the world's most
prestigious periodical on the subject: the Zeitschrift fiir vergleichende
Sprachforschung, launched by Adalbert Kuhn almost half a century before.
Our initial impression is not unencouraging, as we discern, appended to
the 500-page volume, a meticulously subdivided word index running to
almost sixty pages, alongside a preceding topical index of merely thirteen
pages. But that first impression of facing a sort of lexico-etymological
paradise quickly turns out to be illusory. Of words purposefully cited in that
context there was indeed an undeniable wealth, but - with relatively
meagre exceptions - the search for them was palpably subordinated to goals
other than major etymological schemes or breakthroughs.
As we look less hastily into the arrangement of the volume, we recognize
before long, as the major chunks, articles (not infrequently of impressive
size and often contributed by highly regarded investigators who are still
vividly remembered today) which deal, above all, with comparative phono-
logy and, on a more modest scale, with morphology. As spokesmen for the
cause of Proto-Indo-European phonology, that inner sanctum of the
discipline at the given juncture, we encounter, in quick succession, H.
Pedersen, E. Zupitza and (writing from far-off Russia) F. Fortunatov; the
last-mentioned also delves separately into Sanskrit phonology. That
Swedish expert, K. J. Johanson, contributes a piece of crushing weight on
Indo-European initial b-. Then his Danish counterpart Pedersen reverts to
the jousts, this time with an even longer item on the gutturals in Albanian.
Morphology barely holds its own thanks to the attention that Johannes

53
Etymology
Schmidt, qua Hellenist, lends to a pair of numerals and to nominal plural
formation.
Lexis is also represented, I hasten to add, but not quite on a par with
phonology, as regards size and depth of the individual contributions.
Relevant in this respect are not such trivial facts, all told, as the incomparably
greater length of H. Zimmer's contribution here to Old Irish grammar than
the same noted Celticist's light-winged ensemble of eight lexical notes on
different members of the favoured subfamily, or as the involvement,
passim, in lexico-etymological or onomastic probings of such relative
second-raters as Oswald Richter, Richard Meister, Willy Foy, or Wilhelm
Luft (their names are practically forgotten today). Far more symptomatic of
the prevailing Zeitgeist seem to be certain matters of emphasis and
interpretation. Thus, H. Hiibschmann, certainly a major figure by any
standards, presents as a single offering an attractive combination of a
quintet of lexical studies (with raw data culled from Old and Modern
Persian, and also from Old Armenian) and one overtly phonological
inquiry, but apparently does not hesitate to title the whole 'Zur persischen
Lautlehre", thus clearly and explicitly subordinating etymological to phono-
logical analysis. In other instances, it is not the ancillary status accorded to
word study as such that causes a shock to present-day readers, but the
earlier tendency to group etymological observations with exegetic remarks
(for example, the proposed emended reading of difficult lines of some
privileged text) as a sort of bric-a-brac. Other writers consistently mix
random grammatical and lexico-etymological comments, as can be said of
that highly competent student of Irish, Whitley Stokes. A similar ingredient
of haphazardness seems to pervade the, otherwise no doubt meritorious,
but conspicuously patchy, contributions by Albert Thumb and Paul
Kretschmer. The former combined into a single package, as it were,
inquiries into three Greek, two Albanian, and five Gothic words, the latter
concocted a miscellany from a much briefer examination of one Latin and
two Greek lexical items. The total impression left by such strategies was that
etymology was doomed to concern itself with residual problems that
somehow refused to be smoothly fitted at once into the commanding
grandiose structure of phonology and allied grammatical disciplines. To
clear away that more or less embarrassing residue, a loose collection of,
ideally, brief notes was all that was, strictly speaking, needed or welcome.
As one could, not so long ago, hear certain veteran scholars remark,
etymological conjectures are, in essence, footnotes to exercises in historical
grammar, the implication being that footnotes, in most instances, can be
safely skipped by readers who happen to be in a hurry.

54
 The first half of the twentieth century

The situation here described was singularly disadvantageous for any

further growth of etymology as an autonomous discipline, chiefly because it
was associated with the reckless atomization of knowledge and, indepen-
dently, because its pursuit was haunted, so rumour had it, by an excessive
dosage of subjectivity and haphazardness. This unpromising state of affairs
clamoured for some speedy remedy.
One quick way out was simply to exclude etymology from the alliance of a
serious linguist's legitimate concerns - undoubtedly, at a certain price.
Ferdinand de Saussure decided to strike such an attitude towards the start of
this century in the experimental lecture courses he delivered before small
elitist audiences in Geneva on 'general linguistics' or, as one might be
tempted to rephrase the topic at present, on linguistic theory. As if to drive
home his point even more energetically, Saussure declared that a linguist's
eagerness to extend his curiosity to 'folk etymology", was perfectly defen-
sible while he brushed off the serious quest for word origins as a pursuit far
too whimsical and, consequently, too idle to qualify for recognition among
analytically minded practitioners of the arcane discipline. The heavy price
he paid was the incipient subordination, at first by himself and later by a
widening circle of closer disciples and other followers, of diachrony to
synchrony. Fortunately, for the well-being of etymologists the world over,
his trenchantly worded advice was not immediately heeded.
An alternative solution to abdication was for etymologists the gradual
abandonment of certain objectionable practices - including the scattering of
flimsy contributions- apparently dear to a whole generation of pre-1900
trail-blazers. Essentially, the task before their successors was to replace the
inveterate habit of stirring up dust-clouds of loosely floating conjectures by
publishing scries of substantial, memorable, and well-organized articles of
appropriate length.
The transmutation of trifling, disconnected, anecdotally flavoured notes
into significant articles could be achieved in several ways. One approach to
that goal was the preparation of a sort of retrospective dossier or record of
earlier attacks on the given issue - outlining what French scholarship
pointedly calls Thistorique du probleme". This possibility fell, so to speak,
into the lap of each practitioner (provided he had the necessary knack for
dramatizing the zigzags of the reconstructed discussion) simply because a
steadily increasing number of authoritative, if not infrequently conflicting,
pronouncements was rapidly becoming available. A layman, at best casually
interested in the provenance of certain proper names or words, will
ordinarily be satisfied with consulting the latest available edition or printing
of some standard dictionary recommended to him. Not so the expert. He
55
Etymology
realizes that the second edition (1924) of Erich Berneker's (unfortunately,
incomplete) Slavic etymological dictionary (1908-14) involved bare reprint-
ing, but he also knows that Alois Walde's revised Latin etymological
dictionary (1910), even though issued scarcely four years after the comple-
tion of the original version, carried with it a heavy quota of revision, as did
the successive editions of August Scheler's pioneering dictionary of French,
of Diez's comparative dictionary of six Romance languages, and so on.
Greater piquancy attaches to the fact of celebrated 'Schlimmbesserungen',
i.e., unintentional changes for the worse. Of approximately every ten
improvements upon Diezian conjectures proposed by his principal successor
Meyer-Liibke, it is estimated that one, in the end, turned out to be a step
back rather than forward. Even more embarrassingly, the same specialist, in
polishing or updating an earlier piece from his own pen against the prospect
of some new edition, occasionally slipped and offered an inferior interpreta-
tion. A few instances to that effect can be culled from Meyer-Lubke's
otherwise deft revision (1904—6) of his chapter previously written for the
original edition (1888) of Grober's encyclopaedia. Then there are supple-
ments, by younger fellow-scholars, to dictionaries - obsolescent or left
incomplete - compiled by deceased predecessors (e.g., Scheler's to those
by Diez and Grandgagnage), as well as thorough revisions proposed by
aggressive publishers, witness J. B. Hofmann's recasting of Walde's afore-
mentioned venture in the field of Latin. If one recalls that the eighteenth
edition (1960) - long thought to be definitive - of Friedrich Kluge's fabu-
lously successful Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache not only
included the dialect geographer Walter Mitzka's additions and qualifica-
tions, but also contained the fruits of earlier editions by Alfred Gotze, Hans
Krahe, and Alfred Schirmer ever since the eleventh edition (1934). then it
will immediately dawn on today's practitioner that one cannot, in fairness to
all parties involved, operate with the latest 'Kluge' alone, given its
composite character and the partial identifiability of the many confluent
sources of thinking. Add to these book-length treatises the myriads of
verdicts reached in lengthy book reviews, page-filling notes, and the like,
and you will grant that, with a measure of patience and good will, a richly
orchestrated chorus of not infrequently dissenting opinions can be brought
together. Whether these are tersely listed in the opening paragraph of an
article gradually gaining momentum or, even worse, in a compressed
footnote to it, or expanded into a highly readable digest of a protracted
controversy will depend on the talent and intentions of the writer busy with
drawing the balance sheet, of a protracted discussion or on the accompany-
ing circumstances.

56
 The first half of the twentieth century

With all due allowance for the amenity of such an elegant recreation of a
significant, long-lasting controversy (one thinks of the fluctuating discussion
that has lasted decades on the background of the French verbs aller and
trouver), the idea that the injection of such an ingredient could help scholars
transform nonchalantly tossed-off etymological conjectures into weighty
articles of strategic value is, in the long run, untenable. The unravelling of a
plot, with etymologists portrayed either as its protagonists or as the
detectives in charge, presupposes on the part of the narrator a literary talent
rather than a gift for fresh linguistic insights. Moreover, any accumulation
of such spicy reports could easily become counterproductive. What we have
identified here is just an occasionally welcome infusion.
In addition to trying to increase the volume of competing analytical
conjectures one could defensibly aim at operating with an expanded (not
just inflated) inventory of linguistic facts under inquiry. The philosophy
behind that tactical step is the realization that the genetic explanation
sought for, to be truly convincing, would have to fit not an isolated fact, but
a larger number of forms and uses. The more neatly such facts could be
documented and illustrated along the axes of (a) time, (b) space (or area),
and (c) the speaker's social status (in almost free variation with the level of
the literary discourse where texts are at issue), the more persuasive would
be the proponent's hypothesis. The approach might be - and, as a matter of
fact, was tried out with impunity - on the level of conventional old-time
philology, as when some cross-temporal concordance - by definition full
to the brim with delicately nuanced lexical data - has been put to use for
a maximum yield of forms outwardly and/or semantically varied. One
thinks of succinct etymological comments parenthetically wedged into the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae of the five German Academies (principally
Munich).
Still with regard to the broadening of the factual foundation and the
built-in possibility of combining the purely identificational gambit with a
more cause-oriented approach, there has been in existence, almost from
time immemorial, a strong degree of curiosity about synonyms and near-
synonyms among those tilling the mutually adjoining fields of rhetoric
(stylistics) and didactics. If two or three lexical units designating the same
object are, or should be, freely available to the educated speaker or writer,
how would he be best advised to discriminate effectively among (x), (y), and
conceivably, (z)? If we add to this picture the newly awakened dimension of
historical competence, our sophisticated explorer (and, occasionally, even
the inquisitive active user) will at once be tempted to re-formulate the
previous question along a slightly different line: how was it possible that for
57
Etymology
a single seemingly indivisible concept there should have sprouted, within
the same speech community, several competing expressions - (x), (y), and,
perhaps, (z)? The scholar, previously exposed to such training as was
imparted in the late nineteenth century, and thus familiar at first hand with
various chronological layers of the given lexicon as well as with a number of
dialectal varieties of the language at issue (not to forget its cognates), will
tend to segregate, at the outset, the etymological transparent formations
from their genetically impervious counterparts. He will then attempt to
draw certain increasingly bold conclusions from the latter's record, in terms
of time, locus, milieu, literary effect aimed at, relation to congeners, and
the like. The more (near-)synonyms can be marshalled for such reciprocal
elucidation, the more solid, as a rule, will be the cross-connections
(encroachments, etc.) that one can expect to establish among them. Thus
the copiousness and accuracy of the record, along with the semantic fineness
of all brush-strokes executed in synonymic analysis, become virtual guaran-
tees of genuine progress in etymologizing.
In this particular context, the techniques of eliciting, assembling, and
projecting the data that underlie certain analyses that may be potentially
rewarding for etymology are less than relevant. As early as 1895, for
example, Ernst Tappolet, in a distinguished Zurich thesis on Romance
kinship terms, used a profusion of French and Italian dialect dictionaries to
collect the local terms for 'grandfather', 'uncle', 'daughter-in-law', and so
on, preparing in the process a small dossier for each etymologically
controversial cross-dialectal word; by way of support, a few cartographic
interpretations of the facts thus established appeared, relegated to a
supplement. Other students of the same inspired Zurich teacher, Louis
Gauchat, shortly thereafter had recourse to questionnaire-style correspon-
dence with selected informants, whose ranks did not necessarily exclude
middle-class people, or even intellectuals.
Jules Gillieron, the celebrated dialect geographer (and a revolutionary by
temperament), reversed Tappolet's sequence of procedures by starting out
from projections, onto geographic maps, of data observed by a trusted
field-worker, Edmond Edmont, who had agreed to record, in narrow
phonetic script, utterances made, preferably, by humble peasant folk in
response to a cleverly devised questionnaire. Only after establishing, and
making accessible, the relevant maps, between 1902 and 1910, did Gillieron
proceed to analyse a series of lexical problems in studies of varying length
and technicality, among which the pamphlet (1917) and, one year later, the
monograph-sized inquiry into the names of the bee (ef, avette, mouche a
miel, abeille) rightly occupy a place of honour. Before long, Gillieron's

58
 The first half of the twentieth century

dramatic appeals to the repercussions of collisions between (or to threaten-

ing clashes of) homophones, to false regression, to folk-etymological
re-interpreation, and the like, i.e., to previously somewhat neglected (yet,
by no means wholly unknown) processes in establishing, confirming, or
trying to eliminate etymological equations, became familiar to every
practitioner, the world over, of the art or science of etymologizing. What
matters most, however, in the present context is not his notorious display of
fireworks, but his preference for massive documentation - hundreds upon
hundreds of meticulously localized dialect records of coeval rival expres-
sions for the same concepts spread over major territories - a predilection
that he and his fellow-countryman Tappolet shared, however profound
the differences between their respective styles and techniques. These
techniques were destined indirectly to rejuvenate etymology, even though
those scholars' immediate target, I repeat, was lexicology, which was
overtly descriptive and, by implication, also diachronic.
The launching of an appropriate tag for this sort of updated synonymies
couched in acceptably scientific terms must be credited to Adolf Zauner, a
student of Meyer-Liibke's in Vienna and, eventually, Hugo Schuchardt's
successor in nearby Graz. In presenting his sensationally successful Habilita-
tionsschrift (1902) on Romance anatomical terms, he de-emphasized the
cartographic approach (for all its instantaneous impact on the reader and its
sundry fieldwork paraphernalia). But he could boast among other compen-
satory advantages over both Tappolet and Gillieron, in addition to the
latter's coterie of early followers, his thorough acquaintance with Gascon
(Bearnais) and, above all, with Hispano-Romance. In the subtitle to his
book-sized thesis, he had recourse to the newly-minted label 'onomasiol-
ogy', coined in contradistinction to 'semasiology' (a term which, in those
years, was a widely-accepted substitute for 'semantics'). Zauner expertly
discussed the Romance progeny of scores of Latin names - recorded or
safely reconstructed - for parts of the human body: bucca, cilium, cor,
cubitus, gen-iculuml-uculum, gingiua, maxilla, mola, ndsus, pectus, uenter,
etc., but in so doing he also isolated, placed mentally on a relevant map,
then linked through bonds of synonymy, dozens of words of uncertain,
disputed, or entirely enigmatic background, thus creating a meaningful
context for further, more leisurely investigations, to be conducted pref-
erably by others. The key term 'onomasiology'. however, has never been
fully adopted on a world scale in the end. This fiasco could have been due to
the rapid decline of its nomenclatural counterpart, 'semasiology'. (Zauner's
own decline in the three concluding decades of his life, 191CM0, may, sadly
enough, have been a contributing factor.)

59
Etymology

Apart from the crystallization, in several places, of sustained concern

about Thistorique du probleme' and from the committed specialist's
self-immersion (taken almost for granted henceforth) in the study of a given
word's actual record (traceable in the parallel contexts of direct documenta-
tion, synonymy, and geographic location), one more line of curiosity
became visible shortly after the turn of the century, tending to transmute
the preceding period's etymological notes - often mere trial balloons - into
richly developed articles and monographs. What is at issue here is the rapid
rise of attention given to material civilization (German Sachforschung) as a
constituent branch of ethnography or anthropology; that interest lent itself
to smooth combining with dialectologically coloured linguistics (German
Sprachforschung) in general, and with lexicology in particular. The resulting
blend, which further lent itself to absorbing a sprinkling of information
about folklore, clearly held out a promise of furthering the course of
unhurried, multidimensional etymology - but at a certain price which
perhaps, at the start, was not properly recognized.
In 1909 Heidelberg's prestigious Carl Winter publishing firm launched a
new journal, W'drier und Sachen, its slant being editorially defined as
'kulturhistorisch'. It catered for several groups of experts: Indo-
Europeanists, Germanists, Romanists, students of exotic cultures, and the
like; this quality of cosmopolitanism was at that point almost unprecedented
in the intellectual strongholds of Central Europe. The publisher made
allowance for the inclusion of pertinent pictorial material: drawings, maps,
and photographs. The journal heavily stressed those ingredients of a given
language that unobtrusively lent themselves to imagerial representation: the
names of utensils, of pieces of furniture, of containers, and the like. It
offered no logical place for investigating more abstract ingredients of lexis:
prepositions, for example, or conjunctions, or adjectives, or even verbs. To
the extent that shape, size, and colour may co-determine the name of an
object, etymological inquiries into the nomenclatural reverberations of such
qualities derived encouragement from the regular appearance of such a
large-format de luxe vehicle for advanced research and of equally sump-
tuous book-length supplements to it.
Since the slogan Worter und Sachen effectively ruled out any appeal to
conventional phonology and to the inflectional wing of morphology, as well
as to syntax, calling instead for concentration on lexis, and in particular
lexical semantics, it was a foregone conclusion that all facets of lexicology
(including its newly defined component of onomasiology) would be heavily
represented in the 1909 venture, which was spearheaded by Rudolf
Meringer and Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke, together with the Germanist Rudolf
60
 The first half of the twentieth century

Much, the Slavicist Matija Murko, and the Finno-Ugricist J. Mikkola. But
there was nothing in their programmatic message that might have guaran-
teed a high degree of visibility to etymology - defined as the systematic
search for word origins, whether the genetic links involved were merely
revised or newly identified - despite the widely prevailing climate of
undiluted historicism. In point of fact, pure, uncommitted etymology, so the
editorial team's manifesto declared, would at best be marginally tolerated.
In reality, however, loyalty to the cause of etymology became from the start
one of the rallying points for the newly recruited team and its followers.
Let us consider, as we did before, the contents of a single volume, this
time of the one that opened the series, proudly announcing the inclusion of
175 illustrations (both drawings and photographs), in addition to two maps;
Meyer-Lubke's name being the one familiar to us from before, we im-
mediately notice the inclusion of two major articles from his pen.
In the first (pp. 28-39) the starting point is a given form, reduced to an
algebraic skeleton (BAST-), seen initially as the kernel of a single word-
family or word-clan (Wortsippe), with the author's and his readers' atten-
tion, which is semantically coloured, glued to the individual Romance
vernaculars. The aim of the experiment is to demonstrate that, upon closer
inspection, Friedrich Diez turns out to have been mistaken in operating with
a single base (Greek basldzein 'to support'). Actually, two independent
starting points must be posited, one Greek, the other Germanic, to the
virtual exclusion of any contact between them that is conducive to subse-
quent conflation.
The second, even more elaborate article by the same author is concerned
with certain varieties of threshing equipment, including their respective
names (pp. 211-^4). The novelty consists in the use Meyer-Liibke makes of
Gillieron's atlas, as if to counterbalance the forty graphic illustrations
provided. Further guidance was proffered by Max Leopold Wagner, at that
stage a mere beginner. Here Meyer-Liibke fails to attack any single
etymological key issue, but, starting out, again and again, from parts of the
thresher's equipment (for example, the flail) and the movements he
performs (for example, treading), and taking into account even the testimo-
nies of the Old Testament and of Classical Antiquity, he subjects to scrutiny
dozens of etymological conjectures proposed by Latinists, Hellenists,
Celticists, Germanists, and others. He emphasizes the tools' functions and
the meaning of their labels. All in all, it is a magisterial performance.
Etymology is no less prominently represented in a whole cluster of
medium-sized inquiries by Rudolf Meringer, pieces subsumed under the
title 'Sprachlich-sachliche Probleme". His fundamental concern is with
61
Etymology
nuclear meanings, often difficult to ascertain, of individual words which,
once their etymologies have been securely established, can sometimes be
paired off, such as Greek spendo and Latin spondeo, which Meringer
declares himself ready to associate with Latin pendo 'to weigh' and pendeo
'to be hanging' (pp. 177-81). Particularly entertaining and original are
Meringer's attempts to connect etymologically German Brticke 'bridge'
(originally 'Priigelweg iiber sumpfige und morastische Stellen') and Braue
'eyebrow', while strictly excluding the seemingly mediatory meaning 'arch'
(pp. 187-92), with a parallel discussion of the rcconstructible primitive
meaning of Latin ports 'bridge' appropriately attached to it (pp. 192-9).
From lucubrations such as these, and from Rudolf Much's witty note on
'Word and Man' (in which he interprets German Schalk 'scamp', 'rogue',
'knave', or rather the pristine use of that derogatory word in terms of Klotz
'log'. Mump", 'stump', Mout', 'clod'), one infers that certain provinces of
etymological research, among them some of the visually most entertaining
stretches for the analyst and his readers, formed for better or worse the very
backbone of the nascent Worter und Sachen approach.
A few atypical, i.e., conventionally slanted notes, all of them overtly
etymological, by Matija Murko, Sextil Pus,cariu, and Carlo Salvioni (on
Slovene, Romanian, and a combination of Romaunsch and Lombard)
appeared in smaller print as a token of their hierarchical subordination. The
cross-cultural lead article, also by the indefatigable Meringer, dissected the
names of primitive tools used in pounding cereals (club, pestle, hammer),
compared with those devised to grind them into powder (the author
contrasted the pinsere with the molere series). Characteristically, Franz
Pogatscher's exhaustive indexes to the volume fell into a 'Worterverzeichnis'
(pp. 245-57) and a 'Sachverzeichnis' (pp. 258-62). The latter referred the
reader to the various tools and containers that had been paraded before his
eyes. What causes surprise, in retrospect, is not so much the absence of an
index Nominum', i.e., a list of cited authorities, as the fact that no reliable
clue was provided to the various grammatical processes and semantic
phenomena which, at least concomitantly, had also constantly come up for
bare mention or more incisive discussion.
It is arguable that some of the article-sized contributions to the journal
volume here chosen for discussion were also, in the last analysis, clusters of
notes. Even if one takes such a sceptical view, it should, in all fairness, be
admitted at once that the constituent 'notes' of an article - such as those,
here adumbrated, by Meringer and Meyer-Liibke - were no longer loosely
arranged collections of anecdotal conjectures. They were meaningfully and
often stimulatingly connected by a single unifying thread - a provocative
62
 The first half of the twentieth century

point in need of documentation. (And, in the process, they sometimes made

good reading as well.) Glimpses of dialect geography and pictorial represen-
tations of objects were, as a rule, still kept apart. Their eventual union was
later to convert such studies into objets de luxe.
The year 1909 certainly fell short of marking the actual start of the trend
here outlined; as a matter of fact, one of its prime movers, Hugo
Schuchardt, either through sheer coincidence or private whim, was not at all
represented (not even passively as a reviewee) in the opening volume of the
journal that was to build a bridge between organized linguistics and
Sachkunde (the branch of science dealing with inert objets, we recall). To
improve our grasp of the sequence of events we may well remind ourselves
that as early as 1901 the Graz scholar had published, in a journal not
insignificantly titled Globus, a medium-sized article concerned with the
lexical implications of 'sickle and saw", "sickle and dagger'. Schuchardt was
from the outset a staunch individualist himself and. as late as 1925, an
outspoken, militant champion for the cause of individualism in advanced
research. He cultivated, in part consecutively, in part in a strange pattern of
overlaps, several mutually complementary styles of etymological probing,
so that various groups of scholars, not infrequently of different tastes and
persuasions, could with almost equal justification claim him as a trail-blazer
and as their immediate predecessor. The main reason for ushering him in at
this juncture is the fact that, through his lengthy bipartite monograph
Romanische Etymologien (1898-9), generously sponsored by a well-endowed
Vienna Academy, he became a co-founder, if not the chief architect, of a
type of leisurely and circumstantially conducted etymological inquiry in
which grammatical conditions (e.g., points of morphology) and crucial facts
of material civilization (i.e., correlated techniques of fact-finding) were not
only coordinated with the search for certain elusive etyma, but were utterly
subordinated to that search. These stubborn experiments - not necessarily
always successful - with an occasionally (by no means consistently) re-
versed hierarchy constituted Schuchardt's claim to leadership in the field
here under investigation.
Schuchardt thus remained completely immune from any suspicion that he
was incapable of engaging in the more traditional sorts of historico-
comparative research, in which etymological identification amounted to a
routine operation engaged in for the sake of some superior (or ulterior)
goal. This goal might be the establishment of all-important sound cor-
respondences, or the tracing of itineraries for borrowings, including charac-
teristic migratory words. In his earlier writings, he had striven to accomplish
precisely that, as when, in his celebrated Habilitationsschrift (1870),
63
Etymology
approved by a university as exacting in matters of linguistic methodology as
was Leipzig in those days, he painstakingly scrutinized certain noteworthy
instances of conditioned sound change in the Western Rhaeto-Romance
dialect of Grisons ('Churwalsch' = 'Graubiindner'), singling out for cur-
sory, almost casual mention, practically on every page, either the Latin
bases of selected words, or their French, French-Swiss, and Italian counter-
parts. But having demonstrated his ability to acquit himself of such an
assignment more than satisfactorily, he felt free, thirty years later, to pursue
etymology for its own sake - with an undeniably generous measure of
self-indulgence.
The style in which Schuchardt couched the fruits of his inquiries for
Romanische Etymologien was inimitably personal and bound to have
provoked a good deal of eyebrow-raising. At the outset, he announced the
inclusion, as the third part of the short series, of a discussion of French
mauvais as an outgrowth of ancestral malefdtius, but later refrained from
redeeming his promise. As if by way of compensation, roughly one-fifth of
the concluding part, reserved for French trouver viewed as an outcome of
turbdre (a segment of about fifty pages), was devoted to an excursus which
struck out in a completely unexpected direction. In the context of our own,
inevitably retrospective discussion, such eccentricities may well appear
trivial. It is worth showing, however, why the author needed eighty-one
pages for stating, in the opening part, the reason for French sage ('wise')
and its nearest cognates perpetuating sapidus ('tasty', 'wise'), from Classical
Latin sapere, Folk Latin *sapere, rather than, for example, sapiens, *sapius,
or *sabius, all three congeners either documented or reconstructed.
One excuse for the seemingly unreasonable length of the venture was the
sheer volume of material caught in Schuchardt's net. To demonstrate the
superiority of his thinking, he felt duty-bound to do justice not only to the
key-form sage, but to the Old French by-form saive as well, and to a whole
galaxy of cognates (Old Provengal and modern Occitan savi, sabi, sage;
Catalan sabi, savi; Spanish and Portuguese sabio; Sardic sabiu; Tuscan and
Neapolitan sapio, savio, saggio; Piedmontese and Lombard savi, Veneto
savio, Ladin (Central Rhaeto-Romance) sabi, sabe) to the total exclusion of
Balkan Romance. The second excuse was the need that the author felt for a
point-by-point refutation of rival hypotheses, on the triple basis of the
record (or credibility), the patterns of form, and those of meaning; this
'negative' component of the whole runs to eleven pages. The 'positive' part
would hardly have been much longer, were it not for the author's decision to
insert two excursuses, one of them extra-long (pp. 17-70), in which untold

64
 The first half of the twentieth century

side-issues were thrashed out, most of which could perfectly well have been
dealt with in some different context.
At the risk of digressing, I think it opportune to acquaint the readers, at
least cursorily, with the anatomy of Schuchardt's etymological workman-
ship. There is actually nothing sensationally innovative about the technique
he adopts in the negative section of his inquiry into certain offshoots of
parental sapere. In his discussion of earlier pronouncements by Louis
Francis Meunier, Antoine Thomas, J. Anglade, Francesco Zambaldi,
Gustav Grober, A. Horning, and many others, then, again and again,
Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke - a discussion set in the classical key of a German-
style Auseinandersetzung - the author moves adroitly from form to meaning
or in the reverse direction, discovering, somewhere along his itinerary, the
proper niche for examining the authenticity and, wherever that is possible,
the records of the etyma invoked. Conversely, in executing the appropriate
moves to add to the credibility of his own conjecture, Schuchardt begins to
take great liberties. Thus, between a terse statement (pp. 16-17) on the
semantic split of sapidus ('tasty' vs. 'wise', 'sage') and a fairly succinct
discussion (pp. 71^4) of the growth of the Romance descendants of sapidus
'wise' (with a side-glance at the state of affairs in Cymric), Schuchardt
wedges in a whole string of digressions, and busies himself with: the spread
of regular, as against analogical, *-ius for -idus; the replacement of -idus
either by *-itus, *-ulus, *-icus, or by *-«s via *-ius\ the appeal made to
riibidus by Plautus and a less well remembered literary figure, Symphosius;
the evidence for the rise of *ruspidus, *torquidus, fungidus, *mustidus, and
ruscidus; and, as if all this were not sufficient, the wisdom of reading rustum
rather than ruscum in Virgil.
On top of this overabundance and, consequently, imbalance of miscella-
neous side-issues, the reader discovers to his dismay, towards the end of the
entire venture, another, fortunately smaller, cluster of authorial reflections
(pp. 74-9) on generalities (as distinct from his preceding causerie on
generalities, pp. 1-3). Then he finds, more relevant to the topic at hand,
stray remarks on the use of sapidus 'wise' in Alcimus Avitus and in certain
Latin-German glosses, its function as a Jewish title in a certain tomb
inscription, the service it lends as a cognomen in epigraphy, and its
appearance - in derivative or secondary shape - in the writings of that
ancient grammarian, Virgilius. The monograph ends on an interrogative
note: is Sardic scipidu, the author wonders, by any chance a local blend of
ancestral sapidus and sari? But even that concluding excursus falls short of
clearing away the residual undergrowth, since a number of afterthoughts

65
Etymology

and data belatedly unearthed clutter up the appended Supplement (pp.

79-81).
This oddly zigzagging advance is, on balance, but an extreme instance of
Schuchardt's indisputably masterly, but at the same time uniquely bizarre,
workmanship. Yet, because his example, contrary to his own and to
everyone else's expectations, in the end turned out to be contagious, the
approach illustrated with his analysis of sapidus richly deserves more than
casual mention. To be sure, one is free to state, from today's vantage point,
that most of the embarrassing difficulties might have been smoothed out if
only the author could have been persuaded to prepare two separate, if
reciprocally complementary, monographs: one on the fortunes, in the
daughter languages, of the suffix -idus; the other on the vicissitudes of the
sapere, *-ere family. Hazardous as it always is to try to reconstruct someone
else's thinking, especially after the lapse of so many years, Schuchardt,
surely aware of the leaning of most of his contemporaries towards demoting
a report on sapidus to the rank of a chapter or even a footnote in a
monograph on -idus, may well have decided, in quest of originality, to
attempt to reverse the trend by subordinating his dissection of -idus to a
biographical sketch of the sap-ere, *-ere family.
Schuchardt's prefatory remarks read like a beautifully worded essay, but
pose as many problems as they solve. His perspective is futuristic. He offers
his Romanische Etymologien as samples of what etymological spadework
stands a chance of yielding under optimum circumstances. For obvious
reasons of decorum, the author stops short of elaborating on his own age
and station in life. But does not the sort of research for which he volunteers
to act as a spokesman presuppose an accumulated experience of, shall we,
say, thirty years of continuous research (not to mention a commensurate
degree of sophistication), without which no practitioner of the discipline
could have moved with comparable ease and assurance through some of the
most recondite corners of Classical Antiquity and modern-day circum-
Mediterranean dialect speech? Also, what is ordinarily spoken of as an
'etymology' actually involves at bottom, we learn, formulas for an unavoi-
dably complex, intricate, and, indeed, unique word history; and each such
history notoriously lacks sharp edges ('verflieBt ohne bestimmte Grenzen')
and tends to flow or percolate into some adjacent word history. With such
generous allowance made for individualism (or even for uniqueness), let me
add on my own, imaginative monographs on issues in word history will
easily come to resemble their counterparts in the realms of conventional
history, art history, or the history of literature - a confluence which may
indeed please certain etymologists. But do we not, by the same token, sense

66
 The first half of the twentieth century

lurking here a danger of estrangement from the mainstream of linguistic

inquiries, especially those into certain more 'scientifically' oriented (or, at
any rate, more tightly organized) subdisciplines, such as historical gram-
mar? Any rash adoption of Schuchardt's seductively phrased platform could
thus, under an adverse set of circumstances (as, to be sure, could not have
been anticipated ninety years ago) lead to an alienation, in the future,
between etymology and the aggregate of the more austerely managed, less
aesthetically presided-over, subdisciplines of linguistic science.
Unimpeachable, in contrast, is Schuchardt's assumption - and, simulta-
neously, his excuse for having supplied such liberal documentation - that a
typical etymological problem more often than not falls into a bundle, or
ensemble, of subproblems. Here he comes close to anticipating our
present-day insistence on the likelihood of multiple causation behind most
changes. Equally noteworthy is his mature philosophical view that, the
farther we advance, the more our curiosity is bound to be aroused by the
interplay of major forces at work ('wirkende Ursachen') behind smaller
constellations of individual factors varying from case to case, and that the
ultimate roots of that interplay are apt to be detected in the nature and
conditioning of speakers ('in der Natur und den Umstanden der Sprecher').
It may be worth reminding ourselves, emphatically, that no matter how
far removed from his avowed main target - the secure classification of one
almost pan-Romanic Latin adjective in -idus - some of the side-issues
broached by Schuchardt in 1898 may appear to have been, he actually at no
point strayed far from discussing exclusively linguistic data.
The latter observation no longer fully applies to the extended tail section
(1899) of Romanische Etymologien which, we recall, had previously been
reserved for a major etymological decision on a particularly moot point: the
provenance of French trouver 'to find' (Old French trover, Provencal
trobar), and their congeners or diffusional reflexes in adjoining territories.
This Vienna Academy monograph runs to well over two hundred pages, and
such features of the 1898 harbinger as here repeat themselves do so on a
discernibly more ambitious, not to say reckless, scale. Thus, the Introduc-
tion, which is concerned with matters of principle, runs to six pages, and is
as a result twice as long as its forerunner. The Supplements require the
extravagant quota of thirty-two pages, and so on. Then again, the range of
languages and dialects tapped is distinctly wider this time. In addition to the
predictably copious Romance material (including Romanian), we stumble
over a profusion of Greek, Germanic, Slavic, and even Hungarian and
Basque forms, not to mention Latin proper at all its levels and in all its
guises.
67
Etymology
Having familiarized himself with some of the learned author's eccentrici-
ties, the reader will hardly be shocked to discover that the actual dissection
of trouver (and also of Italian trovare, as well as the semantically deviant
Rhaeto-Romance truvar) starts only on p. 54. The preceding forty-eight
pages are given over to the discussion of French gilet 'waistcoat', 'vest', from
Turkish jelek, and of certain words for large and small bells (campana, nola,
*clocca). The last-mentioned lexical type, especially in its protean by-forms
(*cochlea, etc.), gives rise to a fascinating pedigree of variant forms and
variant meanings - a congeries of problems only typologically or program-
matically related to the vicissitudes of turbdre, in which the author now
dimly recognizes the ancestor of trouver. After agreeing to discount
Schuchardt's meandering pattern of advance, the patient reader is rewarded
not only by a fancy family tree of forms (p. 13), but also by tidy drawings of
traditional tools and appliances: distaffs and spindles, fishing gear, and so
on (pp. 39, 95-6). Only the gaudy, multicoloured maps and appropriate
photographs are still missing.
The clue to some of Schuchardt's day-dreaming that gave rise to such a
provocative monograph is embodied in his none-too-short Preface or
Introduction ('Prinzipielles'), which he allowed to become something of a
manifesto. Here one finds preempted the future programme of the Worter
und Sachen school of thought, except that the wording favoured by the
author was slighly different: he wavered between 'Worter und Dinge' and
'Worter und Bilder". Before long, these pages became the fountainhead of
inspiration for subsequent followers, especially in Central Europe, of the
"Volkstum und Kultur' perspective, i.e., of the approach practising the
integration of (a) pure lexicology (with increasingly heavy stress laid on
nouns, especially those designating such objects as tools and containers), (b)
the exploration of regional rural customs, costumes, and folk beliefs (or
superstitions), and (c) finely drawn pictorial representations, alternating
with supplements or companion volumes ('albums') of deftly taken photo-
graphs. Of all this pitifully little was available, even in fairly primitive form,
before 1898.
In retrospect, several of the stimulating ideas here expounded and
dramatized, some of them for the first time, appear sensible and have been
adopted by several generations of etymologists. Close attention to meaning
and to all sorts of secondary and tertiary associations rooted in 'folk-culture'
is indeed relevant, and in certain instances the importance of the semantic
or imagerial factor may, beyond a shadow of a doubt, outweigh that of
purely formal considerations, for example, the testimony of regular sound
correspondences, which, after all, can be overruled. Yet, for all his
68
 The first half of the twentieth century

enthusiasm, the author clearly overreached himself. A practising etymol-

ogist's private diary, in which he is beyond dispute welcome to record - for
his own exclusive use - any sort of resemblance of graphic or acoustic
contour, and the like, between two, or among any number of, lexical units,
must not be confused with the unavoidably selective presentation of just
those facts which, upon mature reflection, have been found to be of
immediate usefulness in the given, formally announced context, to the
exclusion of any display of chattiness. After all, an artist's sketchbook is not
to be mistaken for a finished drawing or painting.
Another token of Schuchardt's outlandish performance was his refusal to
grasp the unbridgeable gap between a methodological guide and a neces-
sarily austere, self-limited monograph. While part of the overflow of his
broad ideas on etymologizing at its most haunting could indeed be illus-
trated with episodes of the eighteen transmutations of clocca adduced
(coda, cokila, clocia, clocula, cloca, cocila, etc.), and while certain imagi-
native designations of 'cockchafer', 'bubble', 'tuft bunch', 'bung plug tap",
"notch of a distaff, 'to crouch squat', and also of a flower known as
'harebell' or 'bluebell', indisputably seem relevant (not to mention indi-
vidual reflexes of musculus, literally 'little mouse', and of an assumed blend
of cusculium "scarlet berry of the holm oak' and cochlea 'bell'), it is still
unclear why all these issues, inherently engrossing as they may be, should
have been subjected to scrutiny in a book-size study of the antecedents of
French trouver. In sum, Schuchardt must be credited with having been
among the first, if not the first, to have felt the need for a novel
methodology in etymological pursuits. But while he correctly sensed the
enormous difference between a grammarian's and a word historian's
approaches to analysis, he tended to exaggerate that polarization and, in so
doing, failed to go far beyond supplying some very general, attractively
phrased, ideas and certain techniques, in addition to a few esoteric and
erudite concrete applications.
Amid all these paraphernalia, exactly what was the central message of
Part II of Schuchardt's daring academy memoir? Meyer-Liibke, of all critics
then available, provided a terse, if friendly, summary of it as early as the
1901 edition of his classic Einfuhrung (see §61), examining the piece in the
broader context of the ever-possible transfer of a given word from one
vocational jargon into another, or into the standard language. (Meyer-
Liibke's stamp of approval was doubly significant, since he and Schuchardt
then ranked as antipodes in most respects.) To paraphrase that epitome and
endorsement: turbdre (in general equivalent to 'stirring, disturbing, throw-
ing into disorder', from turba 'crowd'), among fishermen meant 'hunting
69
Etymology

about, searching everywhere, rummaging' (= German 'herumstobern'),

namely in an effort to drive the fish into appropriate dragnets - a wide-
spread practice indeed. This activity is known among speakers of German as
pulsen, a verb that has remained a technical term, unfamiliar to laymen.
Conversely, in Romance this particular use of turbare (aquam) won wide
acceptance, except that the semantic nuance which triumphed among
speakers at large in the end designated not the start of the activity at issue,
but its crowning accomplishment.
Around this thought-provoking kernel of his conjecture, Schuchardt, as
was his wont, wove a rich tapesty of side-studies and plain excursuses. After
brushing off, in a segment of the fairly short 'negative part' (pp. 54-9) of his
exposition, the candidacies of two Latin and three Germanic lexical types
for the contested place of the etymon, he resolutely plunged into the
advocacy of his own favourite hypothesis by removing from his path, right
from the start, a few moderately embarrassing potential stumbling-blocks
on the side of phonology: metathesis of Ixl, alternation of lol and hi, use of
/b/ in lieu of expected l\l (pp. 59-68).
Only at that point, after the elaborate prelude, was discussion of the
actual semantic ingredient of the many-pronged venture allowed to pick up
momentum. The author abruptly turned to surveying tested imagerial
sources of expressions for 'searching' and 'finding' in the languages of the
world and next offered a 48-page report on the specific fishing technique
and on the equipment or devices geared to it that could plausibly be
suspected of being nomenclaturally involved in the complex bundle of word
histories ('das Pulsen mit Trampen'). There followed a lengthy, anthropolo-
gically flavoured inventory of different makes of fishing nets. Only at that
far-advanced point of intrusion into terra incognita did Schuchardt agree to
revert to his self-imposed lexico-etymological assignment. To signal the
return, there appeared a parade of individual vignettes on fourteen basic
Romance designations - some of them bi- or trifurcated - for the special
fishing technique and the gear peculiar to it that underlie and thus justify the
local speech community's appeal to turbare (pp. 125—41). In their wake one
discovers comments on as many as five Hungarian and several other
non-Romance counterparts (pp. 142-65). This was not all. As the proces-
sion continued, one more cluster of etymological miniatures (all in all,
twelve additional vignettes, preceded by a few pages of wider-ranging
remarks) focused attention on certain varieties of nets named after the
fishing technique under investigation (pp. 165-81). With the end gradually
approaching, the indefatigable author next regaled his readers to some
mercifully succinct and, as usual, sparkling afterthoughts on suffixal derivat-

70
 The first half of the twentieth century

ives and compounds within the confines of the turbdre family: *turb-isc-drey
whose prongs extend into Sardic, Portuguese, and Spanish; con-, dis-
turbare, etc. (pp. 177-87). Mention has already been made of the alarmingly
long and motley list of appended Addenda. The monograph lacks any Index
of Words (not to mention any alphabetic roster of references), so that any
irreverent reader eager to ascertain whether Schuchardt has ever bothered
to assign a niche in his edifice to the faintly conceivable influence of trou
'hole" on trouver would have to reserve long and dreary hours for a search
which might turn out to be frustrating in the end.
Schuchardt's 1899 monograph, which, despite its occasional faults and
flaws, marked a genuine breakthrough, predetermined much that was to
become truly innovative in early twentieth-century etymologizing. It af-
orded insights and raised problems which were conceivably more important
than those that Meyer-Liibke was willing to tackle when he took cognizance
of it after a lapse of three years from its publication date.
For one thing, even if it were true (as was, for a while, firmly believed)
that, as regards sound shifts, each language tends to follow its own
individual course (a state of affairs which, if correctly observed, might save
the Romanist from worrying about sound changes outside his domain, and
vice versa), semantic leaps show no signs of such severe territorial confine-
ment, so that a student of, let us assume, Latin and Romance must not be
discouraged from, or faulted for, citing near-parallels from any language (or
language family) of his choice.
For another thing, etymological inquiry at its most imaginative can and,
under a propitious set of circumstances, by all means should, be conducted
at its own pace and for its own sake. Contrary to late-ninetecnth-century
belief, spontaneous etymological curiosity should not be shackled; above
all, it need not be made ancillary to the compilation of a certain genre of
dictionaries or to the preparation of conventionally slanted historical
grammars. By the same token, the sharply pointed but, as a rule, meagrely
documented etymological note, especially one that enters unobtrusively
into a loosely ordered cluster of such flashes of wit (Einfdlle, Geistesblitze),
is apt, before long, to lose in weight and impact in comparison with the
full-bodied etymological article and, above all, monograph.
Good as Schuchardt's prospects were, by virtue of the numerous real
merits of his Romanische Etymologien (a genuine virtuoso performance)
and, not least, in response to certain eccentricities, to initiate a new trend in
the chosen field, he might not have produced quite such a sensation at the
threshold of the twentieth century were it not for the fact that shortly
afterwards Jules Gillieron, an avowed admirer who was known for his own
71
Etymology

charisma, also became a convert to 'lexicocentricity'. Gillieron achieved this

at the expense of strict adherence to rigid loyalty to phonological evidence.
Yet, unlike his Graz mentor, he applied the new, still heterodox hierarchy
of values to data not exhumed by chance from texts and glossaries, but
vigorously elicited from the lips of unsophisticated native patois speakers.
While Gillieron's shorter interpretative studies, which followed promptly
upon the appearance of the opening fascicles of his major atlas venture, left
no doubt as to the course he intended to steer, the crowning accomplish-
ment of his career as analyst was clearly the impressive 1918 book,
Genealogie des mots qui designent I'abeille . . . . The monograph as a
whole, as its author's debt to Schuchardt's ideology, has been examined
scrupulously by a succession of competent chroniclers of dialect geography
(including the noted team Iorgu Iordan and John Orr, in their deservedly
applauded history of Romance scholarship of 1937), a situation that would
tend to make any attempt at repetition here entirely otiose. But insufficient
emphasis has perhaps been placed so far on Gillieron's peculiar decision to
lace his by no means brief monograph with no fewer than thirteen
appendices - covering a wide range of subjects - which were allowed to
occupy as many as 124 pages. Some of the issues that Gillieron broached on
that occasion indeed pertained to lexicology; their implications were both
wide (concerning, for example, the collision of homonyms, or, for that
matter, folk etymology) and decidedly narrow, as when they covered
essette < es-ep (one of the regional designations of the bee). Others, judging
from the titles at least, impinged on phonology ('Flottement we:e';'s > wes')
or had a morphological flavour ('suffixes masculins dans les prenoms
feminins'). The tactical minutiae and the actual successes thus scored are less
than relevant at this distance from those once exciting events. What matters
instead is the author's resolve to abandon, in the wake of Schuchardt's unpre-
cedented 1887-9 experiment, the old practice of subordinating etymological
discoveries, as if they were little more than mere footnotes, to inquiries which
were differently slanted, in an effort to try out, be it only for once, the
reverse hierarchy. Precisely because of the great differences between the
backgrounds, techniques, and styles of the two scholars involved, their
fundamental agreement on grand strategy should not be overlooked.
The events of the years 1898-1918 have been presented here in almost
disproportionate detail, because of their intrinsic significance and because
they abounded in momentous repercussions (which were in large part
unforeseeable). At this point they entail three afterthoughts.
First, it was certainly not Schuchardt's intention to imply that, to be
respectable, all lexico-etymological studies should be planned on a cyclo-
72
 The first half of the twentieth century

pean scale - a surprising consideration if one takes into account certain

lengthy postscripts from his pen (consisting of replies to critics, or sponta-
neous afterthoughts), which appeared in learned journals, especially be-
tween 1902 and 1904. (The opponents whom he intended to convert to his
approach included such luminaries as Antoine Thomas and E. Herzog.)
What the author, one gathers, was eager to achieve at the turn of the
century was to test the maximum of details and convolutions that an
unhurried etymological discussion could entail, under favourable cir-
cumstances, such as unlimited editorial space. That unique experience, with
all its ramifications, he never sought to duplicate. In the meantime, the flow
of his shorter lexical notes continued unimpeded. Examples include his
notes on the Spanish dendronym madrono and on the Sardic reflexes of
Latin ilex 'holm oak' and cisterna 'subterranean reservoir for water', both
written in response to an Academy memoir by Meyer-Liibke. Conversely,
the professional dialect geographers, by furnishing again and again literally
hundreds of forms which revolved around the same need, made monument-
ality almost obligatory and ended up by injecting into it a certain monotony.
Second, Schuchardt, an Indo-Europeanist by training (to be specific, a
student of August Schleicher at Jena) and in addition a generalist of his own
volition, raised the prestige of Romance scholarship - up to then, a
stepchild - on the international arena. The role that he played in this
applies in particular to his involvement in all sorts of etymological issues. In
a matter of a decade or so, etymologizing in the Romance languages became
a trail-blazing, downright fashionable activity. Younger Romance scholars
would organize pilgrimages to his home in Graz, especially after his
deliberately early retirement from teaching in 1900. Before long he became
an intellectual hero.
Finally, the very definition of 'etymological trouvaille or windfall' (with its
unavoidable ingredient of sheer luck) underwent a thorough revision in
several directions. The overtones of 'sudden flash of thought', 'discovery
through some lucky coincidence' began to recede into the background and
almost disappeared, since etymological inquiry was henceforth compatible
with long-term plans for systematic research. Moreover, the borderline
between diachronic lexicology and etymology began to blur. What was
needed and what invited publication in an esteemed journal was not
necessarily some 'wild' conjecture that involved several unknowns, and least
of all some hypothetical base manufactured ad hoc. The communication
could perfectly well involve a more solid set of arguments in favour of a
hypothesis already ventilated, even by someone else; or the reconstruction
of a partially hidden itinerary of some word that had long - but until then

73
Etymology
less than persuasively - titillated the minds of far-sighted scholars. What
mattered was the skilful piecing together of the mosaic of a half-concealed
word history.
The impact of dialect geography on the fortunes of twentieth-century
etymology was, of course, to exceed, by a wide margin, its role as abetter
and reinforccr of certain ideas that Schuchardt had previously floated as so
many aesthetically appealing trial balloons. True, geographic maps had
been used, at intervals, before the rise of dialect geography to record any
conspicuous distribution, in space, of certain facts of language. But car-
tographically oriented dialect geography fixed the attention of a practitioner
of etymology on the areal distribution of a given word, with a typology of
configurations of areas gradually emerging from the increasingly sophisti-
cated analyses. After a while, the evidence of the area became almost as
essential to the demonstration of the cogency of an etymological conjecture
as the interplay of certain sound correspondences across the ages ('historical
phonology'). This trend was to reach its peak in the Neolinguistic position,
which carried this reshuffling to its extreme, namely to the - ultimately
almost exclusive - reliance on the given areal pattern. The other direction
of the impetus that dialect geography gave to etymological research was the
refinement of the analyst's perception of the particular milieu (preferably
rural, some theorists and practitioners argued) in which certain usages had
sprouted. It is not inaccurate to contend that dialect geography, especially
in its less crude shape, served as a stepping stone to present-day sociolin-
guistics.
In sum, the various innovations tried out by the aggressive schools of
dialect geographers, in addition to the perspectives opened up by those
daring reformers contributed substantially to the creation of an avant-garde
variety of etymology which had been entirely non-existent before 1900.
Schuchardt's unshakable prestige lent that genre a modicum of respectabil-
ity, while Gillieron's inflammatory message held out the promise of eagerly
awaited novel techniques. Yet both scholars here cited had originally been
attracted to the fold of linguistics by the drama of sound change implied by
the record of sound variations. Their subsequent conversion to diachronic
lexicology and, finally, to etymology proper as its logical outcome required
a good deal of experience and much thinking and, as a result, an
appropriate length of time. The same holds true for some of the other
pace-setters of the 'new etymology', whatever the itinerary they chose for
their intellectual pilgrimage.
Let us take the case of Theodor Frings (1886-1969), whose meteoric rise
carried him from a Marburg doctorate, promptly earned in 1910, to a chair
74
 The first half of the twentieth century

in Germanics (1917-27) at Bonn, fairly close to his home town of Dulken.

He then moved a professorship to far-off Leipzig, and eventually became
President of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. At the start, virtually nothing
in the record of his accomplishments as a young investigator presaged such a
course of future events. In the company of other relative neophytes and
guided by a resourceful dialectologist, Ferdinand Wrede (who in turn had
inherited from the actual founder, Georg Wenker, his dialectological
bequest of the Linguistic Atlas of Germany), Frings prepared, for the
monograph series 'Deutsche Dialektgeographie', a circumstantial treatise,
Studien zur Dialektgeographie des Niederrheins zwischen Diisseldorf und
Aachen, which closely resembled a few slightly older links of the same
chain, namely thesis-style inquiries by Jacob Ramisch and Erich Leihener.
Heavy emphasis was placed in all three (and in others that speedily followed
upon them in the same series and displayed a strikingly similar format) on
conspicuous points of phonology and morphology, usually to the exclusion
of syntax, in search of isoglosses ('Linie x —» y —* z'). While lexical units
were assembled, meticulously transcribed, lavishly glossed, and minutely
localized, the last thought that might have occurred to the compilers of the
word list, or of the model sentences elicited from native speakers, would
have been any preoccupation with the distant extraction of those pieces
(except that Leihener condescended to annotate the presence of 220
Gallicisms in his rich haul of regionalisms).
But Frings was no inferior or even average representative of narrow
dialectological curiosity. In a matter of a decade or two, he rose from being
an apprentice dialect geographer to the far more enviable rank of a
Kulturgeograph, a tag which one would be tempted to equate with 'student
of cultural diffusion' were it not for the indisputable fact that 'culture', in
English, and Kultur, in German, normally have far from the same referen-
tial scope. He achieved his goals by learning early on to synthesize minutely
sifted insights, by collaborating closely with an astonishing range of other
scholars (not infrequently chosen on the grounds of reciprocal complemen-
tarity), and by refusing to succumb to the charm of any particular technique
or giddy terminology.
Equipped with this armour, Frings, by the time he reached his mid-
thirties, had achieved the following:

(a) He vigorously expanded the area of his active curiosity and expertise,
advancing from research in Die rheinische Akzentuierung (1916), Die
siidniederla'ndischen Mundarten (1921), and Rheinische Sprachge-
schichte. Ein Oberblick (1924) to inquiries into Saxon and into the rise
75
Etymology

of Standard German: Die Grundlage des meijienischen Deutsch. Ein

Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der deutschen Hochsprache (1936);
(b) He learned how to operate with the total temporal extension of the
chosen language, not just with key segments, as in his Grundlegung
einer Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (1948, 2nd edn 1950);
(c) He became immersed in the oeuvre of an intellectual giant and
generalist of the stature of Eduard Sievers (1933);
(d) He gradually moved from phonology to lexicology, a shift culminating
in his decision to carve out, in collaboration with Elisabeth Karg-
Gasterstadt, a dictionary of Old High German (1952-) from the piles
of notes which Elias von Steinmeyer had left behind;
(e) He became interested in issues in literary history, both medieval and
modern. He took as his starting point texts and salient figures of the
literary scene closely connected with specific dialect areas familiar to
him from previous exposure to linguistic geography. A meandering
path led from two lectures Uber die neuere vldmische Literatur (1918)
to three monographic studies on the elusive medieval poet Heinrich
von Veldeke (1949), reserving an extra dosage of attention for the
latter's Eneide (1964-5);
(f) Having firmly acquired a tight control of linguistic and literary
investigation, Frings, now at the height of his powers, plucked up the
courage to attack broad problems of social organization, to the extent
that they were reflected in lexis and older literature (Die Brautwer-
bung, 1947), or the separate impacts of Antiquity and Christendom on
the crystallization of the German language (1949). In the process, an
initial virtually exclusive concern with Germanics in all its manifesta-
tions began to yield ground to a preoccupation with European culture
viewed as a whole: Europdische Heldendichtung (1938), Minnesinger
und Troubadours (1949).

We have not yet included etymology in our purview. Now, in the early
1930s there occurred certain events which bent Frings's protean curiosity in
that direction, too. In 1932, to be specific, he managed to publish a
medium-sized book which was to exert major influence: Germania Romana.
It included a powerful synthesis of early Latinisms that had percolated into
the German dialects of the Rhine and Danube valleys. Almost simulta-
neously, he published a theoretical pamphlet on speech and settlement,
ethnic by definition: Sprache und Siedlung im mitteldeutschen Osten. The
third event was of a different nature. Largely through Frings's efforts, the
industrious Romanist Walther von Wartburg became attached to the
University of Leipzig. Von Wartburg was devoted to etymologizing, almost
76
 The first half of the twentieth century

to the point of fanaticism, and the occasional collaboration between the two
scholars, who complemented each other's gifts and inspirations in exemp-
lary fashion, led to a series of increasingly pure exercises in etymological
probings, with emphasis on issues in Romano-Germanic lexical and,
broadly, cultural symbiosis. Paradigmatic examples include one piece on
German Hees, French haise, and German Heister, French hetre (1937), and
an elaboration on that article, in response to hostile criticism, the following
year. When Walther von Wartburg, soon after that, moved away from
Leipzig. Frings continued to cultivate etymology on his own, as in his study
of the words for 'willow' (1963), an example of Romano-Germanic sym-
biosis. All lexical and etymological pronouncements by Frings bear the
stamp of his early spadework in dialect geography.
The unusual and impressive instance of Frings's almost simultaneous
espousal of two causes at first glance as disparate as etymology and literary
research may provide the right opportunity for ventilating the issue of a
possible hidden link between the two. To begin with, the case here
mentioned is not as isolated as a casual observer may be inclined to assume.
Let us take the astounding record of inquiries into the provenance of the
Spanish and Portuguese verb tomar 'to take'. After renowned etymologists
of the calibre of Schuchardt or Meyer-Liibke, had fooled around with
unconvincing points of departure (Germanic *tomjan or onomatopoeia -
the noise allegedly produced by a falling object), it was a major literary
scholar, namely Pio Rajna, who in 1919 drew the philologists' attention to
Latin autumdre, a hypothesis soon after endorsed by a consummate
etymologist, namely Jakob Jud. Whether the choice of autumdre 'to affirm,
assent, aver" actually represented the last word in this protracted controver-
sy or should yield right of place to aestumdre 'to estimate, esteem' (either
etymon, to qualify for that role, must be assumed to have suffered a deep
slash of aphaeresis), the salient point in this context is that this conspicuous
achievement was made by a pure literary scholar, not by chance by a
philologist who, like Gustav Grober, managed to straddle linguistic and
literary expertise. One is, of course, free to argue that literary studies, in the
Age of Quellenforschung, required on the part of their practitioners such
fine knowledge, even down to minutiae, of older languages as to have made
it possible for the more gifted among them to hit occasionally (better still,
almost accidentally) on some avidly sought lexical source as well. But this is
not the whole story, since vexing issues in, let us say, phonology and
inflection did not excite or inspire literary savants to the same extent.
The reasons for the affinity, then, must lie deeper. In part, they are due to
the fact that certain words have a haunting biography or a range of
disquieting connotations that have already been on the minds of major
77
Etymology
literary figures even before the advent to prestige and influence of strict
linguistic science. Thus, Arturo Farinelli surely was not the first expert who
became interested in the tortured history of Spanish marrano 'crypto-Jew',
but the sources to be consulted and interpreted for such a study called for
the skill of a pre-eminently literary scholar. A combination of flair for
literary insights and talent for linguistic analysis stood Carolina Michaelis de
Vasconcelos in good stead when she attacked the problem of Portuguese
saudade 'nostalgia' (from older soidade 'loneliness'), while general familiar-
ity at first-hand with the colonial period of Hispano-American history
(including its literary sources) lent special authority to Pedro Henn'quez
Ureria's inquiries into such exotic words, imported from Spain's overseas
possessions, as tomate and patata. From this point we are free to go one step
further and to state that individual growth, rather than mere obedience to
'laws', or conformity with them, is what best characterizes the convolution
of a typical etymological problem as much as it does the configuration of a
characteristic literary piece or issue.
True, the average prospect of a lexical study that is apt to attract the
attention of an imaginative and many-sided literary scholar is one that
dangles before his eyes the chance to disentangle a series of semantic or
functional shifts to the exclusion of complete etymological unknowns. Thus,
in grappling with the vicissitudes of persona, a Latin word of Etruscan
parentage, Hans Rheinfelder, at the start of his career, obliged Romanists
by discussing nominal Portuguese pessoa vs. (pro)nominal French personne,
as well as Anglicists by virtue of the attention he paid to English parson; but
his sole etymological decision was the genetic separation he advocated of
persona from son-are. In the past, incidentally, most literary scholars have
viewed their brief periods of concern about etymological 'riddles' as unique
marginal experiences, preferably not to be repeated. One paradigmatic
example of such a recoil has been Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel's tacit retreat
from etymologizing after her not entirely successful bout with Classical
Spanish arpado as used in the fixed phrase arpadas lenguas (1951).
As this last example most eloquently demonstrates, one consequence of
the sporadic trespassing of certain literary historians on etymological
territory has been the appearance of extra-heavy documentation, something
unprecedented in the last century. By a strange convergence of tastes and
styles in the presentation of corroborative evidence, the hundreds upon
hundreds of dialectal forms of a given lexical unit that a present-day dialect
geographer has learned to toss in when faced with puzzling situations have
been matched, as regards sheer weight, by an often equal number of
tell-tale passages from ancient texts that a connoisseur of fine literature is in
a position to produce. In either context investigators have learned to work
78
 The first half of the twentieth century
with extra-heavy documentation, the like of which no earlier explorer
picked from the ranks of conventional historical linguists could have
visualized in his wildest dreams.
Not surprisingly, avant-garde ideas about priorities in etymologizing fell
short of meeting with the same degree of enthusiasm in all quarters. Most
controversial among Gillieron's innovative thoughts were those that re-
volved around his stiff opposition to practically all earlier practices and
assumptions. In the ranks of his direct followers one finds those who
became enthusiastic about the novel technique of interviewing or data-
elicitation via field-work, in addition to the cartographic projection of the
material gathered. Of greater concern to us is another group whose
members were interested in Gillieron's flat rejection of the regularity of
sound change as the prime mover in matters of language evolution, as well
as his insistent, indeed strident, demands for closer attention to be given to
such phenomena as folk etymology, the reactions of the speaker to the
collision of homonyms, and false restoration (or regression).
Easily the most devoted of his students was the Edinburgh professor John
Orr (1885-1966) who, towards the end of his life, collected into books a
scattering of essays (one of them in dialogue form), articles, and notes
written at a much earlier date. Orr was a medievalist by training and was
thus hardly predisposed to engage in a style of research favoured by social
scientists, such as recording neatly transcribed utterances. Having been
exposed, from the start, to the sort of imaginative writing that fiction is
expected to represent, he was visibly enchanted by the anecdotal flavour of
certain word biographies and derived pleasure from debunking not a few
pretentious reconstructions made by rigid Neo-grammarians. He thus came
to represent, in the English-speaking world, the witty approach to etymol-
ogizing, a very hazardous pose to strike.
Most of Gillieron's followers, however, overrode their mentor's prejudice
and leaned toward reconciling old-style and new-style etymological metho-
dology, against the dual background of the steady improvement of interview
techniques (for example, through the inclusion of urban dwellers) and of the
creation of increasingly sophisticated pictorial records (for example, by the
addition of photographs and drawings). This holds, above all, for the two
highly successful Swiss Romanists Karl Jaberg and Jakob Jud (stationed in
Berne and Zurich respectively), who insisted that they themselves and their
advanced students be perfectly familiar with the undiluted medieval dossier
of each word viewed through a powerful dialectological lens.
Some workers, after temporarily developing a lukewarm interest in
Gillieron's approach to issues in word history, allowed their erstwhile
response to cool off. Two paradigmatic examples of such a metamorphosis
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Etymology
were Ernst Gamillscheg and Leo Spitzer, both students of Meyer-Liibke in
Vienna shortly after the turn of the century. These two, upon their return to
their homes after a brief sojourn in Paris, combined their efforts in studying
the reflexes of a group of semantically connected phytonyms in regional
Gallo-Romance: Die Bezeichnungen der Klette im Galloromanischen
(1915). Soon after, Spitzer, without interrupting his general concern with
etymological lucubrations, nevertheless veered off in directions entirely at
variance with Gillieron's doctrine, while keeping up his loyalty towards
Schuchardt. Gamillscheg, as late as 1928, i.e., almost immediately after
Gillieron's death and his own move from Innsbruck to Berlin, published a
booklet (Die Sprachgeographie und ihre Ergebnisse fur die allgemeine
Sprachwissenschaft), in which, after deftly replacing costly maps by equally,
if not more, effective monochromatic sketches, he pleaded for the cautious
acceptance of lexically centred dialect geography as an adjunct to, if not
outright substitute for, straight historical grammar. Had Gamillscheg been
sufficiently inspired to make generous use of such inexpensive sketches in
his own French etymological dictionary (completed that same year), that
dictionary, which is known under the acronym EWFS, might have acquired
a distinctive feature that would have set it off to advantage against certain
rival undertakings, and so demonstrated with unprecedented graphic elo-
quence the close ties that bind individual word histories (surely not only in
French) to recurrent patterns of areal distribution. Unfortunately, on that
occasion Gamilischeg missed such a chance of a lifetime.
If we extrapolate from certain writings by Schuchardt and from the sort of
lexicocentric atlas project launched by Gillieron, that the ideal of massive
documentation is a major prerequisite for skilful etymologizing, then the
answer to our prayer will be the monumental dictionary of, principally,
individual dialect forms or, better still, a sort of concordance recording
whole utterances. A bold and exceedingly laborious experiment along these
lines (but not, I hasten to add, one that is entirely persuasive in retrospect)
was conducted, over a period of about half a century (c. 1920-70), by
Walther von Wartburg, a native Swiss Romanist whose slightly chequered
university teaching career took him from Lausanne via Berne to Leipzig and
Chicago and, finally, to Basle. His brainchild which I have alluded to here,
namely the Franzosisches etymologisches Worterbuch, was to go through
numerous mutations, but at least the opening phase of its tempestuous
growth invites a survey at the present juncture.
The low-key start to the author's academic career hardly presaged
anything sensational or controversial. His Zurich doctoral dissertation
(1912), which he himself viewed, with his teacher Louis Gauchat's blessing,
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 The first half of the twentieth century

as being semantically oriented, even though others may have leaned

towards calling its bent onomasiological, was pan-Romanic in scope - a
good omen, and one step ahead of Tappolet's monograph on kinship terms.
It dealt with expressions for 'blindness' and other forms of defective sight.
This topical choice, indeed, involved an excellent start, from which the
youthful author could have advanced with ease to explore expressivity,
since most such qualifiers as 'deaf, 'lame", 'hard-of-hearing', 'hunch-
backed" contain ingredients of phonosymbolism. However, the author's
next venture showed no move in that direction. It involved a distinctly
shorter, more concentrated piece, issued by the Berlin Academy in wartime
(1918), conceivably with a delay, and revolved around the Romance names
of the sheep - a domestic animal which was exceptionally well represented
in the relevant rural households. An excellent exercise in zoonymy, and
planned on the same scale as the preceding piece, but endowed with less
potential for further growth, it testified to the author's improved skill in
presenting with commendable stringency material which was copious to the
point of overflow.
Organization began to loom as more important than inspiration. Less
than four years after the restoration of peace in Europe the opening
fascicles of Vol. I of Walther von Wartburg's Franzosisches etymologisches
Worterbuch began to run off the press. But the over-optimistic author
clearly miscalculated the work's total cumulative length. The entries were so
long, and subsequently so increased in sheer extension, that a reader,
whether casual or committed to a certain engagement, was confronted with
a string of full-sized, formulaically phrased etymological articles, rather
than a mere succession of dictionary entries. The articles, let me clarify at
once, were marked by the subordination of conjectures and discussions to
assortments of impeccably accurate data, checked and counterchecked for
their precision and dependability. The pattern favoured by a then still
youthful author in his mid-thirties was an instantaneous success, not least on
account of one weighty circumstance of which, at that point, no close
observer was unaware.
In the aftermath of a stinging military defeat, etymological scholarship, as
practised in Central Europe, became cluttered up by bitter and lengthy con-
troversies, virtually amounting to attempts at mutual extermination, fought
out by certain contenders for the privilege of leadership. Ernst Gamillscheg,
Josef Briich, and Leo Spitzer were for years among the most vociferous and
ruthless participants in that infighting. Lengthy etymological articles, for a
while, seemed to be written with the sole purpose of publicly demonstrating
the rival's inferior logic and equipment. Walther von Wartburg, in contrast,
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Etymology

displayed, first and foremost, the methodically assembled record. He

initially laid heavy stress on the testimony of dialect glossaries (of which he
concomitantly compiled a useful catalogue), but later gave increasingly
more liberal allowance for atlas attestations, for the private preferences of
conspicuous literary figures (without disregarding the leanings of anony-
mous medieval texts), and for affirmative statements, as against spells of
silence, by pioneering lexicographers. (Of course, by tacitly breaking up the
given word's semantic spectrum and derivational-compositional edifice, the
author from the start campaigned unobtrusively for the, to his mind, most
plausible solution of the underlying etymological problem.) Next came a
matter-of-fact listing, in chronological progression, of the various etymolo-
gical pronouncements caught in the compiler's net, with, as it were, only a
minimal interspersion of calmly stated editorial caveats. Finally, the
author, with commendable detachment, not to say composure, would
present his own reconstruction of events, which, with the passage of time
(starting in the 1930s), might gradually increase to a full-length column or
even an entire page, and would consistently remain free of any polemic
overtones.
As a powerful antidote to certain briefly prevailing misdemeanours this
approach, for a while, seemed excellent. However, after having effectively
served its purpose, and after having found at least one late imitator, namely
Max Pfister, this method in the end lost much of its initial appeal. In the
long run, it tied etymology far too tightly to ambitious, time-consuming
data-collections conducted on a massive scale; and it tended to conceal the
most cogent, often crucial arguments - those of special concern to theor-
ists - by burying them under unwieldy aggregates of bare forms, as if forms
alone were invariably the decisive factor in cases of doubt. The quality
of finesse in unavoidable reconstructions was gradually crowded out
altogether. Towards the end of his life, with time and energy running out,
von Wartburg called in a number of collaborators, picked from among
former students and junior colleagues, and entrusted to their care entire
volumes. Not all of these heirs, understandably, worked with the same zest
as the founder of the project or managed to maintain his level of interpreta-
tion, since the pervasive structure of the undertaking, on balance, reflected
someone else's taste and way of thinking.
One more technique for sharply increasing a meticulously researched
corpus of documentation and for tightening, as a reward for all the labour
invested, the network of etymological conjectures was demonstrated by
Paul Aebischer (born in 1897, and hence junior to Jaberg, Jud, and von
Wartburg), from the mid-192()s until the 1950s. After that date the
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 The first half of the twentieth century

French-Swiss scholar veered away with dramatic suddenness from his

earlier preoccupations (which had also included anthroponymy and topo-
nymy on an almost pan-Romanic scale) and plunged into intensive research
in medieval literature, stressing both its Romance and Nordic components.
Anticlimactically, not to say ironically, a representative collection of his
finest articles written in the earlier key, i.e., addressing etymological
questions, made its appearance at a shockingly late date, almost post-
humously in 1978.
Aebischer's originality was rooted in his selecting for private research
only the most salient lexicological questions, with or without etymological
overtones. (We can safely disregard in this context the position he tempor-
arily held with the influential Bureau des patois de la Suisse Romande,
where he was encouraged to practice the art of studiedly slow data-
gathering.) He concentrated on the prehistory and stratification of challeng-
ing individual words, e.g., ruga, literally 'wrinkle, crease in the face", to the
extent that it qualified for the designation of a 'street' (French rue), or of
that celebrated pair of Hellenisms, thius "uncle" and thia 'aunt' (cf. Spanish
tio, tia; Italian zio, zia, etc.), which in certain provinces crowded out their
Latin counterparts, avunculus and amita. Or he focused on the territorial
distribution of the dendronyms sabiicus vs. sambucus 'elder-tree'; or else on
the variant forms of another Greek word transplanted onto Romance soil,
namely amygdala 'almond'. A few significant or intriguing proper names
were likewise caught in his net, e.g., Hispdn-us vs. -iscus, as were a very few
grammatical and derivational morphemes, witness his studies in the vicissi-
tudes of -ora and -drius. Aebischer's principal originality lay in his almost
blind reliance on the testimony of charters (in preference to the evidence of
literary texts), overwhelmingly preserved in copies, or copies of copies
alone. To that extent, Aebischer simply applied to etymology the earlier
insights into phonology of Erik Staaff and Ramon Menendez Pidal;
territorially, he was particularly at ease in Italy.
This style of microscopic inspection of the available record can, in
isolated instances, produce splendid results. Unfortunately, Aebischer
gratuitously weakened the potential impact of his painstaking studies by
certain intellectual caprices. Also, the wisdom of almost completely disre-
garding literary attestation, even where it happens to be within reach,
eludes most readers. His inquiries into the names for 'uncle' and 'aunt' (in
addition to a parallel investigation into the palaeo-Romancc names for 'cou-
sin') would have gained from being assigned places inside a wider-ranging
study of Romance kinship terms, which went beyond the scope of Tappolefs
venture. The study of the -ora plurals might have been imaginatively
83
Etymology

linked with the so-called 'unstressed suffixes' -aro, -ara (and their
variants) in Luso- and Hispano-Romance, and so on. Aebischer's excessive
individuation of lexico-etymological problems places him at the exact
opposite pole from the, at present, more fashionable structuralist slant of
thinking.
The last potential benefit to etymology that came with the rise to
influence of 'classical' dialect geography and of the Worter und Sachen
approach was the experimental elevation of the areal patterns of distribu-
tion of rival words to a higher level of relevance than any other considera-
tion admissible in diachronic analysis, including the previously all-powerful
evidence of regular sound correspondences. This radical step is usually
associated with the extremist doctrine of the Neolinguistic school of
thought, conceived and launched by a small group (which included G.
Vidossi and U. Pellis) of Italian 'glottologists'. Its founding father was
Matteo Bartoli, and its last and easily most militant proponent (in particular
during the ten years or so that he spent at Princeton) was Giuliano
Bonfante.
As a result of his pioneering research in Dalmatian and his excellent
knowledge of circum-Adriatic Latinity (and also of Romanian), Bartoli - a
comparatist ever since the days of his close association with Wilhelm
Meyer-Liibkc in Vienna - developed a special flair for "Eastern Romance'
and, in the process, discovered some arresting lexical resemblances between
Balkan-Romance and Hispano- (or Ibero-) Romance. Let us choose a
single eloquent example, the word for 'beautiful, handsome'. Deriving, on
the one hand, in Portuguese formoso (originally fremoso), in Spanish
hermoso (initially fermoso) and in Romanian frumos from ancestral
formosus 'shapely', and, on the other, in French beau/belle (originally biaus,
bellbele) and in Italian bello, from parental bellus 'pretty, cute", the two
forms of the word represent the flanks vs. the centre of a single edifice, as it
were. Translating this state of affairs into the language of temporal
sequences, Bartoli next argued that any consensus of the lateral or marginal
zones (as the Iberian and the Balkan peninsulas indeed are vis-d-vis Rome)
represent the earlier phase, while the central zone, namely the aggregate of
Northern and Southern Gaul and Italy, serves as the mouthpiece for the
later phase of essentially the same process. In this instance, philological
evidence indeed happens to be available to make it plausible that the
predominance of formosus anteceded the reign of bellus. Moreover, the
etymologies of the two contenders happen to be transparent (the former is a
derivative (ram forma, the latter is an offshoot of bonuslbene). Using such
relatively simple relationships as his unobjectionable starting point, Bartoli

84
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before long began to draw unwarrantedly bold conclusions in the case of

etymologies and grammatical features of a lower degree of translucency,
and to operate with other schemata of territorial distribution. In addition,
he hastened to make a bold leap from Romance to Indo-European as a
whole, and in the end to exotic language families as well, so that his
ambitions became less and less realistic. The Bartoli-Bonfante platform
came in for sharp criticism, for example, from Robert A. Hall, Jr in North
America, and was tacitly rejected on the European continent as well.
However, applied in its more reasonable form, the extra dosage of attention
paid to areal distribution did benefit etymology, for example, in the case of
such peculiar lexical units as Latin afflare (literally 'to blow or breathe on',
then, as a term of hunting, perhaps with an allusion to hounds, 'to hit upon,
find'): witness Portuguese achar. Old Spanish fallar (> mod. hallar), and
their South Italian counterparts. Using an utterly different starting point,
Menendez Pidal, at a distinctly later date (in 1954), also discovered a strong
affinity of Hispano-Romance with South Italian, a point which can be used
as an independent argument of considerable weight in etymological debate.
Discussing etymological procedure in terms of rival assumptions, compet-
ing methods, and alternative techniques can be both profitable and enjoy-
able (not least because these considerations indeed lend themselves to neat
description), as long as one remembers that, after their subtraction, there
still remains, as a rule, an untapped residual element - namely the irredu-
cibly unique identification formula itself, which in general docs not so easily
yield to one's hankering after tidy classification. By making use of circumlo-
cutions, we are at liberty to affirm that certain scholars are endowed with
enviable detective faculties and an almost instantaneously working flair for
felicitous identification, while some of their peers, of otherwise comparable
merit and, in particular, equally commendable erudition, are sorely lacking
in such mental equipment. Leaving details to psychologists, we can confi-
dently assert that etymological talent, inborn as it may be in the last
analysis, lends itself to substantial improvement through tireless practice,
observation of the performance of others, and willingness to learn from
mistakes, including one's own.
To revert to the actual period under discussion, there can be no
comparison between Menendez Pidal's gropings at the turn of the century
and even his improved skill in compiling, a decade later, the etymologically
oriented Cid glossary, on the one hand, and, on the other, his magisterial
elaborations on the original version of Meyer-Liibke's etymological diction-
ary (1920). Most historical linguists are fairly realistic about their own
aptitudes, paying special attention to that elusive ingredient we call
85
Etymology
inspiration, and tend to espouse the cause of etymology, or to shy away
from it, on the basis of that preliminary self-assessment. In this particular
respect, the contrast between Karl Jaberg and Jakob Jud, who were
compatriots, approximate contemporaries, and even partners in at least one
major venture, could hardly have been stronger, as one notices at once in
scanning their respective bibliographies.
The talented and versatile etymologist (a human type that Jud personified
in exemplary fashion) will easily be tempted to experiment with varying
formats and different approaches, adjusting the resources called upon, with
appropriate elasticity, to the configuration of the particular problem under
study. Because, for certain pending problems, the moment of decision or
arbitration simply may not have arrived yet, a scholar of Jud's persuasion
will flatly reject the genre of an etymological dictionary, which might force
him to pronounce prematurely on a number of rebellious questions.
As a beginner, Jud focused his attention on a number of words serially
tied together, as is true of certain numerals (1905), or on nouns whose
histories lend themselves to particularly dramatic presentation through the
instrumentality of dialect geography, for example, French poutre '(wooden)
beam", French aune 'alder', and North Italian barba 'uncle' (1908, 10). But
he also concerned himself with unusual patterns of nominal declension
(1907) and, right at the start of a succession of distinguished book reviews,
allowed himself to be dragged into the discussion of etymological issues
posed by I. A. Candrea and O. Densusjanu in reference to Latin/Romanian
lexical equations across the ages, by a challenging map ('to saw") of the
French dialect atlas, and by J. Gillieron and J. Mongin's stimulating
response to that provocation. He also turned his attention to P. E.
Guarnerio's attempt to delve, via an archaic text, into an Old Sardic dialect
(1908f) and to Max Leopold Wagner's distillation of a phonological system
from data garnered in Southern Sardinia (1908g). The selection of problems
of possible appeal to one's own thinking can thus start with thumbing
through a dictionary of word-origins, the scrupulous examination of one
map, the philological interpretation of a text, or the scanning of a
sophisticated historical grammar. One cannot ask for an exhibition of
greater variety and elasticity!
Until his death in 1950, Jud remained virtually protean in selecting the
right pretext, size, style, and slant for airing his etymological hunches, and
the quest for the right 'etymology' occasionally included not the kernel, but,
for a change, a difficult-to-grasp, teasing derivational or compositional
feature of the lexical unit at issue. Even among the last and easily more
elaborate of Jud's experiments in this direction, not all turned out to be
86
 The first half of the twentieth century

equally persuasive; I have elsewhere stated my reservations about the

extraction of the triad French mensonge, Italian menzogna, Spanish mentira
"lie" and the reverberations in the vernaculars of opus estlest opus 'it is
necessary' (cf. Old French estovoir) that he proposed in those years. But
even a partial defeat, at the hands of a scholar as gifted and compelling as
was Jud. is apt to contain grains of truth of sufficient value to vindicate
retroactively his almost reckless investment of time, energy, and enthusiasm
in this sort of etymologizing for its own sake, not just to fill minor gaps in the
edifice of knowledge. Soon after the start of his career, Jud almost
triumphantly announced and exemplified some of the goals and modes of
the 'new etymology' he personified so well (1911-12). Later he strove to
influence younger scholars by example more than by precept, a hazardous
decision in the long view.
An entirely different climate, whether intellectual or emotional, sur-
rounds Karl Jaberg's ceuvre, which stretches from 1901 to his death in 1958,
and beyond, given the availability of certain posthumous publications. As
one scans the definitive list of his scholarly pronouncements (1965), in
addition to the various indexes meticulously carved out from that list by S.
Heinimann, one quickly realizes that experiments in straight etymological
identification were few and far between among his writings, that they fell
short of ranking as sensational, and that the author scrupulously subordi-
nated those that he happened to make to other, more general or more
abstract, concerns and considerations. In scrutinizing the titles of his
scattered monographs and shorter papers, one looks in vain for any that
appear to tout the discovery of some exciting etymological connection. To
be sure, Jaberg was interested in striking semantic changes and, even more,
in concatenations of such changes, as when he contributed, in the testi-
monial volume in honour of Ernst Tappolet (1935), a real gem of a
zoonymic inquiry: 'Wie der Hundedachs zum Dachs und der Dachs zum
Iltis wird'. He developed genuine curiosity about onomasiology, offering to
a journal which he had co-founded, by way of initial encouragement, a
miniature history of the Romance verbs for 'to begin, start' (1925). In the
wake of Meyer-Liibke. but concentrating deliberately on a single small area
(to wit, the Romaunsch-speaking section of the canton of Graubunden), he
inventoried, as early as 1922, the labels for local techniques of threshing and
for the tools put to use for that purpose. Expanding on his own early
pamphlet on dialect geography (1908), which was geared exclusively to
Gallo-Romance conditions, he delivered, in 1933, three lectures at the
College de France and eventually collected them into a single, finely polished
book (1936), in which areas of form or meaning and the possibilities of their

87
Etymology
cartographic projection were examined with special attention to newly con-
structed maps of Italy. In most of such instances, and no doubt in a great
many more, the wisdom of establishing certain etymological links overlooked
by earlier generations of explorers was, incidentally, brought up, but the
novelty of these valuable additions to the earlier fund of etymological
knowledge was deftly played down. The same holds for three of Jaberg's last
sparks of enthusiasm: his crusade for the acceptance of sound symbolism as a
major force in the transmutation of languages (witness his separate inquiries
into the names of the swing and those of the sling), his concern with the folk
names of diseases, and his self-immersion in problems of serialization, paying
heightened attention, in a cross-linguistic perspective, to numerals. At every
step Jaberg, a mature scholar by now, clearly was in a position to correct,
even delete earlier etymological assumptions and to propose superior sub-
stitutes - services that he indeed performed, but in a tacit, discreet way, as a
self-understood commitment within the broader framework of diachronic
lexicology.
To use a single, simple formula capable of doing justice to all these
tentative innovations (and no doubt to others germane to them), which
were equally characteristic of the first half of this century, what was
accomplished in the end was the highly successful transfer of etymology
from a modest place in the domain of historical grammar (principally
diachronic phonology) to a prominent position in the newly opened-up field
of lexicology, at its most arcane and sophisticated. What, until approxi-
mately 1900, was little more than a residue of intellectually piquant word
histories, involving minor and minuscule episodes that apparently could not
be presented through the instantaneous application of straightfoward sound
correspondences, in other words, an aggregate of extended footnotes to
truly important events, almost overnight became a semi-autonomous dis-
cipline, which had a strong appeal to enthusiastic researchers whose
imagination, responsive to the challenge of individual concrete situations
rather than to the appeal of abstract schemata, refused to make them
first-rate phonologists, grammarians, or syntacticians, but did elevate them
to the rank of leading etymologists.
It is not sheer coincidence that, in presenting the advent of this new era,
we have depended heavily on the record of research in Romance quarters.
Just as the postulate of the regularity of sound change had initially been
established by a close-knit, highly motivated group of militant Indo-
Europeanists, who gathered in Leipzig in the 1870s and 1880s with
Romanists, Semitologists, Amerindianists, etc. following suit as best they
could, so the crusade for the new dignity and aspired-to semi-independence
 The first half of the twentieth century

of etymology was chiefly spearheaded by Romance linguists, who used

newly launched linguistic atlases as their rallying points.
As nearly always happens under such an exciting set of circumstances,
there were involved in this movement both hotheads and moderates. Some
joined it after having previously demonstrated their ability to do creditable
research under the old set of premises, and thus strove for a reconciliation
of the old and the new. Others recognized in the rhetorically announced
"revolution' an excuse or a pretext for neglecting, even forgetting about, any
prior knowledge. Societies and journals began to be founded to serve as
mouthpieces and outlets for the new set of beliefs and preferences. Certain
pioneers were declared martyrs, not to say saints. The names of sceptics and
agnostics became unpronounceable in some quarters; and individual
instances of unfairness and misjudgement can easily be identified in critical
retrospect.
One readily grows aware of several variants of this reallocation of
etymology within the total edifice of socio-spatio-temporal linguistics. As
regards place, the previously practised allotment of a given form to a certain
language or dialect (and, by implication, to an obvious locus or habitat of its
speakers) during those years began to be rivalled by the intensive study of
migratory terms (Wanderworter). In that style of research the investigator,
who was concerned with the transfer of lexical items from, let us say,
Language x to Language y (whether or not these were closely related),
could usually afford the luxury of ignoring the ultimate provenance of
practically the entire lexical inventory of x, but obligated himself, by the
terms of his 'contract', to focusing on a more or less closely defined sector of
the lexis of y, which was suspected of harbouring words of unusual or
atypical extraction. One speaks of a closely defined sector where the process
of percolation is best, or solely, observable in one neatly delimited cultural
(or semantic) domain, for example, in names of garments, among hunting
and sporting terms, in military or nautical vocabulary, among chromonyms,
and the like. Assuming that one cares to include certain categories of proper
names with the rest of the vocabulary, those can indeed be taken into
account. It is, for example, arguable that the spread of Kitty, Dotty, and the
like among Russian mid-nineteenth-century aristocrats ran parallel to the
temporary adoption of words like fashionable in that same milieu.
The details of the plans for research undertaken by any individual
scholars, or teams of scholars, so inclined have varied from case to case. An
ambitious book venture, such as the study of Turkish nautical terms of
Italian and Middle or Modern Greek origin, launched by Henry and Renee
Kahane and happily brought to conclusion in collaboration with Andreas
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Tietze (1958; manuscript completed in the Spring of 1954) could have
sprung into existence in response to the challenge emanating from a few
preceding small-scale etymological explorations; or its writings may have
been stimulated by certain overlapping satellite studies; or else a residue of
etymological inquiries into certain particularly rebellious or recalcitrant case
histories may have followed upon its completion (as a rule no information is
expected from authors on such private choices).
Whatever the anecdotal biographies and bibliographic details may be, it is
a fact that the first half of the present century witnessed a sharp increase in
both the number and, preponderantly, the quality of inquiries into lexical
migration (a genre of research less than frequently experimented with
before) and that, as an inalienable part of such major, long-term commit-
ments, countless individual etymological issues were reformulated and, in
many instances, satisfactorily solved. Here are a few examples, chosen at
random, of article-, monograph-, or vocabulary-sized studies of this sort.
They concern such discernibly foreign 'strains' as: Italianisms in Egyptian
Arabic (S. Spiro, 1904); Arabisms in Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, and
Sicilian (A. Steiger, 1932); Italianisms in Turkish (C. Tagliavini, 1940) and
in Spanish (J. H. Terlingen, 1943); Gallicisms in Dutch (M. Valkhoff,
1931); Neo-Hellenisms in Serbo-Croatian (M. Vasmer, 1944); Italianisms in
French (B. E. Vidos, 1939); Palaeo-Hellenisms in Occitan (Walther von
Wartburg, 1952); and Hispanisms in Italian (E. Zaccaria, 1927). The
attribution of credit is more complicated in the case of Italian nautical terms
in Modern Greek, since Renee Kahane (Kahane, 1938) followed in the
wake of D. C. Hesseling's much earlier and broader-gauged study. All of
this does not begin to take into account the dictionaries of foreignisms,
descriptive or, more frequently, programmatic, in which German scholar-
ship, for transparent reasons, specialized.
Lexicologically, rather than phonologically, underpinned search for word
origins may also hinge on successful periodization, to the extent that the
skilful division of the whole mass of data into layers adjusted to time levels
goes hand in hand with the acquisition of vitally needed secondary skills. To
discuss judiciously lexical units found in Old English, the etymologist in
charge must be at ease in the entire Palaeo-Germanic domain, moving with
assurance through the labyrinths of Gothic, Old Norse, Old High German,
and Old Saxon ( = Old Low German) material - a heavily loaded program-
me for a lifetime of research. A candidate for expertise in Middle English,
especially Chaucerian English, may settle for a lighter programme of
self-immersion in comparative Germanics, provided that this is compen-
sated for by a thorough familiarity with Old French in all its shades and

90
 The first half of the twentieth century

ramifications (and, via Old French, with Romance as a whole). The student
of modern, i.e., post-Elizabethan, accretions to English lexis, especially its
overseas (including former colonial) varieties, urgently needs prior expo-
sure to the indigenous tongues of India and Pakistan, to the language
patchwork of the Near and the Middle East, as well as South Africa and
tropical Africa, and to the maze of North America's autochthonous
languages (although familiarity with colonial French, Spanish, and Dutch,
as well as with the languages of nineteenth-century New World immigrants
from Scandinavia and Germany unquestionably will also be a major asset in
ascertaining the descent of any regionalism of dubious ancestry). Since no
researcher, not even one endowed with a knack for virtuoso performance,
can be expected to be on equally familiar terms with all layers of such an
avalanche of forms, it follows that a typical set of etymological issues
affecting English, to yield impressive results, needs to be tackled by a team
of at least three differently specialized experts. A distant model was
provided, as long ago as 1932, by the two Parisians Antoine Meillet and
Alfred Ernout, who agreed to examine, in an etymological vein, every Latin
word family from two mutually complementary angles, first, as a member of
the Indo-European family (with reference to that family's groundwork)
and, second, for its own sake, with increased attention paid this time to its
Latin and even Romance superstructure.
The factor of time level is closely interwoven with the matter of
documentation, specifically its volume and its degree of trustworthiness. As
the investigator develops growing curiosity about the deepest layers of
language in a given area, spurred on in his quest for lexical antiquities by all
sorts of relics (genuine toponyms, oronyms, and hydronyms, ingredients
of microtoponymy, for example, names of caves and rocks), he begins to
operate with languages of the distant past, whose phonology and gram-
matical structure are not only practically unknown, but, still worse, stand
virtually no chance of ever being pieced together.
Among the ensuing uncertainties, one can distinguish three degrees of
obscurity. The European substratum language (overlaid by some Indo-
European tongue, typically, two to three millennia ago) may itself have
been Indo-European, judging from its cognates. It may, for example, have
belonged to the once exceptionally widespread Celtic subfamily. In that
case the margin of doubt may remain relatively narrow, inasmuch as the
longer-surviving, hence better-known, Celtic languages (for example, Irish,
Manx, Welsh, Breton) throw sufficient light on the entire subfamily to allow
analysts to judge the plausibility of a new conjecture concerning a congener
not directly accessible to observation. Alternatively, the closest Indo-
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Etymology

European language invoked by the proponent of such an etymological

hypothesis may have been extinct for, let us say, two thousand years, but
has at least left reliably reconstructed records; Osco-Umbrian seems to be a
case in point. The third situation, and the one that deserves to be called the
least advantageous strategically, involves a language (or a language family)
which is neither directly accessible, nor obliquely imaginable via cognates
that are extant or, at least, securely pieced together.
While cautious scholars like Jakob Jud recognized the marginal legiti-
macy of such etymological issues, which we are least equipped to cope with
(characteristically, in the year 1946, he devoted a lengthy article to
Reliktworter, i.e. 'residual Romance words' that somehow got stuck in
territories overrun by the Alemanni, but only a three-page note to
pre-Romance ingredients of the lexis of Alpino-Lombard and Rhaeto-
Romance dialects, by way of comment on an inquiry conducted by Norbert
Jokl), other scholars went much further in this type of extra-hazardous
etymological inquiry. The roster of such dare-devils includes: a number of
Italian 'glottologists', chiefly Vittorio Bertoldi, dedicated student of phy-
tonymy; Ramon Menendez Pidal, especially in the concluding decades of
his crowded life (witness his 1952 collection of toponymic explorations);
and, above all, Johannes Hubschmid, whose peculiar bent, ever since the
early 1940s, has been aptly described by Kurt Baldinger (1982), a scholar of
an entirely different persuasion in his own research programme.
We must here confine ourselves to this brief statement, because the
current of etymological thinking at issue embodies an extremist position,
involving as it does exaggerated optimism regarding reconstructibility.
Espousing likewise the cause of lexically oriented etymology and relying
also on the additional boon of very heavy documentation (part of it
sometimes cartographically recorded), some scholars have been guided less
by considerations of space (area) or time than by the selection of recurrent
meaning as a common denominator. I am referring here to the celebrated
onomasiological approach, which burst into bloom around 1900, then
suddenly underwent a sharp decline between 1950 and 1960, and has been
resorted to ever since only at rare intervals. Even though onomasiology
need not be dependent on the ready availability of dialect atlas maps, there
can be no doubt about the mutual support that dialect geography at its peak
and onomasiology during its half-century of flowering were lending one
another.
The field worker, by showing each of his informants the picture of, let us
say, a squirrel, in an effort to elicit from him or her the local designation of
that little rodent (known for its queer looks and bizarre movements),
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 The first half of the twentieth century

collects a splendid array of, possibly, dozens or scores of carefully

transcribed vernacular labels. To be sure, not all of these tags conceal
unsolved etymological problems; in all likelihood, only a small minority
does so. Moreover, the author of the monograph (typically, a doctoral
candidate) who is at work on the names of the squirrel will hardly feel
constrained to supply the missing etymology (or etymologies), although the
temptation to do so will be very great and society's rewards for having
managed to do so may be overwhelming. The point is that knowledge of the
exact area where the etymologically elusive lexical unit happens to prevail
serves more often than not as an etymological eye-opener. Also, micro-
scopic inspection of the record, with special attention paid to receding
variants, is apt to lead to the chance discovery of some long-concealed
variant, which at long last offers the eagerly awaited solution, as when
colmena ('beehive'), in Spanish, leads one nowhere, although it is on almost
every speaker's lips, while the discovery of dialectal cormena, a long-
overlooked by-form (or so it seems), immediately clamours for an appeal to
ancestral crumena 'purse, bag', with the further possibility of colmar 'to
heap up, fill to the brim', colmo 'heap, crown', and yet other words which
have deflected the descendant of crumena from its straight course.
Since we are concerned here with the trends of research which were
fashionable in the first half of the present century and the genre now under
discussion had its boom precisely during those five decades, we are
fortunate in having at our disposal Bruno Quadri's Zurich dissertation
(inspired and supervised by Jakob Jud): Aufgaben und Methoden der
onomasiologischen Forschung (1952), except that Quadri, having raised and
successfully answered a long series of pertinent questions, was apparently
unable to foresee, let alone to explain, the rapid decline of a genre of
research which still enthralled and held spellbound his generation of young
European explorers.
A mere onomasiological inventory of cross-dialectal and, equally useful,
cross-linguistic synonyms can be highly relevant to the etymologist. Thus, to
revert to the names of the squirrel, German Eichkdtzchen (lit. 'oak-tree
kitten') and Russian belka (literally 'whitic', i.e., 'animal whose fur has a
white spot' - seen from a hunter's perspective) seem straightforward
enough, but the development in Romance and, in its wake, in English has
been extremely complicated, as a quick glance at the onomasiological index
unobtrusively appended to the revised dictionary (1930-5) by Meyer-Liibke
(pp. 1187-1200) will show at once. One discovers traces of false identifi-
cation with some other animal, allegedly similar in some respects (glis
'dormouse', nitela 'small rodent', uiuerra 'weasel'); there are also vestiges of
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Etymology

borrowing from some other language, above all, from Greek: skiurusl
*skurius (which underlies French ecureuil, with English squirrel represent-
ing its northward prong; Aragonese esquirol qualifies for the position of its
southward, trans-Pyrenean outpost). Other etyma have been characterized
as, basically, onomatopoeic: *kosja, or as hints of the animal's striking tail:
rapum 'turnip, knob, *tail\ or as references to the conspicuous position of
its body: pronus, or as evocations of its motley colour pattern: varius; in
nitela a blend of the word for 'splendour' with the designation of some
ill-defined species of a small mouse (dormouse?) may have occurred. Thus
the etymologist who runs into yet another, still unidentified name of the
'squirrel' will instantaneously know approximately what to expect. It will
hardly come as a surprise to learn that Meyer-Liibke, on the same occasion,
recorded twenty disparate sources for 'lizard', and twenty-four for 'owl'; but
it is, admittedly, a matter of astonishment that the same inventory should
list twenty-one starting points for words which, at a certain evolutionary
stage, came to designate in Romance an animal seemingly as unexciting as
the donkey.
Understandably, the degree of lexical variegation stands in a direct ratio
to the fascination that certain onomasiological problems have exerted on
etymologically alert scholars. If one is to rely on Bruno Quadri's statistics
(which have the year 1950 as their chronological limit), four scholars had by
then busied themselves with the names of the squirrel, eight with those of
the lizard, and no less than fifteen with those of the insect 'ladybird'
(Coccinella septempunctata). These numbers include Romanists, German-
ists, and, possibly, a sprinkling of experts in other domains as well.
In the half-century here under scrutiny, historically oriented research
concerned either with lexical semantics (previously also known as semato-
logy or semasiology) or with its converse, namely lexical onomasiology (or
synonymies), invaded also, in accelerated tempo after 1920, the extensive
domain of Germanics, including the various evolutionary phases of English.
In his aforementioned monograph, Quadri appends a rather thorough
examination (pp. 212^19) of the record of Germanicist research relevant to
his principal survey of Romance accomplishments along that line, identify-
ing the centres of research responsible for that vogue in Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavian countries, and (on a
disappointingly meagre scale) the English-speaking countries. He identifies
the scholars who were chiefly in charge of this development at that
stage - in part through their own efforts, in part by supervising student
dissertations: H. Falk, G. G. Kloeke, H. Polander-Suolahti, R. Hot-
zenkocherle, Paul Kretschmer, E. Schwarz, S. Singer, J. Trier, Francis A.
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 The first half of the twentieth century

Wood, P. Zinsli, and many others. What Quadri, whose bibliographic

prowess exceeds, by a wide margin, his analytical finesse, fails to accom-
plish, is to define the various styles of research selected by the practitioners
of this method and, even more relevant, to segregate, for easy consultation,
any etymological discoveries - whether incidental or intended from the
start - that may have emerged as by-products of the entire current.
One recognizes the appeal the authors at issue made to this method -
once 'modernist', at present passe - by the titles they chose, or were
persuaded to adopt, for the finished product of their works: 'The names
of . . . ';'The Maple-Tree . . . 'or'Parts of the body . . . '; '(The) designa-
tion^) of. . . '; 'Verbs denoting locomotion'; 'The terminology of the
realm of . . . '; 'The Geography of phytonyms . . . '; 'Words semantically
akin to . . . " (= 'Die Sinnverwandten . . . ' ) ; and several variations on
these. A fine-meshed cross-cultural investigation into the purely etymo-
logical yield of their converging research efforts (to the extent that
diachrony, especially reconstruction of the concatenation of past events,
was at all aimed at by those authors), remains, I repeat, to be undertaken.
The triple emphasis placed here so far on (a) an avant-garde style of early
twentieth-century exploration, (b) choice slices of Romance lexical material
that attracted attention, and (c) the Central European tradition and
peculiarities of scholarly endeavour, must not be allowed to produce the
impression of a certain inevitability, as though there had not existed, at the
crucial moment, tempting alternatives to these three interlocking patterns
of highly motivated commitment. To become duly sensitized to at least one
viable alternative it suffices to examine the role assigned to etymology by
Antoine Meillet and by a few leading members of his once highly influential
Parisian circle of language historians. By way of random selection of a
suitable specimen, let us dissect, then reassemble, some representative
portions of Vols. XXVIII and XXIX of the tone-setting annual Bulletin de
la Societe de Linguistique de Paris, which correspond to the years 1928-9
and thus jointly mark the peak of the inter-war period.
From Vol. XXVIII we shall pick the master's own piece, actually an
ensemble of four short semi-independent notes, 'Observations sur quelques
mots latins' (pp. 40-7), the illustrative lexical units being: salus 'health,
welfare'; propinquus 'near, neighbouring'; dicere 'to say"; and aperire 'to
open' alongside operire 'to cover (over)'. This composite item will be
flanked by a concise Old Iranian (specifically, Sogdian) note from the pen of
Emile Benvcniste, already recognizable as the heir apparent (pp. 7-8),
against the background of a medium-sized article by M. Cohen, which is
entirely different in its coverage and styling, since it concerns itself with
95
Etymology
problematic ties between somewhat nebulous entities, such as the Mediter-
ranean cultural sphere and even a family of Oceanic languages (pp. 48-62).
Vol. XXIX promises to enrich our dossier to the extent that it contains a
fairly typical article by Meillet, rich in etymological implications, on the
Indo-European lexemes for ordinal numbers (pp. 29-37). It was accom-
panied by a relatively long piece on two Latin near-homonyms, cerno 'I
separate, discern' and cresco 'I grow', contributed by Alfred Ernout (pp.
82-102). Michel Lejeune's note on Ancient Greek irpwTos (pp. 117-21) also
qualifies for consideration, while M. Cohen's divagations on migratory
words in Semitic and adjacent territories (pp. 132-7), once more, strike one
as being least germane to the central line of advance. Benveniste's,
Ernout's, and Lejeune's shares in this volume (at least those that have so far
been identified) certainly lend themselves effortlessly to bracketing with the
two magisterial contributions by Meillet, the undisputed leader of the
group.
Apart from such pervasive features as expository and phrasal elegance, in
addition to intentional parsimoniousness of documentation, precisely what
are the salient features of the Meillet School's approach to everyday
etymological practice?
To begin with, the term 'etymology' itself and its offshoots are used
sparingly (and virtually never in the titles of articles and notes). The items in
question are offered, less ostentatiously, as contributions to diachronic
lexicology. By implication, the pieces hold out no promise of presenting any
radical revision of existing knowledge as regards the starting point of a given
lexical trajectory. Although the quest for the ultimate ascertainable origin
of a given word is, typically, aimed at, the course that word took in
mid-career or some other significant feature of its growth (for example, its
varying distance from congeners, its territorial spread, the shrinkage of its
use) may just as cogently serve to justify the writing of the note.
Even though the lexical items chosen for closer inspection may have been
removed from any section of the given lexis, it so happens, again and again,
that in addition to their lexico-etymological weight they are also gramma-
tically significant. Any trend toward driving an irreversible wedge between
historical grammar and etymology has thus been blocked from the start. As
a matter of fact, it sometimes becomes a point of sheer expediency to decide
whether a problem of this kind should be treated under the rubric of
phonology (or morphology), with the subordination of its lexico-
etymological kernel to grammatical considerations, or whether the reverse
hierarchy should be allowed to prevail. But even where the issue basically
remains confined to lexicology, as with cernolcreui, the particular episodes
96
 The first half of the twentieth century

of two narrow-meshed word histories, after having been duly singled out for
leisurely analysis, must in the end lend themselves clearly to subordination
to general diachronic lexicology - if necessary, one of the future rather than
of the present.
Thus, Ernout concludes that the threat of (near-) homophony can lead to
two polar opposites: either the elimination of one (of necessity, the weaker)
of the two contenders - a loss that may be limited to sections of the
paradigm - or their tendential merger through semantic rapprochement.
Reduced to this simple formula, the results of the experiment lend
themselves to cautious application to other languages and even language
families (they might, for example, have advantageously underpinned the
study presented independently in Language, 55, 1-36 a half-century later).
As an accomplished historian, Ernout readily admits that there were
additional forces at work within the chosen corner of the field (namely, the
pressure of certain Greek models, in particular on concretus and concemo,
to the extent that the habits and references of the educated were involved);
yet, he hastens to add that the basic contours of the dilemma which faced
the crowd of speakers of Latin were not thereby diluted or distorted.
Meillet's own paper on Indo-European lower ordinals (1-10) is far more
highly concentrated, and displays the same pattern of inextricable inter-
weaving of etymology and historical grammar (with a distinctly heavier
stress placed, for a change, on phonology than on morphology), except that
here the great powers of serialization and of analogy (the permeating
influence of cardinals on corresponding ordinals, with an additional role
assigned to distributives) assert themselves. One further dimension is the
areal characterization of Latin and Celtic, on the one hand, and of
Indo-Iranian, on the other, as marginal or lateral zones within the given
family ('extremites du domaine indo-europeen') apt to have given shelter to
archaisms. And the entire highly sophisticated discussion is crowned by the
newly gained insight into 'abnormal' (i.e., unlevelled) forms serving as the
best available clues to the otherwise elusive stage of pristine Indo-
European. Each single form (with those for '6.-10.' discussed ahead of
those, more recalcitrant to analysis, for 41.—5.') is examined as a separate
issue in etymology (or word history), with the refined machinery of
Indo-European comparativism at its most intricate pressed into service.
But, finally, a single inflectional, i.e., grammatical fact is borne out when
the author superimposes upon one another the individual lexical sketches,
to the effect that the -to- suffix, as in Greek hekatos 'tenth', is late and
secondary if measured by the yardstick of its chief rival, the -mo- suffix, as
in Latin decimus.
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Etymology
The preceding four shorter pieces by Meillet lend themselves to similar
characterization. Apropos the Latin abstract salus, Meillet demonstrates
that even an authoritative partial answer to pressing etymological queries
can be useful, provided that the experienced etymologist knows exactly
where to draw the line between the domain of the known (or knowable) and
that of the unascertained. He makes it clear why salus, designating as it does
an active force viewed in a religious context, is a feminine noun, and casts a
bridge to the adjective saluus; but he confesses his inability to solve the
mystery oisdnus. As regards sollus 'totus et solidus', he voices his disbelief,
on phonological grounds, in a widely accepted conjecture, and identifies
ways and means for cicumventing it, but stops short of reaching any
decision. The note on dicere offers no new etymology at all, but strengthens
our earlier grasp of the word's filiation by laying heavier stress on its affinity
with iu-dex and in-dic-dre, and by calling attention to the paradigms of its
cognates.
Meillet's success in developing a pleasing personal style for his etymo-
logical research must not be rashly misinterpreted as a token of disinclina-
tion on his part to take into account and, where appropriate, to applaud
studies conducted elsewhere in a radically different key. Thus, apropos the
vignette on aperireloperlre (in conjunction with panes 'wall'), he fell back on
decisions reached by Leumann, Meringer, Miiller, Niedermann, Persson,
Schulze, Sommer, and Trautmann, a phalanx of foreigners steeped in a
different tradition of scholarship, against whom he cited only his teacher
Breal. Then again, in coming to grips with the vicissitudes of propinquus
'nearby' (and its semantic opposite longinquus 'distant'), he cast about for
support from Brugmann, Leumann again, and Solmsen.
Among Meillet's disciples already mentioned above, one detects varying
degrees of approximation to the recommended model. Emile Benveniste,
already at that juncture rivalling his teacher in the art of pithy presentation,
allows a Sogdian Buddhist term, reducible to *fkirxdr, to come to life,
likening its ambit to that of Sanskrit vihdra 'sanctuary'. For his virtuoso
performance two printed pages are sufficient to survey the local record of
toponymy and oronymy; to extricate himself from a misleading conjecture
of his immediate predecessor Gauthiot; to expand the evidence by introduc-
ing Old Armenian data previously overlooked; to toy with the possible
agency of expressivity; to inject a few drops of poetics (through allusion to
Middle Persian farxar 'blissful abode' abounding in lyrical poetry) and, for
good measure, of the history of Oriental religions. To watch an etymo-
logical inquiry so carried out becomes a source of aesthetic pleasure, doubly
so because one suspects no concomitant loss of rigour.
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Possibly a shade less sparklingly worded, Michel Lejeune's compact study

of Greek irpwTos 'first' derives its attraction from the author's skill in
welding the search for an acceptable etymon to a discussion of certain
problems in ancient numerology, including (a) mankind's long inability to
realize that one should start counting from 'one' rather than from 'two', and
(b) the consequent schema of suppletion prevailing in the erratic relation-
ship of 'one' to 'first', throughout Indo-European and far beyond its
bounds. At that point Lejeune balances purely linguistic against non-
linguistic, i.e., broadly cultural considerations, knowing exactly where to
stop. The documentation proffered, apart from its accuracy, is varied, but
light. Quick glances are cast at Finno-Ugric and Romance (specifically,
Romanian), but the centre of gravity is not allowed to shift in any rival
direction from Palaeo-Indo-European, especially from its arsenal of pre-
fixes. General linguistic measurements are taken, but the commitment to
one particular sector of the globe remains firm.
Not for nothing did Meillet, Ernout, Benveniste, Lejeune, and their peers
have rather sparing recourse sixty years ago to the classificatory tag
'etymology', ordinarily preferring to see themselves cast in the roles of
lexicologists. Their articles and notes, indeed, could not by any means,
through simple acts of routine inflation or compression, have been trans-
muted into entries in a typical etymological dictionary (even though,
ironically, two among them were later to embark on, of all things, such a
protracted venture). An honestly conceived etymological dictionary re-
mains, by definition, a reference work, despite all and any latitude of
embroidery. Conversely, an etymological note or article is meant to be
read, judged, and appreciated for its own sake, multidimensionally as it
were, not in narrowly informational terms. It invites flashes of thought on
methodology and thrives on judiciously rationed generalizations. It need
not be lacking in style.
Any confrontation, as regards the handling of etymology, of the influential
Meillet School in Paris with the practices of Central European linguistic
science almost sounds like giving credence to reports about national
varieties of scholarship. Such reports or, worse, postulates must be firmly
met with scepticism. After all, France boasted, among the incarnations of
her tradition of etymological learning, an Antoine Thomas (already re-
ferred to here at an earlier juncture), who certainly did not think, write, or
teach about etymology in the same key as Meillet and his followers, while
such protagonists of Central European erudition as the Neogrammarian
Meyer-Liibke and the anti-Neogrammarian Schuchardt, though tactful in
eschewing personal clashes, were in sharp disagreement with each other in
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practically all matters concerning etymology. Moroever, were one to insist

seriously on a French (or French-style) approach to etymological analysis as
being irreconcilably opposed to a German (or German-style) approach to
the subject, then one might finally be forced to admit, albeit only face-
tiously, that the sole escape from such baneful limitation would be for a
practitioner either to be a Swede writing in French on issues in Romance
etymology (like Gunnar Tilander, principally as unrivalled connoisseur of
medieval hunting terms), or to be a versatile Austrian capable at all times of
dashing off witty, but superficially researched lexical notes either in his
native German or his nearly-native French, as Leo Spitzer is known to have
done from before World War I to long after World War II.
This would, then, amount to being caught in a blind alley, an experience
doubly perilous because, through a strange and, all told, sad twist of
circumstances, not a few major early twentieth-century cultures committed
to their own, entirely respectable brands of linguistics fell short of develop-
ing any truly distinguished tradition of etymological inquiry. It gives me
little pleasure to admit that the United States of America and British
Canada formed one such culture throughout the first half of the present
century, despite the availability of a few talented, but severely isolated
'loners', who, as if to complicate matters, chose to specialize in highly
esoteric languages. David S. Blondheim (at Johns Hopkins University)
specialized in Old Judaeo-French, and William A. Read (at Louisiana State
University) specialized in the Caribbean melting-pot of diverse languages
and cultures. Since neither, despite their zest and stupendous erudition,
proposed a new style which lent itself to generalization or ventilated any
fresh, challenging theory, their activities produced only a pathetically
limited echo.
It is singularly depressing to report that Edward Sapir, for all his dazzling
versatility, not only treated etymology as a stepchild in his otherwise
deservedly influential series of essays, Language, an introduction to the
study of speech (1921), but, in the recent informal estimate of an expert as
thoroughly grounded as Yves Goddard, turned in a less than satisfactory
performance in etymologizing Indian lexical material. These disappoint-
ments cannot be counterbalanced by Sapir's loosely connected attempts,
made in the concluding years of his life, to etymologize a scattering of words
connected with the Ancient Near East.
Opinions have been divided from the start, and continue to be so, on the
merits of Edgar H. Sturtevant's 'Indo-Hittite Hypothesis', a matter of no
direct concern to us here. However, students of Ancient Anatolian who are
indisputably authoritative and, in addition, demonstrably friendly to the
late Yale scholar, in assessing the global value of his accomplishments, have
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 The firs! half of the twentieth century

privately singled out etymology as the single most vulnerable spot in his
record. Not surprisingly, Sturtevant's Introduction to linguistic science
(1947) treated etymology only obliquely.
Through the prism of certain chapters in Leonard Bloomfield's long-
revered book Language (1933), especially of Chapters 19 and 22-7,
experienced readers could observe the admired author's occasional brushes
with etymological issues. The more naive readers, who viewed themselves
as militant followers of Bloomfield's doctrine in the 1930s and 1940s, did not
extract from the book they assimilated with such fervour the impression that
etymology continued to be a valuable discipline, worthy per se of
heightened attention. (As a neophyte, however, no doubt under the
influence of his Chicago teacher Francis A. Wood, Bloomficld had zestfully
practised the craft of etymology.)
The unfavourable balance produced by all these mutually corroborative
trends was reinforced when converts to linguistics, from coast to coast,
turned to the one European generalist who was most influential in the New
World during those decades: Otto Jespersen. Danish linguists, however
meritorious in other respects, have lacked any marked penchant for
advanced research in etymology.
In this section we have so far succeeded in circumventing the difficulty of
taking into due account the special genre of the etymological dictionary -
with a few exceptions (Ernout and Meillet, Walther von Wartburg). Strictly
speaking, there exists no rigid division between a monograph (article, note)
and the dictionary designated to explore word origins. For one thing, not a
few scholars, before embarking on a book-sized project in this domain,
value chances to experiment with more modest undertakings. Thus, Murray
B. Emenau's Dravidian etymological dictionary, written in collaboration
with Thomas Burrow (1961), was preceded by a long series of short-to-
extended etymological papers, dealing, it is true, for the most part with
Sanskrit. For another thing, there exist several intermediate subgenres.
Thus, especially before the watershed date of 1950 (chosen here somewhat
arbitrarily), an exceptionally thorough glossary compiled to accompany a
text in an ancient or medieval language would easily become an exercise in
controlled etymologizing. The Hispanist can cite examples ranging from
Menendez Pidal's almost legendary edition of the Cid epic (1908-11) to
George Sachs's commendable edition, which is particularly strong on the
etymological side, of a thirteenth-century veterinary treatise {El libro de los
caballos, 1936).
Despite all these indisputable facts and arguments, individual research
efforts in etymology and etymological reference works, including those
prepared by reputable experts, display no perfect mutual compatibility. The
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Etymology

one-volume dictionary marked explicitly as etymological, which aims at

being both handy and authoritative, will, as a rule, offer under any entry a
single hypothesis declared correct by implication, without bothering to
identify the locus and date of its original presentation (or 'discovery') or the
name of its earliest proponent, even though it may want to qualify the
fragmentary identification thus conveyed by some such attenuating adverb
as 'doubtless', 'probably', 'possibly', 'hardly'. Of course, the lexicographer
is also free to attach to the word at issue some such alternative label as 'of
uncertain origin' or 'of dubious authenticity'. The discriminating reader's
obvious expectation is that the given author's professional reputation
virtually guarantees his having scrupulously examined the entire dossier of
the word under consideration and of its offshoots, including (a) the actual
record and (b) the various, often mutually contradictory, explicative
hypotheses. This two-way policy, on the part of author and reader, applies
to a not inconsiderable number of familiar mid-century ventures, including
Juan Corominas' Breve diccionario de la lengua castellana (1961) (character-
istically ushered in by a far more voluminous work from his pen), C. T.
Onions and his two associates' Oxford dictionary of English etymology
(1966), Giacomo Devoto's Avviamento alia etimologia italiana; dizionario
etimologico (1966), no less than to Bruno Migliorini and Aldo Duro's
distinctly earlier Pontuario etimologico della lingua italiana (1950), the
Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue frangaise compiled by the 'Larousse
team' (H. Dubois and H. Mitterand's 1964 revision of Albert Dauzat's
dictionary, traceable to 1938), and to many others, of undeniable value to
laymen and advanced workers alike. Only in a small minority of such
compact dictionaries, for example, Wilhelm Meye-Liibke's Romanisches
etymologisches Worterbuch (1911-20, 1930-35), or in Ernst Gamillscheg's
Etymologisches Worterbuch der franzosischen Sprache (1926-8, rev. 2nd
edn 1966-9), or else in Alois Walde's Lateinisches etymologisches
Worterbuch (1905-6, 2nd edn 1910; later revised by J. B. Hofmann,
1938-54), are the names of the discoverer (or of a pioneering endorser) of
the recommended solution explicitly revealed, the voices of prominent
critics, sceptics, and dissenters identified, and the reasons succinctly stated
for the author of the given reference work having aligned himself with one
school of thought in preference to all others, or having volunteered an
entirely new solution. One readily imagines the difference in the treatment
of such genetically 'troublesome' French words as alter, avec (Old French
avuec), and trouver between those two neatly contrastable categories of
etymological dictionaries.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that there developed in
certain societies (including that of North America) a certain split between
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 The first half of the twentieth century

the taste and scale of values of 'advanced linguists' and those of the citizens
at large. Advanced linguists opted for a highly technical re-arrangement of
the science entrusted to their care and, overwhelmingly, placed cogent
descriptions of observable facts above inspired reconstructions of events. As
a result, the status of diachronic linguistics was pathetically weakened; in
particular, the prestige of etymology, including any serious historical study
of proper names, was relegated to the very rear, or fringes, of the discipline.
Indeed, they came perilously close to being expelled from the grounds of
organized scholarship. The reading public at large, however, reacted
differently. There continued to make itself felt a strong demand for easily
assimilable guides to the origin of both lexical units and proper names, and
since that demand could no longer be satisfied from above, as a result of the
withdrawal of potential first-rate purveyors of knowledge, the gap was filled
by dilettanti, of varying degrees of seriousness.
It is only fair to draw a dividing line between Ernest Klein's unquestion-
ably studious, if perhaps unoriginal Comprehensive etymological dictionary
of the English language (1966-7) and Joseph T. Shipley's more successful
than distinguished writings, including his Dictionary of word origins (1945,
2nd edn 1969) and The origins of English words; a discursive dictionary of
Indo-European roots (1984). It is equally important not to confuse Shipley's
level with such exercises in uninhibited entertainment as Charles Earle (alias
Tom) Funk'striad: A hog on ice and other curious expressions (1948); There-
by hangs a tale. Stories of curious word origins (1950); and Horsefeathers and
other curious words (1958). Also, only a completely humourless observer
would be troubled by a successful writer and literature professor, like
George R. Stewart occasionally deviating from the straight and narrow path
and writing a bestseller like Names on the land. A historical account of
place-naming in the United States (1945, 1958). What Klein, Shipley, and
Funk shared was their disinclination to engage in technical etymological
spadework, and Stewart leaned towards the same attitude. No minutely
flawless inquiries, in research papers checked, tested, and approved by
professionals, accompany these attempts to win approval from a lay
readership. And the - not unexpected - consequence of such a hazardous
imbalance can be a piece like Funk's Preface (1940) to ReiderT. Sherwin's
book, whose title alone sounds like a joke: The Viking and the red man. The
Old Norse origin of the Algonquin language.
One conspicuous difference, then, increasingly visible after 1920, be-
tween the monographic exploration of challenging etymological riddles and
the brisk manufacturing, on the assembly line, as it were, of etymological
dictionaries consists in this: the publication of the former in specialized
scries, journals, and bulletins remained under the tight control of fellow-
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Etymology
scholars, a state of affairs normally carrying with it a guarantee of
professionalism. The production of the latter was, in many environments, in
the hands of 'free enterprise', and dictionaries of this sort, a lucrative
business venture from the start, unfortunately tend to be the more profitable
for the publisher the less satisfactory they are on the technical side.

104
 The second half of the twentieth
century

In the forty-year period surveyed in this concluding section of our venture

(1950-1990), etymology can be seen steering a strange course, as if its
practitioners and its beneficiaries were sometimes working at cross-
purposes; in addition, irreconcilably conflicting ideas all too often prevailed
inside each group. There are few exceptions from this trend towards
diversification at almost any cost. One rare universal is the fact that a single,
particular genre of etymological guide is at present clearly doomed to rapid
disappearance (not least for economic reasons), namely the dictionary of
word origins in Language X expounded in Language Y (assuming, of
course, that both X and Y are major living tongues). The nearly-extinct type
of lexicographic compilation here hinted at is exemplified by Max Vasmer's
meritorious work on Russian and Ernst Gamillscheg's on French, each
phrased in German, in conformity with an old tradition. To be sure, there
was published a revised translation into Russian, by O. N. Trubacev, of the
former, and a slightly expanded second edition of the latter made its
appearance in the original garb without, it is true, producing any stir outside
Central Europe. Yet, the more characteristic course of recent events can be
illustrated by the fluctuating fortunes of Walther von Wartburg's incompa-
rably more ambitious and influential venture, which concerns Gallo-
Romance lexis as a whole, and more. At the outset the monumental project
was undertaken as a venture to be worded in German, and was so
continued, when the author moved from Lausanne to Leipzig. Next, the
Romanist agreed to produce a concise, single-volume counterpart, in
collaboration with a Paris-based colleague, Oscar Bloch - this time, a
reference work couched in pleasing French. Finally, the concluding volumes
of the original series, issued posthumously by Walther von Wartburg's
intellectual heirs, started making their appearance, under the tutelage of

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Etymology

France, and written entirely in French, with a French-trained scholar, J.-P.

Chambon, assuming full responsibility for the von Wartburg archive at
Basle. This abrupt switch may rank as a shade opportunistic, or as
inescapable, or even as tasteless, and the successors of the equally excellent
Tobler-Lommatzsch dictionary of Old French, worded in German, have
found a sponsor who fortunately allows that undertaking, not entirely
etymological in slant, to continue sailing under the old flag. But Max
Pfister's etymological dictionary of Italian, and Bodo Muller's of Spanish,
both demonstrably launched after 1950, though innovative in few ways, are
clearly progressive in this one respect: in the retreat of German from a role
which to many has seemed contrary to logic, economics, and nature.
Obviously, the situation is wholly different where dead languages, such as
Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, or entire language families (for example,
Indo-European) or little-known, or else exotic tongues, like Basque or
Breton or Vietnamese, are involved.
The various national communities of scholars' active concern with
etymology, measurable along several axes (not always easily compatible),
and each readership's, each public's response to the challenge of that
discipline after the mid-century point show their own sets of peculiarities. In
the Russian sector of the former Soviet Union, for example, a special
learned journal, with the unequivocal name Etimologija emblazoned on its
cover, has sprung into existence, a state of affairs rich in implications. The
earlier record of Italy was distinctly weak, even in regard to that country's
own standard language; Robert A. Hall, Jr's 1941 bibliography, for
example, lists, apart from a sprinkling of transparently dilettantish exper-
iments, only two noteworthy older florilegia of etymological notes, from the
thoroughly respectable pens of Napoleone Caix (1878) and Giovanni
Flechia (1876-8), in addition to the indisputably modest, even weak,
full-sized etymological dictionaries by Enrico Levi (1914), Ottorino Piani-
giani (1907, 2nd edn 1937), and Francesco Zambaldi (1889, 2nd edn 1913).
As the gaps between the dates of the respective first and second editions
show, the educated public's demand for such book ventures seems to have
been mild rather than passionate throughout those decades. But from the
middle of our century a radical change in supply and demand becomes
clearly perceptible. There appear, to begin with, entirely respectable
introductions to the art of etymologizing, first by that seasoned veteran
Vittore Pisani (1947, 2nd edn 1967), later by the distinctly younger Alberto
Zamboni (1976). Equally if not more important, one observes a real
mushrooming of etymological dictionaries, practically every one of them
original, interesting, and reliable in its own way. The series stretches from
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 The second half of the twentieth century

Bruno Migliorini and Aldo Duro's intelligently selective Prontuario etimo-

logico (1950), a clear-cut success with lay readers (3rd edn, 1958; 4th edn,
1964), through Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio's somewhat bulky
Dizionario etimologico italiano (5 vols., 1950-57), D. Olivieri's 1961 edn of
a 1953 original, and Giacomo Devoto's Avviamento alia etimologia italiana
(1966-7), to Manlio Cortelazzo's and Paolo Zolli's superbly researched
Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana (5 vols., 1978-88).
The situation in the United Kingdom is by no means easy to describe
through a simple formula. In series inherited from earlier periods, such as
the venerable Publications of the Philological Society, lexicology, in general,
and etymology, in particular, have continued to eke out their modest
existence unimpaired, balanced by an equal share of attention accorded to
word-order as a chapter of historical grammar (for example, D. G. Pattison,
1975) and to other studies diachronically slanted (for example, P. M.
Clifford, 1973). In series greatly invigorated after World War II, such as the
universally appreciated annual digest The Year's work in modern language
studies, the critic responsible for each individual language and literature
domain, be he an I. Gonzalez-Llubera, a John N. Green, an S. Ullmann, or
a R. Wright, will ordinarily bracket lexicology with etymology in his
straightforward report, keeping his private preferences under control. From
an encyclopedia (or Grundrifi-) type of multi-author venture, such as
Rebecca Posner's and John N. Green's not so distant four-volume brain-
child, Trends in Romance linguistics and philology (1980-82), literature had
to be excluded by definition and philology was subordinated to linguistics;
but one discerns not a trace of a discouraging or condescending attitude
towards the study of word-origins, as is obviously also true of Posner's
earlier large-scale report, Thirty years on (1970; see Iordan, 1937). But the
feeling that etymological curiosity and skill represent something definitely
old-fashioned, passe, a quaint orientation reconcilable, at best, with John
Orr's odd scale of values but not with a modernist, progressive view of
language research traceable, in the final analysis, to Saussure's Cours de
linguistique generale, has become visible in the pattern of editorial prefe-
rences of deliberate avant-garde periodicals such as Britain's impressive
Journal of Linguistics.
Let us pick, at random, one concrete example presumably illustrative of
what was in the air as the third quarter of this century was approaching its
end. The second number of Vol. X of the aforementioned tone-setting
journal (issued in September 1974) contained a combination of four original
papers (two articles and two notes), in addition to a profusion of book
reviews of varying size, including a twenty-page 'blockbuster' by an
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Etymology
American contributor, Charles J. Fillmore, stationed at Berkeley: a healthy
ratio by all means, at first glance. Of the original pieces three dealt with
syntax and one with phonology, as might have been fully expected given the
trends and events of that well-remembered decade. The critical appraisals
busied themselves with book-length publications on a wide range of
stimulating and perfectly legitimate topics, including, in alphabetic order:
aphasia; cognitive processes; communication and interaction; experimental
psychology; inflectional morphology; intonation; literary stylistics;
paraphrase grammar; phonetics in linguistics; phonology set in various keys;
reference grammar; semantics; sociolinguistics; the speech of primates;
stratificational analysis; syntactic theory (besides syntax in generative garb);
typological genetic linguistics in a generative framework. The voice of
pragmatics alone was apparently still missing in that chorus. But where,
amid this wealth of offerings, could one plausibly expect to find a niche,
however modest, for etymology, the identificational operation par excel-
lence*} The last glimmer of hope was the discovery, among the books
assessed, of an unassuming anthology compiled by James M. Anderson and
Jo Anne Creore. It was titled Readings in Romance linguistics and had been
issued two years before. Yet, as the by no means hostile reviewer, M.
Harris, pointedly remarked, etymology was specifically excluded from the
programme of the compilers,'since to permit . . . adequate coverage would
have required considerable increase in space'. Interestingly, of the two
co-editors of the journal, sponsored by a newly launched dynamic associ-
ation of British linguists one, on the strength of his record, was committed
to diachronic research.
We shall do well to keep in mind the relevant date as, possibly, the
all-time low in the esteem in which a preponderantly youngish crowd of
British linguists and of their closest foreign friends held etymological
probing. The paradox consists in that the same country, just a decade or so
earlier, had wisely patronized, in an Oxonian framework, Thomas Burrow
and Murray B. Emeneau's trail-blazing comparative Dravidian etymological
dictionary (1961, with a battery of significant sequels) and soon thereafter
made available the helpful and handy Oxford dictionary of English etymo-
logy (1966), the work of a trio, namely C. T. Onions, G. W. S. Friedrichsen,
and R. W. Burchfield. As a matter of fact, a later experiment planned and
supervised by Burchfield alone (1987), shortly before his retirement, leads
one to expect further reverberations of that project. Has etymology of late
tended to become, in the United Kingdom, a privileged pasturing ground
reserved for independent-minded individuals and extra-small teams of
mature researchers?
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 The second half of the twentieth century
The recent fortunes of etymological inquiries on North American soil
have abounded in contradictions, not the smallest of which has been the fact
that it has of late been demonstrably feasible to get a major, time-
consuming etymological project approved by society (witness James A.
Matisoff s Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary, sponsored and staffed by
the Berkeley Campus), as against the transparent unavailability of space in
front-line journals for monograph-sized articles on the subject. Exoticism,
contrary to expectations, also helps; yet, one of the most meritorious (and,
one hopes, successful) ventures among the latest crop has been the
English-oriented Barnhart dictionary of etymology (1988). Repeatedly, one
gets the impression that etymologists are bracketed, in the estimation of
educated laymen, with straight lexicographers rather than with bona fide
linguists, a classification which borders on the absurd, because students of
word origins, though concerned with lexis in diachronic projection, need not
in the least commit themselves to the production of wholesale reference
works; also because experts in historical phonology and morphology are
helpless without the constant flow of support from the headquarters of
practitioners of word-identification.
The confusion whose symptoms we have just exemplified did not arise at
the mid-century point; it has much older roots. After the pioneer William
D. Whitney had extolled the virtues of etymological insights in almost
ecstatic terms (1867, 1875), the long-influential textbooks by Leonard
Bloomfield (1914, 1933) and Edward Sapir's series of spellbinding essays
(1921) barely mentioned it at all except by implication or incidentally. The
paradox within the paradox consists in this: as a rank beginner (1911),
Bloomfield, as we have seen moving in the footsteps of his teacher Francis
A. Wood (who, of course, never swerved from that traditional path) had
indeed made attempts to cultivate etymology for its own sake, but hastened
to abandon that sort of inquiry for the sake of more 'scientific' pursuits,
whereas Sapir's flickering concern with word biographies (and, inescapably,
with word origins) became recrudescent the more he swerved his attention
from a long-trodden path of Amerindics towards Semitic and Palaeo-Indo-
European. Yet, these finer points eluded the attention of the crowds of New
World students whose curiosity about linguistics began to warm up after
1940.
However, these twists do not exhaust the complexity of the situation that
has crystallized in the United States, from coast to coast, over approxi-
mately the last half-century. Because, while the near-consensus of tastes
of American-born explorers went one way, not a few intellectuals among
the newcomers were bringing with them to the shores of the Western
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Etymology

Hemisphere a radically different standard of preferences. In the Hittite

field, the decision of Jaan Puhvel, an Estonian by birth and early upbring-
ing, to bank on a larger-scale etymological dictionary of Hittite (1984),
seems to represent a case in point. In the Romance domain, strong leanings
towards unhurried etymological excavations before long became percep-
tible in the far-flung ensemble of writing by the menage Henry and Renee
Kahane (residents of the USA since 1939, but frequent travellers to
Europe), who not so long ago obligingly collected the finest among their
scattered writings in three sturdy volumes. The two elements of novelty in
the spade work of this exemplary team consisted, first, in the imaginative
combination of Greek (including its Byzantine variety) and Oriental
(particularly Anatolian Turkish) with Latin-Romance lexical ingredients,
and, second, in the exceptionally broad humanistic foundation of their
glottological scholarship. While that kind of miscellany doubtless can be
scrupulously indexed, it will never amount to a dictionary, perhaps fortu-
nately so. The point is that, on the European continent, the quest after
etymological knowledge - as a glance at the Italian scene has taught us
before - had not been eroded around 1950; and since some European
scholars so preconditioned and later transplanted onto American soil
succeeded in recruiting students of indisputable American authenticity, the
pendulum, in part, began to swing back.
The hard-core younger Indo-Europeanists, primarily (among them
Calvert Watkins at Harvard and Eric P. Hamp at Chicago), and second-
arily, a handful of enthusiastic and undaunted comparative Romanists offer,
then, a virtual guarantee of continued in-depth etymological inquiries,
despite the extra difficulties produced by the necessity to heed the separate
testimonies of a steadily increasing aggregation of languages, and by the
many obstacles that continue to stand in the way of any unified theory, which,
once formulated, might make etymological analysis more fashionable.
Let us take as our concluding instance of a national scenario, as concerns
recent or current commitment to etymological investigation at its most
advanced, the example of post-war Germany, flanked by other German-
speaking countries. Given the exceptionally deep roots that etymological
curiosity, for centuries, had struck in Central European soil, no one was
surprised to see Manfred Mayrhofer present, as early as 1953-80, a concise
etymological Sanskrit dictionary (Kurzgefafites etymologisches Worterbuch
des Altindischen); nor is it astonishing, in that environment, to see the same
scholar at work on a Sanskrit grammar - a duality of commitment traceable
to the classic tradition of Jakob Grimm, Franz Bopp, Wilhelm Meyer-
Liibke (and, before him, Friedrich Diez), and the like.
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 The second half of the twentieth century

Now the existence of a firm tradition offers both advantages and

drawbacks. On the positive side of the ledger, one detects the same
availability as before of human resources willing and sometimes eager to
compile all sorts of etymological dictionaries, vocabularies, glossaries, and
mere word-lists. One also detects the same zest and endurance for long-
drawn-out spadework, the same degree of will-power and self-effacement
required to continue work initiated and programmatically circumscribed by
one's predecessors (with this task now, at intervals, assigned to foreign
colleagues, as was the case with Winfred P. Lehmann's recent revision of
the third and final edition of Sigmund Feist's Vergleichendes Worterbuch der
gotischen Sprache), also, the same readiness of private publishers or learned
bodies to endorse or sponsor such ventures. Finally, one notes the availabil-
ity, in high-level journals, such as Kratylos, of adequate editorial space for
publishing extensive, minutely detailed assessments, some of them concern-
ing a dictionary as a whole, while others are allowed to concentrate, through
a microscopic lens as it were, on individual fascicles: witness Klaus Matzel's
recent attempt (1989) to devote thirteen pages of mostly small print to Vol.
I (A-Bi) of Albert L. Lloyd and Otto Springer's Etymologisches
Worterbuch des Althochdeutschen, published just the preceding year. With
thoroughness, even if it is achieved at the cost of slowness, being the
watchword, one is not amazed to see just the first two fascicles of the letter
A of Rolf Hiersche's Deutsches etymologisches Worterbuch (1986) con-
verted into objects of independent critical attention. Supporting evidence of
continued (as a matter of fact, growing) loyalty to this time-honoured genre
of research, which at present preferably sails under the fashionable flag of
'Historische Wortforschung', can be readily supplied on any desirable scale.
Suffice it to mention here, entirely at random, the Etymologie der hethi-
tischen Sprache (one of several such overlapping projects) initiated by Heinz
Kronasser and now successfully concluded by Erich Neu (1962-6, 1987).
This project, incidentally, exemplifies the new genre of 'tentative or
preliminary etymological dictionary'. As regards the triumph of the label
'Historische Wortforschung', as a cautious substitute for the slightly out-
worn 'Etymologie', suffice it to cite the case of the 'Bruder-Grimm-
Symposion zur historischen Wortschopfung' (Marburg, 1985), a conference
whose fruits were made known by Reiner Hildebrandt and Ulrich Knoop
the following year. Alternatively, one is free to speak of 'Studien zum
Wortschatz' (for example, Wolfgang Meid, 1987).
One less attractive feature is the continued inability of the (otherwise
meritorious) German-language school of etymological probing to draw an
incisively sharp line between:
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Etymology

(a) solid etymological work of intended use for fellow-specialists alone,

with exhaustive documentation of every single occurrence of the
words under study, and with due mention of every previous hint or
statement made by earlier analysts; and
(b) equally respectable work divested of such apparatus (and even of any
claim to original discovery of minute facts), but imposingly original in
its organization and the perspectives that it opens, also endowed with
a refreshingly high degree of readability.
Thus, Friedrich Kluge's classic, Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen
Spmche, which, on the scale of sheer accessibility, used to be compared to
the Grimm brothers' masterly collection of folk-tales and to Konrad
Duden's guides to correct orthography, has beyond dispute been improved
in countless details by its successive revisers, including Walther Mitzka
(1967, 1975), but has, in the process, lost much of its original verve and
assimilability. Here, a few other countries, including France (due to the
energetic revision of Albert Dauzat's pre-war venture by Jean Dubois and
Henri Mitterand) and the United States (by virtue of the already mentioned
experiment staged by Robert K. Barnhart and his collaborators) seem to
have moved ahead of Central Europe.
The individual word study conducive to an etymological restatement (as
distinct from a dictionary of word origins) continues to flourish in Central
Europe, but is these days seldom engaged in with an elan remotely
comparable to what one could confidently expect to find before, especially
in the 1920-50 period. This recoil from a conceivably excessive vogue looks
like a symptom of temporary fatigue or, worse, disappointment and gives
the impression of being somehow connected with a nearly simultaneous
retreat from three positions, each one until recently blessed with enviable
potentialities of brisk and aggressive advance, and all three neatly profiled
in Central Europe's tradition of scholarship:
(a) onomasiology (or historical synonymies) planned from the start as
exactly the reverse of diachronic semasiology (akin to present-day
lexical semantics); its assignment was to concentrate on rival expres-
sions for the same concept - usually a noun in overt preference to any
other form class (for example, The Designations of 'Uncle' and
'Aunt' in Language X');
(b) Dialect geography practised in a dynamic key, which examined the
moves of individual words, or commonly used itineraries, across space
and, by implication, time. It specialized in the causes of the extinction
of certain doomed words (for example, those damaged by the hazards
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of erosion or homonymy) and in the rise of suitable substitutes for

them, with constant attention to increasingly intricate dialect maps,
collected in special atlases; and it stressed selected features of rural
life, again with an emphasis on nouns; and
(c) Concurrent study of lexicology and material civilization, predomi-
nantly synchronic but with the ever-present possibility of extension
into diachrony. It entailed almost mandatory concentration on the
vast repository of nouns (for example, tools and containers), to the
near-exclusion of pronouns, adjectives, and, above all, verbs.

Since the more modern currents of linguistic thinking, rightly or wrongly,

lean towards a heavy stress on various categories of pronouns and verbs as
the classes most rewarding for inquiries into syntax, which currently enjoy
such a vogue, there has gradually threatened to develop a divorce, even on
German soil, between all guises of modernism and etymological traditional-
ism, however recherche.
Experience shows that etymology is engaged in most effectively when
paired off with some other, collateral interest, a combination which
prevents reckless scattering of attention and gives etymological inquiries a
more 'structured' appearance. This lesson has by now been learned on
either side of the Atlantic. In Germany's 'cultural sphere', the period of
space-filling conjectures recklessly assembled, in the quarterlies, under the
rubric 'Etymologisches', has definitely - and fortunately - become a thing
of the past. The combinations, whether topical or methodical, are not
meant to last forever; we have just watched the decline of three of them.
More durable has been the alliance of (a) standard etymological operations
and (b) inquiries into the rise and spread of proper names, whether
anthroponyms and zoonyms or toponyms, oronyms, and hydronyms. As a
matter of fact, the borderline between the two domains, where it has been
drawn at all, seems entirely artificial. Consequently, high-level studies in
proper names, more characteristic of the academic environment of Germany
than of other countries, have continued to make their appearance and have
preserved their relevance to etymological practice and theory. (Cf. Wilhelm
Eilers' 100-page study of the Near Eastern oronym Demawend (1988) and
the literature cited in the somewhat older collection of Ramon Menendez
Pidal's Hispanic toponymic investigations (1952); or, on a monumental
scale, Manfred Mayrhofer's and Rudiger Schmitt's multi-volume Iranisches
Personennamenbuch (Vol. IV, by M. Alram, 1986).)
Another increasingly close connection has developed between word- and
name-history, on the one hand, and, on the other, the history of settlements
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Etymology

(Siedlungsgeschichte). The hazard here lies in the possibility of political

overtones and even of hidden claims when the author belongs to one of the
participants in a territorial conflict. The risk, of course, lends itself to tight
control: there may be some wisdom in subordinating these kinds of reports
on contact-through-conflict to the general history of lexical diffusion, also
known by its older labels as 'loans' and 'borrowings'. Such analyses offer the
perfect backgrounds or starting points for etymological investigations, and
German scholarship has acted wisely in refusing to abandon them. A major
step forward taken of late has been the selection of maritime zones as focal
areas for such purposes as the analysis of lexical infiltration, witness T.
Hofstra's study (1985), characteristic in this respect, of protracted contacts
between Finnish and German in the Eastern Baltic.
Having so far observed a string of clashes and contradictions in the latest
zigzag course followed by advanced etymology in several countries, we
would almost be disappointed to discover nothing of the sort in one of the
homelands of the discipline at issue, namely Germany. And, sure enough,
there has of late crystallized a new and hazardous genre, which it seems safe
to dub 'etymological counterdictionary' (Malkiel, 1986, used greater re-
straint in mentioning an 'aberrant style of etymological research'). The
spokesman for it has been Harri Meier, no youngster at that stage, and he
has managed to recruit a whole crew of inexperienced followers.
The prototype of this novel genre was harmless enough. Important
etymologica, abounding in fresh data, new techniques, and illuminating
solutions of age-old 'riddles', have for a long time tended to provoke
unrealistically lengthy critiques, sometimes followed by authors' rebuttals.
Thus, in the Romance domain, Gustav Korting's uninspired compilation
(1891, 1901, 1907) received far closer attention, especially in Italy, than it
actually deserved. The thing to do, for a book reviewer who is both
imaginative and judicious, is to vindicate his opinion by examining under a
powerful lens a randomly selected slice of, let us say, ten or, at most, twenty
pages of the book under scrutiny. Seventy years or so ago, some over-
zealous critics started to exceed such a reasonable quota by a frighteningly
wide margin. Among Hispanists alone, the original edition (1911-1920) of
Wilhelm Meyer-Lubke's pan-Romanic dictionary produced a single superb
review article from the pen of Ramon Menendez Pidal, a slightly overex-
tended sequence of instalments of Americo Castro's interesting comments
(still a journal article in the aggregate); and Vicente Garcia de Diego's
book-length running commentary. The last-mentioned critic's excuse (had
he been called to order) might have been that his 200-page book, basically,
was an enfilade of factual addenda, elaborations, and corrigenda extracted
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from a storehouse of peninsular dialectal data which he had patiently

accumulated over the years, without actually proposing many entirely new
solutions. The next act of the comedy was an experiment staged by Leo
Spitzer, a many-sided Austrian scholar and critic, who had meanwhile been
transplanted to Baltimore. Americo Castro's philological edition (1936),
spiced with crisp etymological remarks, of three late fourteenth-century
Latin-Aragoncse glossaries, was subjected to line-by-line scrutiny in several
consecutive volumes of an overseas journal. Spitzer was so sophisticated
and many-sided, and knew so much about ancient, medieval, and modern
languages that the reader was willing to go along with his invariably witty
(and sometimes persuasive) counter-proposals. Riding this vogue of suc-
cess, Spitzer, almost a decade later, repeated the trick apropos of Juan
Corominas' original etymological dictionary of Spanish, in four volumes
(1954-7).
Again, one was inclined to forgive Spitzer his eccentricity in haphazardly
ventilating a great many etymological conjectures by way of mere
'Geistesblitze', without any independent laborious collection of raw data or
of earlier hypotheses (Corominas' museum, although well-equipped with
such information, was obviously far from complete). Eventally Meier,
lacking any excuse for this bizarre modus operandi, applied such objection-
able methods to the book-length sifting, in excess of 200-pages long (1984),
of the Corominas-Pascual venture, an expansion of the earlier dictionary by
the former writer alone, aimed to occupy a total of six volumes. Meier offers
the barest minimum of arbitrarily chosen fresh data; unfortunately, his book
bristles with new (and, almost invariably, untenable) 'Einfalle'. The scep-
tical reader gains the painful impression that a detour has here been tried
out. While hesitant to fall back directly on a Korting-level degree of
superficiality, one of our contemporaries has cleverly circumvented the
difficulty by giving free rein to his roaming imagination via the cloak of
counter-proposals nonchalantly tossed off, and ranging from A to Z.
The widely discrepant records of recent commitments to etymology
elsewhere could easily be discussed in comparable detail, no doubt at the
risk of some monotony. But, in all likelihood, there exist equally notewor-
thy dividing lines among traditions, not necessarily drawn along the borders
that happen to separate national cultures. Thus, in the English-speaking
community of scholars it has become customary to include derivational and
even inflectional morphemes among the entries, on a par with the bulk of
lexemes taken into account. The Barnhart dictionary of etymology, for
example, makes a point of discussing, under the entries en- and -en: (a) a
weakly perceptible prefix en- (variant an-) inherited from Old French, as in
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Etymology
enchant, anoint, making some allowance for its intensive function in enclose,
enfold (var. in-); (b) a weakly detachable prefix en-, of hazy connotation,
found in Hellenisms, as in endemic, energy, enthusiasm; (c) a suffix, of
Germanic provenance, serving to extract verbs from adjectives and nouns,
as in black-en, flat(t)-en, soft-en; (d) a suffix, often obsolescent, of the same
origin, forming adjectives from nouns, as in ash-en, wood-en; (e) a suffix
that qualifies for coining past participles, for example, brok-en, fall-en; and
(f) an element residually used in the formation of certain plurals, as in
brethr-en, ox-en, and, through conflation with a -re plural, child-r-en.
The somewhat older Oxford dictionary of English etymology, overwhelms
its reader with, fundamentally, the same kind of information, except that it
dwells far more on Old English and Middle English usages and spreads out
richer collections of examples. Also, it mentions the seventh use of the same
morpheme of which a single trace has survived into contemporary English
(vix-en), namely the use of -en to mint feminine from masculine nouns, as
anciently gyden 'goddess' from god, including such abstracts as hceften
'custody' or rceden 'arrangement'.
The editors responsible for the second (revised) edition of the unabridged
Random House dictionary seem to be in agreement in principle, except that
their favoured pattern of functional segmentation comprises five categories,
including diminutive -en, as in kitt-en, maid-en.
Now, this tradition turns out to be almost totally alien to Romance
scholarship, whatever the environment in which it is being practised. True,
Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke, in both versions of his comparative dictionary
(1911-20, 1930-35), still presented a short separate entry re- (§ 7102),
chiefly because stray attempts had been made, in certain daughter lan-
guages of Latin, to grant a measure of autonomy to that erstwhile prefix.
Ernst Gamillscheg, as a student and loyal follower of Meyer-Lubke, agreed,
in his etymological dictionary of French (1926-8, 1966-9), to list separately
de- and re-, i.e., characteristic prefixes; but he excluded the -ons of av-ons
and the -u of both ten-u and touff-u, i.e., suffixes of all sorts inflectional and
derivational. Juan Corominas, in his counterpart for Spanish (1954-7), went
one step farther and altogether discarded re-, making an ill-advised leap all
the way from razzia to reacio. True, most Romance prefixes also function as
adverbs or prepositions and thus do come up elsewhere for incidental
mention; but this advantageous status stops short of applying to most, if not
all, suffixes. The answer to the threat of a lacuna is then, apparently, the
insertion of a diachronically slanted concise treatise on derivation in the
total edifice of the given dictionary venture, along the lines tried out by the

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nineteenth-century Hispanist Pedro Felipe Monlau, whose etymologicum

was repeatedly re-issued in Argentina half a century ago (1941, etc.).
In reaching their perfectly defensible decision the Romance scholars were
no doubt merely following in the footsteps of Diez (and, in the last analysis,
those of Grimm); but they were inexplicit in justifying their position, which
amounted to bracketing all details of word-formation with historical gram-
mar (specifically, with morphology) rather than with straight lexis, and
became lax about explicating any underlying theoretical considerations.
Thus, Joseph M. Piel, when invited to revise and bring up to date his
teacher Meyer-Lubke's Wortbildungslehre (1921), excellent for its time,
confined himself to appending a long series of minor details (1954), a policy
which explains, at least in part, the cool, not to say hostile, reception of his
efforts by disillusioned younger critics. An otherwise experienced and
well-informed Gerhard Rohlfs, this time apparently undecided as to where
to insert his discussion of Italo-Romance prefixes and suffixes, finally
appended it to his analysis of syntax in the concluding volume (1954) of his
otherwise well-structured Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache
und ihrer Mundarten. Max Leopold Wagner, with his thinking conceivably
riveted to his forthcoming etymological dictionary of Sardic, then in an
advanced stage of preparation (it was to appear posthumously, in three
volumes, 1957-64), produced, in 1952, a hastily written Historische Wortbil-
dungslehre of that same language, which he knew so well, a manual that
contributed little to grammatical insights, but, at least, neatly segregated
borrowings from the native stock of insular words and not infrequently
inventoried up to fifty or sixty derivatives involving a single suffix, i.e.,
confused lexical with grammatical information. Henry and Renee Kahane,
after straddling etymology and suffixation as late as 1948-9, thereafter
wisely decided to concentrate on the former.
More thought-provoking, perhaps, than any further elaboration on the
subject of blurred dividing lines between subdisciplines is likely to be a
quick look at a gradually arising new variety of etymological inquiry,
characteristic of the academic microcosm after the two World Wars: to wit,
the extension of etymological curiosity to neologisms rather than to ancient
lexical deposits. Conceivably by the time a side-effect of the general
recession, after c.1920, of traditional excitement about the classics, the long
mandatory study of secondary level of Latin and Greek - qua languages
and qua carriers of a peerless cultural heritage - began to sink on both sides
of the Atlantic, this shift had a dire effect on the mainstream of historical
linguistics, i.e., of the discipline to which etymology was an ancillary. While

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being itself a university-level subject of study and research, that speciality

was nevertheless geared to its devotees' preliminary familiarity with Latin
and Greek as the two mutually complementary pillars of our grasp of
Antiquity. Ironically, while fewer enthusiasts could thus afford to warm to
the prospect of future careers as classicists, as Indo-Europeanists, or even as
palaeo-Romanists, the respective programmes of advanced study were
becoming more and more complicated, through the ceaseless discovery of
new languages and dialects.
In such a climate of opinion and preference, the prospects for continuity
and improvement were few and slim indeed; and it took a 'desperado' like
the German-Swiss investigator Johannes Hubschmid, in the 1940-60 pe-
riod, to declare, or insinuate, out of sheer stubbornness, as it were, that he,
a versatile Romance etymologist by training and initial inclination, found
the building of lexical bridges from medieval and modern dialect speech,
such as Gascon or Sardic, to Latin insufficiently fascinating for his spade-
work and the interpretations based thereupon. Apparently, for a Romance
word to whet his appetite, he expected to recognize, however dimly, at the
other end of the lexical corridor some pre-Latin (for example, Celtic) or,
better still, some downright pre-Indo-European (for example, Iberian)
base - despite the disproportionate size of the hazards taken in such
identificational exercises across millenia (and, in addition, over distances of
thousands of miles). Witness the eloquent titles, here mercifully abridged,
of such characteristic studies from his pen, inquiries extending from 1949 to
1960, as: Praeromanica. Studien zum vorromanischen Wortschatz der
Romania (focusing on the Franco-Provencal and Occitan dialects of the
Western Alps); Alpenworter romanischen und vorromanischen Ursprungs
(i.e., Alpine words either of Romance or of substratal stock), 1951;
Sardische Studien. Das mediterrane Substrat des Sardischen (certain pre-
Romance, 'Mediterranean' ingredients of Sardic are here connected with
Berber, Basque, Eurafrican, and Hispano-Basque), 1953; Schlduche und
Fdsser (the lines of lexical borrowing here stretch from Anatolian Turkish to
European and from Turkish-Caucasian to Iranian), 1955; Mediterrane
Substrate (with special consideration of Basque and of West-Eastern lexical
connections), 1960. Clearly, in this kind of exploration etymological curios-
ity and intuition reign supreme, since there remains virtually nothing else to
look into. But at what price in loss of realism has this aim been achieved!
If Hubschmid's oeuvre, which apparently came to a virtual standstill a
quarter of a century ago, represents in its exaggerations a sort of overreac-
tion to the general retreat from antiquarianism, as it had flourished before
1914, the new developments, luckily and somewhat unexpectedly, offered
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realistic alternatives to any exclusive infatuation with but hazily recogniz-

able prehistoric languages. When the new-style genre of linguistics journals,
divorced from earlier concentration on Antiquity, sprang into existence,
designed to capture the attention of the modern-language teacher at college
level, one could have expected their respective editors, contributors, and
reader-subscribers to have attempted to rid themselves of any ties to
'old-fashioned' etymology, concentrating instead on phonetics, stylistics,
and the like. This holds for Die neueren Sprachen in Germany (1893-1943,
and 1952-); for Moderna Sprdk in Sweden (1906-); for American Speech in
the USA (1925-); for Le frangais moderne in France (1933—); for Lingua
nostra in Italy (1939-); and no doubt for numerous other similar journals.
What actually happened, however, was something entirely different and
not readily foreseeable. The founding editors of the aforementioned
journals (and of several others, sloped in the same direction) - Albert
Dauzat in the case of Le frangais moderne, Bruno Migliorini in the context
of Lingua nostra - were erudite but flexible persons, thoroughly trained in
the ways of traditional etymologizing (witness their respective etymological
dictionaries), but unconventional enough to turn their eyes and ears to
alternative possibilities, more in tune with the post-war Zeitgeist. Instead of,
unimaginatively, declaring etymology antiquated, as has indeed been done
of late in certain opportunistic quarters on either side of the Atlantic, they
leaned towards encouraging something truly new: the application of the old
technique and method to the large reservoir, for the most part left
untapped, of currently observable neologisms. These, to be sure, included
some linguistically noteworthy scientific terms pieced together by scientists
from the nearly inexhaustible resources of authentic Greek and Latin.
Understandably, much heavier emphasis was placed, however, on new,
'colourful' slangy words which were gradually seeping through from some
directions that remained to be ascertained. As a rule, their arrival on the
scene could easily be dated with the help of newspapers, announcements,
radio broadcasts, television messages, tapes, gossip columns in newspapers,
informally overheard conversations, performances of (musical) comedies
and farces, and the like. There certainly was no dearth of primary sources.
Lists of colloquial 'mistakes' deserving to be weeded out, compiled by
purists or pedants with an entirely different aim in view, also provided
excellent fuel for the neo-etymologists.
It almost goes without saying that enterprising editors of new-style
journals (and contributors whom they managed to recruit) were not the only
priests of the spreading cult. Certain freewheeling scholars, endowed with
special aptitudes for this kind of data-gathering and analysis, readily chimed
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Etymology
in. One example was the Frenchman Pierre Guiraud (of the University of
Nice), distinctly better-known through his many-pronged corpus of publica-
tions than through the limited fruits of his teaching. Migliorini, on the other
hand, had a deservedly strong following. He derived added strength from
occupying a chair at Florence not of 'glottologia' (an appointment that
might have enticed him to divide his time and energy between Indo-
European and comparative Romance), but of 'Storia della lingua italia-
na' - an appointment (the first in this subject) that literally invited a division
of his leisure time into more conventional and more innovative approaches.
The point of the entire movement was that it could, minimally, aspire to
satisfy the 'etymological hunger' of educated and sophisticated, but un-
specialized readers (lawyers, doctors, college teachers, enlightened business-
men, tourists, for example), i.e., persons who could never be prevailed
upon to delve into, let us say, Hieroglyphic or Cuneiform Hittite, or into
Tocharian B, by giving them a chance to familiarize themselves with
exactly how the tracing of individual words to their origins works. As the
potential maximum yield one could single out the analyst's confidence that,
at least, a few younger readers thus stimulated could eventually be
persuaded to turn their attention to the serious, professional practice of
etymology.
Scattered traces of such thinking are visible in the sporadic attempts
made, in good taste, by present-day weeklies and monthlies of wide appeal
to reserve a page or two of each issue for exercises in 'neo-etymology',
couched in an easily assimilable, non-technical, but nevertheless tasteful
style. Even the keyword 'etymology' is then, as a rule, avoided, as being
possibly conducive to, or redolent of, undesirable pedantry. The column or
page in question can, for example, be discreetly titled 'Among the new
words'. One remarkable experiment along this line has, for example, been
imaginatively conducted in the United States by the nationally esteemed
Atlantic Monthly, a very establishmentarian periodical normally far
removed from the avant-garde.
Let us see how the scholars here somewhat arbitrarily brought together
actually operate to arouse their readers' dormant curiosity. The Atlantic's
shrewd expert Craig M. Carter knows how to cut a path with a well-honed
knife through the jungle of studies engaged in by serious linguists, but
forgets not for one moment that he has agreed to address and enlighten a
huge crowd of non-professionals - ideally, all the habitual readers of the
well-established monthly (presumably in the neighbourhood of half a
million adults), practically all of them laymen so far as technicalities of
linguistic analysis are concerned. Therefore he basically offers them a bit of
entertainment rather than a dull sermon or a cogent demonstration.
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Being in charge of 'word history', as the concluding section of a typical

180-page large-format issue of The Atlantic is titled, he will dutifully
acknowledge a single source via the habitual obligatory subtitle: 'Etymolo-
gies derived from the files of the Dictionary of American regional English' (a
respected venture still in process of publication). Other sources likely to
have been consulted are, as a matter of policy, never identified, even
though upon occasion one finds hints of divided opinions, splits which
testify to Carter's having, at least, tried to rummage around for some
conclusive explanation.
The three-column page offers just sufficient space for ventilating three or
four usually disconnected lexical issues, if one takes into account that same
number of accompanying pictures (not, or not yet, cartoons). A graphic
illustration, in this context, dwells not on the crucial stage of the develop-
ment envisaged, but on some recent phase that one can safely expect to
titillate the average American subscriber's thirst for knowledge via amuse-
ment. Thus, the November 1990 issue concerns itself with {inter alia)
bonanza, as applied, chiefly in present-day Nevada, to a rewarding kind of
farming cleverly suggested by the illustration adjoined. Every imaginable
effort has been made not to fatigue the potential reader (or, for that matter,
the typesetter): Greek malakos 'soft', malakia 'softness' (i.e., the ultimate
sources) appear in Latin script, without the requisite accent marks;
*bonak(a, the hypothesized counterpart of malakia, is relieved of its
asterisk, which would have overtly marked it as a reconstruction; while the
label 'euphemistic' is withheld from the substitution of bon- for mal-, after
the latter's witty reinterpretation as a member of the malus family. Not a
single word is wasted on the replacement of the (semantically empty)
terminal segment -akia by the fully-fledged suffix -antia, although there
happens to be in existence a book-sized monograph of the twin suffixes
-antia and -(i)entia, written in English and published by a California
university press over forty-five years ago. The pivotal stress shift does not
come up for mention. In sum, these sacrifices are indeed heavy, but
apparently are deemed sufficient to provide in the reader's mouth for the
expected salivation. Hence the urgent need for some 'kick-off statements,
such as the anecdotal opening remark that there at present exists a television
series so named, or, equally sensational, that a US senator recently called one
provision of the 1990 Civil Rights Act a 'lawyer's bonanza'.
Far more complicated is the history of the phrase {to be) snarky, which in
Britain is tantamount to 'to be irritable, short-tempered' and in the United
States rivals '(to be) elegantly stylish'. Part of the difficulty resides in
homonymy or near-homonymy. Ultramodern American English narc 'nar-
cotics officer' must be kept out of the family tree, while the name of the
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Etymology
imaginary animal snark (Lewis Carroll) turns out to be a portmanteau word
formed from superposition of snake on shark. Carter brushes off any
possibility of influence from that direction, although he is not above toying
with the off-chance of some mild lateral pressure from nark 'unpleasant,
quarrelsome person', (British slang) narky 'ill-tempered, irascible', ori-
ginally 'informer'. Fundamentally (so he reports), snarky belongs with to
snark 'to snore, snort', a sound-imitative verb of Germanic ancestry with
cognates in Scandinavian and German. With so many admitted uncertain-
ties besieging us, why bother to introduce the unwary readers to such a
stumbling-block without, in the process, wasting a single word on the
habitual expressive or phonosymbolic dimension of the word-initial conso-
nant cluster sn-1 The motivation or relevance of the choice has not been
withheld. Jim Henson (a locally famous entertainer) reportedly once said of
his best-known Muppet, Kermit the Frog: 'He's a little snarkier than I am'.
These two examples suffice to provide an illustration of what middlebrow
(actually low-brow) etymologizing can amount to. Alas, one discovers an
even less appetizing variety on the entertainment page of one's neighbour-
hood daily newspaper. Here, even any harmless fagade of professionalism
becomes totally invisible. Thus, on the back page of a typical issue of the
Oakland Tribune (to be sure, not the equal of the New York Times),
etymological riddles are inconsiderately squeezed in as an ingredient of a
tasteless pot-pourri of comics, horoscopes, crossword puzzles, announce-
ments of television programmes, cryptoquotes, questions and answers on
bridge-playing, horse sense columns (a pastime at which a player can score a
number of points for correct answers to assorted 'silly' questions), and
similar amusements (intellectually unrewarding as a rule, if not downright
banal). Platitudinous cartoons and, in the their sequel, colourless public
notices are occasionally allowed to appear on the same newspaper pages.
At the opposite end of the scale of possibilities characteristic of the New
World's present-day mores one discovers, in an early-1989 issue of Ameri-
can Speech, John and Adele Algeo's truly high-standard piece, 'Among the
New Words'. And, if one is eager to advance one step farther in the
direction of serious, organized scholarship with an etymological tinge, one
can indeed find representative specimens of such work in a 1988 issue of a
strictly philological periodical, namely the University of Georgia's Journal
of English Linguistics, as when Mary E. Clark and Brian D. Joseph try to
vindicate the (controversial) derivation of English bum 'buttocks' from
bottom by assuming its migration from child language into adult speech by
combining historical evidence with direct observation of their own two-year-
old son David's baby-talk.
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It is correct and feasible, then, to amalgamate one's separate impressions

of the layers of the present-day American scene into a single composite
picture. That projection ranges from (1) the truly serious attitude of a
chosen few interpreters towards their assignment, involving lexemes that
are (a) either fairly new (but long left unrecorded) or were (b) actually
introduced not all that long ago, through (2) semi-scholarly analysis
misleadingly disguised as sheer entertainment to (3) completely, almost
cynically trivialized treatment, pretending that a playful attitude is called for
in coming to grips with such problems.
A palpably different climate of opinion has, until recently, at least,
prevailed in France where, side by side with unimpeachably conducted
experiments traceable to the historicist legacy of Antoine Meillet and his
school, there also developed a heterodox school of thought ordinarily
associated with the name of Pierre Guiraud (1912-83). If one agrees to call
Guiraud's fierce independence of mind, combined with a phenomenal
capacity for hard work, his obverse side, then a certain capriciousness and
arbitrariness in matters academic and no doubt personal constituted the
corresponding reverse. He rapidly developed into a loner, was prevented
from making, in Paris, a career commensurate with his talent and promise,
and had to content himself with thirty years or so of teaching at the
University of Nice, i.e., at a considerable, not to say prohibitive or punitive,
distance from the crucially-important capital. (An erratic attempt he made
in 1952 to establish himself in the Netherlands, at the University of
Groningen, seems not to have led him very far, either.) With few avid or
demanding students knocking at his door, he had plenty (perhaps an excess)
of leisure, which he used to produce a frightening number of textbooks, not
all of them of uniformly impeccable quality. In the end, his slim introduc-
tion to Old French (1967), ironically enough, gained by being revised by a
younger, but more rigorous scholar, G. Zink. But his etymological inquiries
turned out to be truly interesting and original, not only topically but also by
virtue of their methodological heterodoxy. He fell short, I repeat, of
assembling any school of sympathizers or followers. Recognition came
late - at first, surprisingly, from England (witness the four pages that
Rebecca Posner, in 1970, reserved for an appreciation of his 'new and
fascinating insights into language dynamics' in her report Thirty years on,
that well-remembered supplement to Iordan-Orr's Introduction to
Romance linguistics). He received no testimonial volume except posthu-
mously (1985), and its editors, C. P. Bouton, E. Brunei, and L.-J. Calvet,
were little known outside the precincts of Nice. Nevertheless, there could be
no doubt that he became a major experimentalist after 1967, the publication
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Etymology

date of his Structures etymologiques du lexique frangais (a second edition

was arranged for by Paul Robert's associate Alain Rey in 1986). There
followed his possibly weightiest and most ambitious venture, the Diction-
naire erotique (1978), which has completely replaced Auguste Scheler's
earlier venture issued under an assumed name. Finally, the Dictionnaire des
etymologies obscures (1982) rounded off his attempts to tread this risky and
treacherous ground, except that the most memorable contribution to the
aforecited Hommage (1985) is rumoured to have been Guiraud's posthu-
mous 'inedit': 'Encore des etymologies obscures', ten concentrated pages
devoted to the vicissitudes of twenty-one words with initial '/i aspire'.
One cannot measure Guiraud's performance as etymologist by the same
yardstick that is commonly applied to the accomplishments of a Wilhelm
Meyer-Lubke or a Walther von Wartburg, not to mention, in the ranks of
Indo-Europeanists, such practitioners as Alois Walde and Johann Baptist
Hofmann. Of the more than forty books that he wrote, rarely if ever in
collaboration with others, not one deals, programmatically, with a language
(living or dead) other than French, or even with French envisioned in some
thought-provoking combination with other languages, even though foreign
tongues, to be sure, may constitute unobtrusive parts of the background
material, as indeed they inescapably must in a venture slanted in the
direction of Les mots etrangers (1965). Other doubts arise as one discovers,
in scanning Guiraud's imposing bibliography, his uncanny skill in dashing
off, in breathtakingly rapid succession, one book-length synthesis after
another, in a rather disorientating sequence: at first, a pamphlet on the
sources of the rhyme (1952); next, somewhat longer treatises on stylistics
(1954) and on the statistical method applied to the study of languages (that
same year, and a return performance in 1959); then, slender books on
semantics (1955; rebaptized 'semiology' twenty years later); on grammar
and on the learned vocabulary (both in 1958, despite the wide disparity of
the two topics); finally, on syntax (1962), on Old French and on Middle
French (the following year: two separate, parallel ventures), and on
versification (1970). Almost inevitably, a bystander's initial impression is
that of a chain of travaux de vulgarisation, some of them admittedly
successful as publishing ventures (as had been, before Guiraud, certain
books by Albert Dauzat, written agreeably enough for a public of laymen
and neophytes). But while this series of books and booklets, and Guiraud's
involvement in some other side-issues, e.g., in the lexical corpus of certain
writers, did little to consolidate his reputation among serious specialists,
certain other books from his pen, step by step, circumscribed his more

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sharply silhouetted bent, indeed, talent, for straight etymological inquiries.

His eventual penchant for 'etymologies obscures' and his inquiries into the
provenance and vicissitudes of racy, scurrilous, or erotic words were
adumbrated by his sole authorship of writings such as Uargot (1956), Les
locutions frangaises (1961), Uetymologie (1964), and, in 1968, Patois et
dialectes franqais, side by side with Le jargon de Villon ou le gai savoir de la
Coquille. The more resolutely Guiraud decided to veer away from his
earlier concern with the vocabularies of, for example, Corneille, Racine,
and Valery (a preoccupation highly characteristic of the 1950s), the more
daringly he could plunge into the exploration of murky etymologies, almost
in the wake of an earlier nonconformist, namely Lazare Sainean.
Sound symbolism, starting with the speculations of the ancients
(especially Plato), was destined to play a major role in Guiraud's thinking,
and he felt more at ease, upon his own admission, with contemporary
theorists and practitioners (like O. Jespersen, R. Jakobson, and Emile
Benveniste) who had made generous allowances for it, than with certain
disciplinarians who were narrow-minded enough to question its agency or to
leave it unmentioned. Guiraud, flexibly enough, stood prepared to operate
with multiple causation: a given form, he felt, could represent a compromise
of sorts between some other processes, better studied but all too often
marginalized (a blend, a suffixal derivation, a borrowing, to cite three
disparate possibilities), on the one hand, and, on the other, onomatopoeic
orchestration. (From the dialect geographers he inherited a certain predilec-
tion for small-sized 'interpreted' maps.) Thus, in his Structures etymolo-
giques he assembled 180 clusters of Modern French words (all in all, over
400 lexemes) presided over, as it were, by a T-K, or, better still, a T-R-K
skeleton, an assertion which did not exclude the high probability that most
of them boasted normally shaped ancestral forms traceable to neatly
individuated etyma. But the T-(R-)K feature came close to acting as a sort
of common denominator, as a shared dominant peculiarity, and must not be
rashly eliminated from consideration when the analyst trains his lens on an
ensemble that comprises items extracted from heterogeneous, not to say
haphazardly arranged, sources, such as standard dictionaries, argot glossa-
ries, dialect vocabularies, maps torn from linguistic atlases, Old French, Old
Provengal, and Modern Occitan data collections. Interconnecting, then,
lexemes extracted from disparate sources, and likely to exhibit a variety of
meanings which are at first glance difficult of reconciliation (tac, taque,
taquer, attaque, attaquer, taquee, taquoir, taqu-et [-ette], taquot, etc.),
Guiraud, all obstacles notwithstanding, believed to have recognized certain

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common denominators: 'Le protosemantisme', he remarked, Tidee initiale

qui supporte l'ensemble, est celle de 'frapper', sous les alternances taquer,
tiquer, toquer\ {Structures, p. 74.)
Guiraud himself classified the case of T-K as one of two instances of
onomatopoeic structures that had come to his attention, the other being one
of 'labialized roots', which also presupposed, as its main pivot, a pattern of
biliteralism, B.B.-, P.P.-, F.F.-, B.F.-, P.F.-, with nasalization of one or,
less frequently, two of the vowels involved, representing the counterpart of
the aforementioned infixation of the R into the T-K architecture; speci-
fically, BOB- either directly or obliquely suggests or, at least, connotes a
show of 'arrogance, presumption, display, overbearing manner'.
In an effort to launch what he called 'structural etymology' and to mark
off several 'morphosemantic fields', at least in his native French, Guiraud,
by the time he reached maturity of age and experience, transcended the
domain of onomatopoeia, examining such processes as tautological and
advocative compounding as two examples of morphological structures. He
also examined: the naming of spotted (furs of) animals and correspondingly
chequered (plumages of) birds, in addition to arrays of zoomorphic
metaphors, as so many illustrations of semantic structures; pseudo-suffixal
derivation and onomastic metonymy as instances of paronymic structures;
the aforementioned morphosemantic fields (for example, analyses of the
colloquial verb chiquer, of the French designations of the 'cat as a pet', and
collisions of homonyms, a classic), as well as certain 'semic structures' (for
example, folk taxonomy: the leap from phytonym to zoonym) as topics
inviting heightened attention. The book culminated in a concluding 22-page
chapter, theoretically nuanced, which epitomized salient problems and
methods of structural etymology. The limited attention the author was
lending to medieval forms, as he himself may have realized, obviated any
need for systematic appealing to the comparative method on a generous
scale.
The author was well aware of the modernity of his stance, as defined,
after some zigzagging, a quarter of a century ago, and stressed this
modernist attitude through unhesitating (excessive?) use of a plethora of
newly minted technical tags. He was also conscious of the fashionable
predilection of certain contemporaries for well-defined areas of meaning,
such as chromonyms and kinship terms, but hastened to declare such
favouritism incompatible with the tenets of any truly even-handed structu-
ralist philosophy. He admitted the affinity of his own thinking to exper-
iments conducted by ten other younger would-be innovators, but found
their new semantics too strongly modelled on the pre-existent pattern of
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 The second half of the twentieth century

newly-emerging phonology. Conversely, his prime intention, he averred in

the Introduction to his 1967 synthesis, had been to balance semantics
against morphology in synchrony and diachrony alike, throughout the
mutually overlapping domains of lexical and etymological probings.
In a critical vein, one is free to observe that Guiraud was attracted not
only to genuine neologisms, but to many words which had reached a level of
prominence over the last three or four centuries. He was a good listener and
an assiduous reader endowed with a splendid memory; dispassionate
interviewing, in a social-science framework, was of lesser appeal to him. He
enjoyed wading through the by-ways of lexis, picking lexemes from the
gallant writings of certain eighteenth-century authors, thus stumbling over
taboo words and over lame, more or less ephemeral replacements for them.
His self-immersion in 'obscure' etymologies therefore amounted, in part, to
inquiries into spontaneously or artificially 'obscured' word histories. He
attempted, probably in vain, to reconcile his infatuation with modernism
with a strong aversion to the Saussurian belief in the arbitrariness of the
linguistic sign.
Bruno Migliorini's long commitment to the cause of etymology in a few
respects resembled Guiraud's extended advocacy and in many ways differed
radically from it, starting with the fact that from his early thirties almost
until his very late seventies Migliorini (1896-1975) was consistently a very
successful man in matters academic. Of direct relevance to his eventual
espousal of the cause of etymology after some false starts (for example, his
concern with artificial languages) were the topic and the slant of his first
major publication (1927), which aroused immediate attention in several
quarters, not only inside Italy: Dal nome proprio al nome comune. By
observing, within the total range of Romance languages and dialects of all
periods, recurrent shifts from proper names to common nouns, the author
of the c. 300-page monograph at once established himself as an anthropo-
nymist, an etymologist, and a versatile student of lexical semantics, all three
applied in diachronic perspective, not to mention the seductively pleasing
tone of any disagreements with certain predecessors, a level of tone which
clashed with the bitter sarcasm characteristic - precisely in those years - of
not a few contemporaries (Ernst Gamillscheg, Josef Bruch, Leo Spitzer, to
cite just three names) similarly excited by etymological unknowns.
But that was merely the start (except that the author made a point of
reverting to the subject-matter attacked and the approach practised in a
lengthy supplement included in a generously revised and expanded second
edition, 1968). Fifteen years later, in polishing to a fine sheen the eighth
edition of Alfredo Panzini's Dizionario moderno delle parole che non si
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Etymology

trovano nei dizionari comuni, Migliorini found a splendid opportunity for

concerning himself (in collaboration with A. Schiaffini) with the ensemble
of foreignisms and neologisms. Interestingly, in 1963 he had a chance to
reissue as a separate book distributed by the publishing firm his listing of
12,000 newly coined (or newly introduced) words.
The year 1945 gave Migliorini one more fillip for strengthening his
etymological prowess, this time from the side of dialect research. With some
help from Ulderico Rolandi, he rejuvenated, in launching its second
edition, the Vocabolario romanesco by Filippo Chiappini (1836-1905).
Shortly thereafter (1947) he made an experiment with instilling new
strength into the inescapably etymological bent of the treatise Delia fortuna
delle parole, libri due, by the pioneer Giuseppe Manno (1786-1868). The
time had now arrived to join forces with a younger colleague, to be specific,
with Aldo Duro, in issuing a sort of preliminary or cursory etymological
vocabulary of Italian, one that provided answers to queries but lacked
discussions. That venture was crowned with major success, not least among
laymen, on account of the authors' commonsensical attitude and the
refreshing simplicity of their presentation: Prontuario etimologico della
lingua italiana (1950; 4th edn, 1964).
Common to all of these meritorious undertakings, differently slanted as
they were, was an ineradicable element of fragmentation; the author
regaled his readers with albums of polished, sophisticated miniatures or
vignettes. In the masterpiece of his mature age, Storia della lingua italiana
(1960; 3rd edn, 1961), Migliorini examined unhurriedly - and, for a change,
entirely on his own - layer after chronological layer of the entire growth of
the edifice of Standard Italian, the same way as Ferdinand Brunot and his
successor Charles Bruneau had narrated the history of French and Rafael
Lapesa had pieced together the chronicle of Spanish (but with less attention
to minute details than the former 'team', yet somewhat more specifically
than the latter investigator, at least in the earlier versions of his venture).
Migliorini's book, translated into, at least, two world languages, embedded
scores of etymological equations in some kind of meaningful context,
catering more to the taste of language historians than to the preferences of
straight historical linguists (i.e., the champions of historical grammar); and
there was an engagingly even distribution of editorial space and expertise
among the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and modern times, down to the
twentieth century, with the barest minimum of attention accorded to
prehistory, under the pretext of exploring nebulous substratum languages.
The margin of reconstruction, chiefly in the etymological bricks of the

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edifice, had been reduced to a modicum, to the advantage of readers chiefly

concerned with language as a tool of fine literature.
When Migliorini's magnum opus appeared, his star was at its zenith, and
repercussions of his feverish activities were felt in many quarters. His brief
tenure of a professorship of Romance Philology at Fribourg (1933-8), which
had enabled him to establish contacts with such giants of Swiss-style
etymological research as Karl Jaberg, Jakob Jud, and, more sporadically,
Walther von Wartburg, had come to an end. He was now firmly entrenched,
for almost three long decades (1938-66), at the prestigious University of
Florence, occupying a chair newly created and expressly reserved for him,
as Professor of the History of the Italian Language. Radio, television,
enterprising publishers, and several influential newspapers were at his
command.
Migliorini indeed lost no time in displaying extraordinary energy, almost
invariably crowned with success, upon firmly establishing himself in Italy.
From editor-in-chief of the Enciclopedia italiana he rose, we recall, to the
position of founding editor (with more moral than actual support from
Giacomo Devoto) of modernist Lingua Nostra (1939-) and became, under a
difficult regime, president of the Crusca Academy (1949-64). From contri-
buting fine articles to influential journals, foreign and domestic, he switched
to publishing, in astonishingly quick succession, a whole phalanx of books
and booklets - on balance well over thirty - allying himself, more and more
frequently, with younger partners who were presumably picked from among
the best of his former students (F. Chiappelli, Gianfranco Folena, but also
Carlo Tagliavini). One cannot help noticing a certain scattering of initiative
and industriousness: introductions to spelling, to lexicography, to lingu-
istics, to the history of Italian; confrontations of today's and yesterday's
languages; inquiries into the relation of cultural history and language
growth; textbooks for secondary schools; reconstructions of the chronolo-
gical sequence of the major events; semi-formal causeries about the Italian
language, viewed in various perspectives; preparation of concise antholo-
gies of Old Italian texts; disquisitions about the most appropriate pronun-
ciation to select for didactic purposes (Florentine or Roman?). Migliorini's
practicality and realism are visible everywhere, even though not all the
projects upon which he embarked appear, in retrospect, to have been
equally worthy of the attention of a major figure. It is interesting to observe
how, as time went by, Migliorini's knack for word biographies - a deeply
ingrained talent - broke through more and more; witness, for example, his
1968 venture: Profili diparole, the harvest of a septuagenarian. For a while,

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however, the bent for etymologizing (sleuthing with a Spitzerian knack for
surprises) was effectively held in check by other, perhaps more respectable
lexicological exercises.
There may be some point in disclosing the strategy Migliorini resorted to
in an effort to discuss present-day neologisms by analyzing his two books,
mutually complementary, on twentieth-century Italian - books which he
published, with excellent timing, at the threshold of the protracted Floren-
tine period of his career. Lingua contemporanea appeared, as a supplement
volume to the aforementioned journal, Lingua Nostra, in 1938 (i.e.,
technically slightly ahead of the opening issue) and became available, five
years later, slightly retouched, in a third edition. The companion volume,
Saggi sulla lingua del Novecento, saw the light of day in 1941, while the
second edition, superficially revised, made its appearance the following
year, and was destined to reappear on the book market, to everyone's
surprise, as late as 1990, in more elegant garb and ushered in by a very
substantial introductory essay (over ninety large-format pages), from the
pen of the best-qualified critic, the author's influential heir Ghino Ghinassi.
The two books here being jointly assessed are, strictly speaking, collections
of learned essays for the most part previously published in tone-setting
journals, such as Archivio Glottologico Italiano, Archivum Romanicum, and
La Critica, and, in part, had already been reviewed by authoritative critics,
foreign and domestic, including Leo Spitzer and B. A. Terracini; or else
they involve public lectures, unless they echo contributions to earlier
testimonial volumes. Whatever the set of circumstances, a distance of
several years enabled the author to lend each one a welcome last finishing
touch. The typographic standard of either book venture was very high, and
appended word indexes effectively bracketed both collections.
What sort of Italian, socially speaking, was the author aiming at? In one
of the two prefatory notes he made it unmistakably clear that his principal,
indeed only target, was not (unlike the preference of most preceding
linguistic analysts) the spontaneous speech of some group of natives, for
example, villagers, but the normal, or average, written idiom of the
educated middle class, with the scrupulous exclusion of dialectal (rustic)
variants. Other styles were marginally taken into account, but only to the
extent that they served the same layer of the Italian public. Additional
languages, upon occasion, were taken into consideration for contrastive
purposes, but not necessarily because they were close cognates. Twentieth-
century French, to be sure, received its proper share of attention, but the
voice of Spain made itself heard only at rare intervals, while references to
contemporary German and English caught the reader's eyes at every step.

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Sixty years ago, an educated (but not necessarily erudite) Italian could be
credited with some knowledge of the classical tongues, so hints of Latin and
Greek prototypes are visible everywhere, in undiluted shape; and the
apparatus of the footnotes bristles with bibliographic details, sparing no
weak-kneed reader.
Etymological issues come up everywhere for incidental mention or
discussion, but they have been cleverly subordinated to scrupulous exami-
nation of broader problems, which appear less 'petty' to the uninitiated
person. Here Migliorini displays a quota of mild indifference to phonology
and inflection (not to mention syntax, of subordinated relevance in a
lexicological context), but instead exhibits striking enthusiasm about the
two traditional pillars of Romance word-formation: affixation and com-
pounding, especially in their innovative rather than antiquarian aspects.
Thus, the Saggi (i.e., 'Essays') begin with a long, brilliant piece (pp. 7-54)
on 'prefixoids', a term minted by Migliorini himself (who was rightly known
as an inspired word-smith) to designate certain opening segments of
artificially coined compounds, such as the aero- part of aeromobile and the
radio- ingredient of radiodiffusione. It might be rewarding to check
Migliorini's findings, polished to a fine sheen but necessarily confined to
present-day Standard Italian, against the possibly conflicting evidence of,
for example, contemporary Spanish before giving his thoughts an unqua-
lified stamp of approval.
Here are a few more illustrations of the content of the book. An originally
medium-sized article on the vicissitudes of the prefix super- in present-day
Italian, here generously expanded (pp. 55-89), is fascinating for the
inclusion of its rivals (some, but not all of them, congeners): alongside
sovra-, sopra-, sor- one also encounters stra-, oltra-loltre-, arci-, iper-, which
the author judiciously compares among themselves, then assesses in relation
to German iiber-, remaining fully aware of the two competing patterns of
lexical polarization: sopra-lsotto- vs. super-lsub-. The next piece, on the
thriving suffix -istico (pp. 90-133), has also, as a result of elaborations,
become three or four times longer than its modest 1931 prototype. The
trajectory of the heavy compound suffix is compared with those of its
lightweight counterparts -ista and -ico, in terms of relative usefulness. Once
more, intermittent comparison with courses of events in neighbouring
languages becomes unavoidable and actually serves to season the presen-
tation of the main issue.
These samples suffice to show the thrust of Migliorini's most character-
istic and conspicuous scholarship of those years. He was a cosmopolitan at
heart, at a juncture when it was in Italy politically difficult and, for a while,
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even dangerous to be one, and he recognized, ahead of most contempor-

aries, the inalienable value of a respectable scholar's concentration on
modern rather than on antique or medieval lexis. In particular, he cherished
the revival and sophisticated transmutations and use of ancient derivational
tools in a modern, technologically dominated environment. Though ad-
dicted, at least in these two volumes, to the systematic exploration of
present-day conditions of derivation and compounding, he refused to
become a fanatical follower of such theorists as demand the merciless
extirpation of historical considerations from all and any analyses slanted in
the direction of description, i.e., of synchrony.
While Migliorini did not consistently adopt in other writings the approach
here sketched out and was perfectly familiar, from the start, with the more
traditional ways of conjectural etymologizing, the choices he made around
1940 show him passionately addicted to the study of neologisms, giving only
collateral and incidental attention to the inalienably etymological compo-
nents of the complexly structured issues. The contrast with the heterodoxies
of Pierre Guiraud, a prisoner of the vernacular, could not have been more
dramatic.
A slightly later stage in Migliorini's thinking and preferred modus
operandi in the context of short and medium-sized word histories is
reflected in those articles and notes (originally channelled through
newspapers) which he eventually collected in the miscellany Profili diparole
(1968), an appropriate sequel to the midway point along that line of
dignified popularization, Lingua e cultura (1948). The readership aimed at
was still the same, and the level of presentation remained unaltered; but
most of the items focused upon were now neatly isolable individual words
rather than arrays of similarly shaped formations, so that any supportive
collateral material, unannounced in the chapter headings, was unobtrus-
ively relegated to the background. Thus the pretext for discussing glamour
(pp. 100-1) was the triumph of that allegedly untranslatable Anglicism in
sophisticated Italian mid-century speech. The author reveals nothing new to
students of English by contending that glamour is a descendant of Old
French grimoire 'magician's guide', itself traceable to (ars) grammatica
(even though some readers might have preferred him to posit a blend of
grimoire and gramaire). The author's margin of originality consists in his
knack for surrounding this bit of dry factual information with allusions to
near-parallel sense-developments observable in the see-sawing perfor-
mances of other 'esoteric' words, such as Italian carattere, French charmel
charmer (let me here toss in the remark: also absorbed by English), Italian

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incanto and its satellites as well as fascino/fascinare and malia 'enchantment'

(in addition to its offshoots).
Another note, even more concisely worded (pp. 222-3), lays bare the
reverberations, in older North Italian and French microtoponymy (Foxhall,
Waux-hall, Facsal, and the like), of English Vauxhall, with special reference
to the famous amusement park located there. The value of this curious
witness to Continental Anglophilia (and even Anglomania) might, inci-
dentally, have been enhanced through inclusion of Russian voksdl, gen-
erally used to this day for 'railway station'.
While studies of this sort deal mainly with intricate processes of borrow-
ing, diffusion, and semantic adaptation rather than ultimate extraction,
central issues of word origin also come up for occasional distillation, among
them the celebrated controversial question of the descent of barocco (pp.
21-34), an Italian word whose history abounded in international reper-
cussions.
Migliorini's styling of such lexical cameos fell short of revolutionizing the
exploratory strength of etymology, but definitely invites comparison with
the previously described approach used by, for example, the contributor(s)
to Atlantic (Monthly). An abyss separates the original investigator
who - strictly by way of a sideline - also knows how to enlighten (and,
incidentally, to entertain) hurried and less specialized readers from the
amateur, or worse, the would-be professional entertainer in the realm of
etymology.
A flair for generalization and forceful distillation are hardly characteristic
features of Germany-style scholarship, so one is unlikely to look for bold
experiments with 'neo-etymology' in Central Europe (although the waves of
neologisms of the National-Socialist era, including those rooted in abbrevia-
tions, have indeed been inventoried). Perhaps one should here briefly
mention the ambitious venture that goes under the (not unequivocal) name
of Der Grofie Duden, sponsored by the Mannheim Centre for Lexicogra-
phy. The relevant activities, started in the 1930s, reached their all-time peak
in the 1960s and are ultimately traceable to the turn-of-the-century pioneer,
Konrad Duden, a master of standardization and'correctness'of spelling and
grammar. Whereas in the typical dictionaries of our century the various
crumbs of information provided - rather heterogeneous, not to say dispa-
rate at that - tend to make the individual entries uncomfortably crowded
and require the use of excessive abbreviations, the Mannheim team
intended to disentangle the knots. This goal was achieved (or, at least,
aimed at) through isolation of the typical components, or strains, of the

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entries as ordinarily presented. Special medium-sized volumes, assigned to

the care of responsible experts, were organized for pronunciation, spelling,
synonymy, syntax-and-semantics, pictorial representation (where
appropriate), status as a foreignism or an assimilated borrowing, stylistic
nuances, etc. of the lexemes at issue. One such facet of the total picture thus
emerging was the provenance of the given word. For bits of etymological
information, a separate volume was reserved, titled Etymologic
Herkunftsworterbuch der deutschen Sprache (1963), entrusted to the care of
Paul Grebe, a middle-of-the-road man rather than an avant-gardist. The
information poured out is, obviously, more elementary and offered in less
sophisticated terms than in the various consecutive revisions of Friedrich
Kluge's classic.
In the standard dictionaries of German destined for a large market,
etymological information has been retained, perhaps as a matter of respec-
tability, but is now being offered in calculatedly discreet dosages and, as it
were, incidentally. Thus from Alfred Schirmer's 1960 revision ( = 7th edn) of
Hermann Paul's magisterial Deutsches Worterbuch, the curious reader can
ferret out hints of pre-classical and even medieval, as well as strictly
regional, use. But Proto-Germanic, not to mention Proto-Indo-European,
reconstruction has been ruled out as a matter of principle, even though it
would continue to be relevant in an etymological dictionary of Old High
German, of Gothic, or of Old Norse (all of which belong on the shelf of a
research library).
On balance, the various attempts undertaken on both sides of the
Atlantic to shelter, or even to fan, the lay public's residual interest in the
ultimate provenance (as far as it is ascertainable) of individual words and
names is not devoid of interest and deserves the creative, advanced scholar's
sympathetic attention; but no real remedy seems to have been devised so
far. The general trend of events, at least among laymen, runs in the
direction of simplification rather than complication, and curiosity about, as
well as knowledge of, dead languages (or older stages of living languages)
will continue to be on the wane, unless such language study demonstrably
serves to bolster the theory of glotto-diachrony.
The fact that certain innovative stimuli as well as certain techniques of
simplified presentation have been tried out, roughly since the middle of the
century, in a number of countries and in a variety of intellectual climates (all
this in a transparent effort to restore or rejuvenate lay curiosity about
etymological riddles and relationships), may not have been devoid, one
hopes, of a modicum of intrinsic merit. Above all, that fact is symptomatic
of an unmistakable malaise surrounding etymological pursuits in the
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concluding half of the present century. This uneasiness - be it interpreted

as embarrassment, impotence, discomfort, indifference, or else active
defiance - invites dispassionate analysis. As a matter of fact, it deserves
two-layered dissection, since the position of sophisticated etymology vis-a-
vis rival linguistic disciplines seems to be as much at stake as are the
legitimacy and intensity of less specialized curiosity about the origins or
starting points of lexemes - a curiosity which is moored to the total fabric of
late-twentieth-century culture on either side of the Atlantic, at least as can
be observed in the West.
Etymology, still much admired by experts two generations ago, appears
of late to have been banished altogether from certain influential head-
quarters, for example, editorial offices of key journals, the planning centres
for choosing the topics of meetings, and similar nerve centres of active
scholarship. In typical academic environments, an intelligent present-day
student of linguistics will before long unfailingly notice that he is not being
encouraged to put this subject on a par with, let us say, phonology,
prosodies, morpho-syntax, lexical or syntactic semantics, pragmatics,
psycholinguistics, or even poetics. Etymology no longer enters into mainline
linguistics, except obliquely via diachrony, and the mere mention of it is
redolent of irretrievable past enthusiasms, of something quaint, rather than
of truly relevant present-day concerns and the common interests of keen
minds.
The reasons for this fairly rapid loss of status, even among otherwise
fairly balanced specialists, who are by no means one-sidedly avant-garde,
are, grosso modo, these (enumerated in a loose sequence):

(a) The general prevalence of synchronic over diachronic commitment

among most younger front-line researchers, a bent rationalized in
many different ways; a tendency, perhaps, that, inter alia, may
ultimately reflect the gradual banishment of 'dead languages' from
secondary-school and collegiate curricula (or, at least, the trivial-
ization of their continued study);
(b) The absence, from most etymological lucubrations, of any tightly
phrased theory that might invite sharply pointed and, as a result, truly
appealing and rewarding discussion, paying full attention to gener-
alities;
(c) The gradual loss of esteem, among tone-setting intellectuals, for
certain once highly prized national schools of thought or revered
regional academic traditions known to have, decades ago, granted a
place of honour to etymological probing. This re-assessment has a
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bearing on the once very prestigious Central European, especially

German, philological scale of values, as a consequence of certain
misapplications of etymological evidence in that part of the world;
(d) The network of alliances on which etymological research seems to rest
and to thrive, for example, archaeology and mythology, plus the study
of ancient or rural material civilization. It seems more advantageous
and certainly more fashionable to many moderns to establish closer
rapport with mathematics, logic, cognition theory, statistics (including
probability theory), and kindred disciplines;
(e) The high degree of subjectivity transparent in etymological pronounce-
ments, a margin of arbitrariness which threatens to degenerate either
into unforeseeable caprices, or into all too predictable prejudice:
ethnic-racist, aesthetic, religious, socio-economic, broadly cultural,
and the like, sometimes to the extent of ruling out any fruitful
dialogue. In the past, certain etymologists, while temporarily amusing
readers through the resultant bickering, have in the end been digging
their own graves by undermining the seriousness and detachment of
marginally admissible debates;
(f) The growing realization, on the part of observers, of the sheer number
of factors involved and the complexity of their patterns of intertwining
in the procreation of a given lexeme. While the Neogrammarians,
approximately a century ago, somewhat naively assumed that all that
truly mattered in trying to ascertain the obfuscated ancestry of a word
was the accurate application of certain highly reliable sound cor-
respondences ('phonetic norms or laws'), contemporary practitioners
judiciously recognize the typical intricacy of studies in lexical identity
and continuity.
Here is one example of a relatively simple imbroglio. Florentine
casa looks and sounds like a replica of Latin casa, although it is
semantically distinct ('house' vs. 'cabin'). Spanish casa makes a
similar initial impression of rectilinearity, which in the end turns out
to be faulty, since Old Spanish /kaza/ brusquely interrupts the smooth
connection between ancestral /kasa/ and virtually identical modern
Spanish /kasa/, thus illustrating a zigzag rather than a straight-line
movement. Portuguese casa looks exactly like its Latin, Italian, and
Spanish counterparts, but its first a, stressed, and its second a,
unstressed, make radically different impressions on the ear. French
chez displays a switch to an entirely different form class
(noun > preposition), a shift for which Spanish dialect en ca de,
literally 'at the house or home of, has duly prepared the few familiar
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with it for the French-style development. In addition, chez exhibits,

along with the acquisition of a new meaning, an unforeseeable loss of
the final vowel, also a change of inherited /k/ to III via HI and of one /a/
to Id via diphthongal /je/, etc. Such instances of multiple causation
produce the need for increasingly detailed and convoluted accounts in
preference to deceptively elegant formulas;
(g) The continued growth of a formidable competitor. For a long period
of time elaborate word indexes appended to historical grammars (or
elevated to the rank of heavyweight Registerbande) have served as
succinct substitutes for independent etymological dictionaries - as
was true, at the start of this century, of Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke's
comparative and of Friedrich Hanssen's Spanish grammars
(1890-1902, 1913). The trend has continued into more recent periods,
gaining force; witness the concluding volume of the mid-century
venture by Gerhard Rohlfs (1949-54), less so, of Tekavcic (1972),
so far as Italian is concerned. This remark holds, as a rule, for the
entire range of phonology and for certain privileged sectors of
morphology (primarily derivation), but distinctly less so for syntax; it
presupposes comparability of time depth in our accounts of grammar
and of lexis. Alphabetically arranged word indexes designed to
accompany synchronic semantic projections of structural rules and
lexical material, such as Karl Jaberg's and Jakob Jud's priceless
posthumous guide (1960) to their Wort- und Sachatlas of Italy and
Southern Switzerland, obviously do not qualify for this subsidiary
service;
(h) A defensible tradition demands that any proponent of a new etymo-
logical solution of some long-vexing 'mystery' pass in review, with a
critical eye, most or, if this aim is at all attainable, all earlier
explicative statements on the problem. No such demand is pressed
with comparable strictness where a point of grammar is at issue;
(i) The expensiveness of certain auxiliary tools (for example, of accom-
panying maps, rarely used in grammatical investigations; also, of
drawings and photographs, especially where designations of certain
objects, for example, those of tools or containers, are involved;
ultimately, of pedigrees, minutely accurate transcriptions and meticu-
lous transliterations of certain records) tends to make the publication
of an etymological monograph a real budgetary headache, for the
most part unparalleled, at least on such a scale, in the production of
an etymological dictionary. The net result of these circumstances and,
possibly, of yet other conditions, similar in essence, is the gradual, but

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relentless isolation of modern-day practitioners of etymology, who

tend to form sects, often riven by internal dissension;
(j) There has also occurred a parallel estrangement between etymology
and the philologically flavoured production of older texts. While
Wendelin W. Foerster's glossary (including its revised version by
Hermann Breuer) that accompanied the corpus of Chretien de
Troyes" romances that he undertook to publish aimed to list not just
lexical items, translating each one into German, but also the relevant
etyma, such an approach would appear anachronistic at present.
Ramon Menendez Pidal, sailing in the wake of his German masters,
adopted it (indeed, expanded it) in his magisterial edition of the Cid
epic (1908-11) and, on a selective scale, in his polished, if much
shorter, presentation of the well-known dialogue, Elena y Maria
(1914). But, in revising his Cid venture (1944-6), he excused himself
from re-working the Glossary as a whole, even though individual
lexico-etymological points were taken up, with expected skill, in the
Supplement. While glossaries of varying degrees of detaillisme
continue to be a desideratum in the presentation of texts and
chrestomathies alike (witness Lucien Fouiet's vocabulary compiled to
match J. Bedier's masterly reconstruction of the Roland Song), their
compilers, with the rarest of exceptions, at present tend to dispense
with etymological comments. In the New World, Jeremiah D. M.
Ford, in providing etyma for the vocabulary of his Old Spanish
readings, went with the times (in 1911). Henry B. Richardson, by
supplying them in 1930 for Juan Ruiz and, after joining a team of
three other scholars, at the mid-century point, was already behind the
times;
(k) One factor not yet adduced in this ensemble of obstacles is the
staggering number of units for whose exploration the subdiscipline at
issue has tacitly assumed full or partial responsibility. The phonolo-
gically trained analyst, in bringing his special skill to bear on a given
language, is likely to end up with, perhaps, twenty-five autonomous
phonemes. If variants produced by position (stress) or contiguity to
other sounds are to be included in one's estimate, he arrives,
conservatively, at a low three-digit figure for the number of sound
units ear-marked for being taken into account. The contingents of
grammatical morphemes, both inflectional and derivational, differ a
good deal from one another, depending on the general character of
the language under consideration and on the favoured method of
counting such units; but the aggregate will very seldom exceed a few

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hundreds. Over against this basically wholesome modesty of available

resources stands the number of word families that can be pressed into
action in a representative European language. It is bound to run into
thousands, while the sum of individually isolable lexemes, cor-
respondingly, may reach tens of thousands. As a result of this glaring
disproportion between the sheer sizes of conglomerates of phonemes
(or morphemes) on one side, and, on the other, those of lexemes, the
experienced phonologist or grammarian is in a position to perform
elegantly executed leaps from one projection of his favourite classifi-
catory theory to a possibly superior alternative in a matter of weeks
or, at most, of months; whereas the parallel labours of an etymo-
logically inspired lexicologist, ineradicably plodding on account of
their slow rhythm, may require years of concentrated data-gathering
and data-ordering, be it carried out by one individual or by a
well-sychronized team, with or without the help of instruments.
Another facet of this difficulty is the painful decision whether
imported, learned, exotic, and comparably marginal elements of lexis
which are clearly recognizable as such (for example, English words
introduced by transparently antique prefixes, like archi-, hyper-,
proto-, borrowed from Greek, or extra-, infra-, inter-1 intra-, pre-,
praeter-, subter-, super-1 supra-, and tra-, trans-, all extracted from
Latin) deserve attention in the etymological dictionary of a late-
twentieth-century language. The problem is by no means new - as a
matter of fact, it is traceable, in a straight line, to Humanism and the
Renaissance - but has, of late, been made far more acute than before
through the ceaseless influx of thousands upon thousands of scientific
neologisms. Also, it exists not for English alone, despite the particular
hospitality formal English has shown to such newcomers. Italian is
replete with them, too, and certain etymological dictionaries of Italian
have gone very far, not to say unreasonably far, in paying attention to
them. This holds for the five volumes of Carlo Battisti and Giovanni
Alessio's mid-century venture and, on an even more generous scale,
for Max Pfister's overabundant collection of entries, which is still in
the process of compilation. Such lexemes, to be sure, deserve to be
recorded and their rise may justifiably be dated, but this sort of
information, to be potentially useful, belongs in an all-embracing
thesaurus of the given language (or in a special compilation of
Neo-Hellenic and Neo-Latin usage) rather than in an English or an
Italian etymologicum, unless the foreignism has somehow managed to
infiltrate and influence the host language;

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(I) Against the backdrop of modern-day conditions of life, the 'pure

etymologist', unpleasantly enough, runs the risk of adversely impress-
ing the community of scholars to which he inescapably belongs as a
belated romantic, a sort of straggling daydreamer and intuitivist who
is out of tune with his rationally organized and smoothly functioning
academic environment - one intent on brewing a strange mix of data
amassed with overextended, fanatical patience and of solutions (con-
jectures, 'theories') unaccountably arrived at, whose abandonment,
even under the pressure of cogent counter-arguments, he may stub-
bornly resist to the bitter end. He is free, of course, to avoid making
such an unfavourable impression by shrewdly balancing etymological
against more soberly conducted grammatical inquiries in his total
programme of creative research. For a long period of time and until
fairly recently, successive generations of flexible, versatile scholars
did, or, at least, aimed at doing, precisely that: witness the bibliogra-
phies of Franz Bopp, Carl Darling Buck, W. F. Edgerton, Antoine
Meillet, August Schleicher, Edgar H. Sturtevant, and Joseph
Vendryes, among leading Indo-Europeanists; of Jakob Grimm and
Hermann Paul, among celebrated Germanists; of Friedrich Diez,
Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke all the way to Max Leopold Wagner, Gerhard
Rohlfs, and Vicente Garcia de Diego, among respected Romanists;
etc.
But this test of his intellectual pliability is what today's 'pure
etymologist' may want, above all else, to avoid. Juan Corominas (also
known as Joan Coromines), for example, who has superbly embodied
this type of idealized purity in the sustained scope and tone of his
pre-eminently etymological research over a period of, at least, half a
century, has engaged in a chain of inquiries that bear increasingly
eloquent witness to such progressive stiffening of self-confidence.
Upon scrutinizing Corominas' voluminous record of publications,
one discovers that, after an auspicious start at Barcelona (evidenced
by a Pyrenees-oriented monograph on a dialect spoken in the Upper
Garonne Valley as a doctoral dissertation, 1931 and a re-examination
of Arabisms in Hispano-Romance, after attendance at Jakob Jud's
Zurich seminar), he switched, in the wake of his temporarily enforced
transfer to western Argentina (Mendoza) in the early and mid-1940s,
to such topics as 'Some semantic features of Argentinian Spanish'
(free translation), 'New Spanish [and Portuguese] etymologies' (a
cluster of seven notes), 'New-World contributions to pending issues'

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 The second half of the twentieth century

(a constellation of three notes, all three etymologically slanted),

'Problems still awaiting a solution' (again an etymological triad), all
three items traceable to the years 1941-2. A second series of
'Etymological Studies', this time marking a simultaneous attack on
twenty-one less than closely related issues, was followed by a 'Harvest
of Vulgar Latin' (a chain of nine etymological vignettes, brought to
bear on as many as thirteen isolable questions), of 1942-4 vintage.
Then came a third bouquet of topically disconnected etymological
cameos, this time eleven, flanked, for once, by the inclusion of a
newly edited short Old Catalan text which was not, to be sure,
deprived of, at least, an etymological glossary, all three items falling
under the chronological rubric '1943-5'. This is not all. Alongside the
pieces just enumerated, which Corominas deftly placed in his own
journal, he squeezed a 115-page monograph of etymological bric-a-
brac (whimsically titled 'Indianoromanica'), entertainingly enough
presented, into three instalments spread over a 1944 volume of an
even better-established Buenos Aires quarterly. And, surpassing his
own earlier achievements, he came to the shores of the United States
with another, similarly titled miscellany in his hands, as a welcome gift
(1947-8) to an impatiently waiting California journal editor!
The one-sidedness and resultant monotony of this self-immersion,
to the point of near-exclusiveness, in etymological controversies is
obvious. So is the author's resolve to inundate the book-market, from
then on, with one monumental etymological dictionary after another,
with practically no adequate intervals reserved for other categories of
linguistic or philological probing (except for the long-delayed edition
of Juan Ruiz's early fourteenth-century text). Milestones along this
path include a four-volume dictionary (1954-7), overtly etymological,
of Spanish, which the compiler somewhat arbitrarily and out of
context called 'Castilian' (with a Supplement appended to Vol. IV), a
six-volume partial revision and expansion, intended to cover the
ensemble of 'Hispanic' dialects, likewise viewed exclusively in the
etymological perspective (c. 1980-90), and an even more ambitious
multi-volume dictionary of Catalan, an undertaking concluded in
1991, once more, predictably, etymological. (For the last two projects
the ageing author collaborated with a large number of younger
colleagues, apparently reserving for himself all crucial decisions and
the stylistic colouring of the whole.) While the Breve diccionario
etimologico was, one gathers, meant to represent a mere by-product

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of such feverish activities, its three nearly identical versions actually
make it the most manageable and readable of these ventures, not least
on account of a welcome absence of polemics.
What matters in the present context is the oft-observed fact that
such a high degree of feverish concentration on the minutiae of
etymological riddles provoked the author's almost complete neglect of
what was meanwhile (1930-90) going on in other branches of lin-
guistics, both Romance and general, with the inevitable result that
these huge edifices of lexicological guesswork are not infrequently
thrust on the archaic, pre-structural, and hence highly vulnerable,
foundations of phonology and morphology. To be sure, there is no
dearth of incidental phonological and grammatical asides (often
polemically spiced), scattered over his overextended discussions of
controversial proposals advanced by others. But this is not the sort of
imaginative performance by which his prowess as a student of
historical grammar can safely be judged. He will go down, in the
annals of scholarship, as a one-sided investigator excited by the
adventures of risky word biographies at the expense of any new
grammatical insights;
(m) A number of additional vexing problems have arisen from present-day
societal pressure on the practitioner of etymology. If he is prudent
enough to remain satisfied with elucidating individual cases of lexical
filiation, or small clusters of such cases, he may be relatively well off.
At worst, he may be - somewhat cynically - advised to avoid the use
of 'etymology' in the title of his note or article, on account of the
hypersensitivity of certain journal editors to many younger readers'
aversion to this key word, which of late has indeed tended to become
controversial. At least, he will feel protected from any pressure to
release the results of his inquiry before he has slowly reached some
mature and defensible conclusions.

Thus, in the year 1951 a single American journal, namely Language,

published three overtly etymological pieces. The Sinologist Roy Andrew
Miller focused attention on the provenance of a single Chinese word, liu
'pomegranate', which he interpreted as a native folk etymology for a
loan-word. The Indo-Europeanist Paul Tedesco paired off two Slavic
adjectives of dubious descent, *pilbrib 'diligent' and naglt 'sudden', which
shared the one feature that their dubious origin could be most cogently
identified through semantic analysis. Then again, the palaeo-Orientalist
Albrecht Goetze (1951) scrutinized the pedigrees of, roughly, eight Hittite
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words (or word-variants), to wit: wit(ant)- 'year', gim(ant)- 'winter',

zena(nt)- 'autumn', hamesha(nt)- 'spring', ispant- 'night', siwat- 'day', nekut-
'nightfall', and lukat- 'morning', demonstrating that the terminology for
'year', 'season', and 'segment of the day' was inherited and coincided 'in all
essential aspects with that found in the IE languages' (p. 476). What
bracketed these words, predestining them for joint etymological analysis,
was their common reference to the calendar. A second bond, not stated by
Goetze, but transparently implied, was that, around 1950, he felt ready to
pronounce on the eight germane problems of their lexical ancestry.
Juan Corominas, at the start of his career, alternately had recourse to
either technique of grouping. In his 1947-8 pot-pourri, written chiefly for an
American audience ('Problemas del diccionario etimologico", I-II), he
targeted alrededor 'around', bellaco 'sly, wicked, knavish', bostezarlacezar
'to yawn', escarmiento 'penalty, caution", garra 'claw', guisante 'pea', etc.
apparently for no other reason than the very advanced stage of his own
investigation into their notoriously confusing vicissitudes. Elsewhere, in one
of his previous 1941-2 pieces with which he had introduced himself to a
South American readership, he alternated between the rival classificatory
criteria of (a) assumed novelty, originality of the solution advocated
(allende 'beyond'/aquende "this side of, caracol 'snail', hueco 'hollow',
joroba 'hump', etc.) and (b) a New World overtone in the problems selected
for diagnosis (prondo 'hollow, puffed up, big-bellied", embadurnar 'to
daub", tripular 'to man, equip, fit out"). Whatever the approach to selection
in each individual instance, one comes away with the impression that
Corominas, Goetze, Miller, Tedesco, and their peers were convinced of the
legitimacy and perfectibility of advanced etymological analysis, rooted in
thorough familiarity with the respective ancient cultures and with the earlier
findings of reliable practitioners of historical grammar. Less visible is their
expectation that their own discoveries can push forward our grasp of
phonology and morphology. Thus, from Corominas' voluminous ceuvre one
cannot piece together his mental vision of the highly controversial growth of
Old Spanish sibilants.
Here are some suggestions for an invigorating rejuvenation of etymology,
viewed from a cross-linguistic perspective. First, students of some language
families lean towards omitting from their purview any systematic analysis of
the structure of primitives, a practice which I find objectionable. However,
the fact that Spanish designations of physical defects (including speech
defects and their mental implications) comprise, to the point of near-
predictability, disyllabic paroxytones ending in -ol-a, is both grammatically
and etymologically significant; cf. calvo 'bald', ciego 'blind', cojo 'lame',
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Etymology
corvo 'bent', flaco 'emaciated', lerdo 'sluggish, heavy', manco 'one-
handed', mudo 'dumb', sordo 'deaf, tuerto 'one-eyed', zambo 'knock-
kneed' (besides the words for 'stupid': bobo, lelo, memo, tonto, zonzo or
sonso). In contrast, Old and Modern French have given speakers complete
freedom in this respect: monosyllabic sourd 'deaf (also Old French cieus
'blind') have coexisted with trisyllabic aveugle 'blind' (clearly, a substitute
word). Since some of these qualifiers represent etymological unknowns or
puzzles, closer attention to the configuration of the primitives may greatly
enliven the discussion.
Second, standard interjections as well as certain conversational formulas
used on a par with, or in lieu of interjections (English all right.' right o(n)f;
German na also!; French ma foi!; Spanish jya lo creof alongside /ojald!;
Russian nu vot!, and the like) indisputably have been the stepchildren of
linguistic research in general, and of etymological lucubration in particular.
One feature of possible relevance to the student of word origins (who is
likely to detect in this corner of the edifice quite a few unknowns) is the
pitch contour of such words and frozen formulas. Yet, the last bit of useful
information that one can hope to extract from existing guides to lexical
usage is a record of the musical shape of such bits of material. Even in
reference works that, as a rule, inform the user of the geographic spread of
the given word and that provide drawings (or photographs) of, let us say,
the species of butterfly under discussion, the melodic curve of German
Nanu! Zum Teufel! or of Italian davvero! or of American English oops! will
ordinarily be skipped. Acoustic effects should be granted as much attention
as their optic (visual) counterparts.
Third, with certain well-known exceptions (for example, Berber, Basque,
and Arabic words in Southern Spanish; Turkish words in circum-Aegean
territories; Tartar words in Russian), etymological research is prepond-
erantly pursued within a given family or subfamily. It took the large
contingent of Romanists a shockingly long period of time to realize that the
spread of Folk Latin as a whole, and of Northern Gallo-Romance in
particular, cannot be seriously examined without an appropriate dosage of
attention to English, Dutch, as well as the Rhenish and Danubian dialectal
varieties of German. If such limitations are recognized as understandable
but arbitrary, new inspiration can be drawn from a world-wide perspective.
The origin of American English okay is an issue intricate enough; the
reasons for its world-wide spread also invite attention, and some of the
answers to that second question may prove enlightening even to those still
engaged in the elucidation of the first problem.

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Fourth, comparative etymological dictionaries prepared in the traditional

vein (for example, those organized by Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke and, to some
extent, by Walther von Wartburg) list alphabetically, as entries, the
recorded, in addition to the reconstructed, ancestral bases that underlie the
forms culled from the daughter languages, dialects included. This approach
has merits and certainly need not be discontinued in the future. But, be it
only to avoid monotonous repetition of a time-tested methodology, why
should we not try to approach a complex situation the other way around?
Why not extract, for a change, from some excellent dictionary of Latin,
prepared by a team of seasoned classicists, an alphabetic list of such
authentic words, peculiar to Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as have
not been handed down to the speakers (and scribes) of the daughter
languages? Such a negative record (or, to put it differently, such a record of
lexical losses) is apt to stimulate discussion, simply because any disap-
pearance calls for a justification, including a statement of what remedies
were appealed to in an effort to provide substitutes. One can scarcely
hope for any more powerful stimulus for a fresh breeze of etymological
discussion.
This list of readily available possibilities that come to mind almost at once
can be considerably lengthened. The well-being of etymology depends, of
course, also on other factors, and no firm prognosis of guaranteed success
can as yet be offered. Under the conditions prevailing in the 'social contract'
between etymological researchers and entrepreneurial publishers, however,
all these models of selection and entries attuned to individual author's tastes
and varying degrees of self-assurance cease to operate. As the printing and
the distribution procedures (often by fascicles) are usually organized, the
beleaguered author feels contractually obliged to pronounce on the
backgrounds of all words beginning with, let us say, a- or b- long before he
can dream of taking up the biographies of those introduced by y- or z-. To
put it more drastically: a mere whim of the alphabetic order is allowed to
predetermine the sequence of events, by lengthening or shortening the time
reserved for sobering reflection. The author, in despair, may jot down,
"origin unknown' or, much worse, may thus label some case of remote
possibility or even of a course of events wholly improbable: 'Presu-
mably . . . , 'in all likelihood', or some similar reassuring paraphrase. This
state of affairs prompts many observers to argue that it is the monographic
exploratory pieces rather than the dictionaries that qualify for genuine
breakthroughs in etymology - granted the usefulness of dependable ref-
erence works, they are often indispensable.

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But let us suppose for a moment that the aforementioned societal
pressures (and, along with them, occasional retreats from such earlier
commitments as had been beneficial) were nonexistent. Let us assume, just
for the fun of such a presupposition, that scholars had been cut out to live
and toil in an 'ideal' world. Would, under this set of imagined cir-
cumstances, the present-day status of etymology and the prospects for its
immediate future rapidly improve? The answer need not be completely
negative but, if given in an affirmative vein, must be very cautiously
phrased, if it is to command respect.
Let us, by way of preliminaries, call to mind some characteristic relevant
features of past periods. Etymological conjectures or plain guesses were
indeed made in prehistory, in Antiquity, and also in the Middle Ages, and
have continued to be practised as constituents of numerous so-called
primitive cultures. The advent to influence of organized linguistic science
offered eager etymologists a welcome chance to check the fruits of witty
guesswork against certain (presumably overrated) norms of pointlessly rigid
historical phonology. Next, an ineradicable residue of irritating exceptions
forced another generation (or a different team) of explorers to look into the
interplay of regular sound development with a wide variety of other forces,
not a few of them somehow more 'human', hence more appealing to a
certain category of investigators (for example, effects of humour, avoidance
of homonymy or, conversely, leaning towards puns, phonosymbolism, and
the like). The phenomenon of lexical borrowing had been very well known,
and even understood, for centuries (Roman educators could effortlessly tell
Hellenisms from lexical items of pristine Latin stock. Renaissance lexico-
graphers were able to distil Italianisms from the cores of French and Spanish
lexis, and so on); yet, the advent to prestige, ever since the end of the
nineteenth century, of the linguistic atlases strengthened the advanced
researchers' belief in the migration of lexical units by land or by sea as part
of the broader process of diffusion, and so on. Viewing things in retrospect,
one feels obliged to admit that in the past (including the fairly recent past,
best recognizable to today's observers), it has invariably taken the rise of
some new theory (however exaggerated if measured by later, more rigorous
standards), or fashion, or some novel technique (however one-sided, if
applied exclusively) to set in motion an innovative style of etymologizing.
It can be argued that what is most urgently needed at present is the
preparation of more voluminous or more scrupulously supervised collec-
tions of raw data; and it is not at all difficult to demonstrate (as has indeed
been successfully done more than once) that, in some dramatic instances,

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the new availability of some better-understood passage in an ancient

manuscript or inscription, or of a cluster of seemingly marginal regional-
isms, actually led to an instantaneous collapse of long-cherished etymo-
logical beliefs. By the same token, any new thesaurus, bursting with fresh
information and conscientiously polished, remains a valuable tool in the
hands of an experienced etymologist. But, for all its undeniable usefulness,
whether it happens to be confined to a literary language or serves to capture
a profusion of dialectal forms or else manages to combine these two seldom
jointly tapped sources of information (as has been true, for example, of
most volumes of Walther von Wartburg's celebrated Franzosisches etymo-
logisches Worterbuch), an etymological dictionary and a lexical thesaurus
represent two entirely different genres of scholarly undertaking, whose
complete merger is clearly inadvisable - for psychological, economic, and
yet other reasons. What is urgently needed, by way of remedy, is a
stimulating experiment with rejuvenation of method; and since linguistic
theory is the order of the day, and general linguistics (in preference to
'particular linguistics', its older counterpart), for better or worse, exudes a
special magnetisim, one sees no reason for studiously avoiding the discus-
sion of possible bridge-building between the two disciplines. (A marginal
likelihood of initial error must, obviously, be taken into account from the
start; and a supply of elasticity for retreating from too hazardous gambits,
and for renouncing over-optimistic expectations, is indispensable.)
At the risk, then, of courting reproaches for triviality, let us lay down the
following set of conditions that are helpful in studying specimens of the
simplest and most familiar situations. Let the language selected for conduct-
ing our etymological exercises be known as A; the word under investigation
as a; the principal, if not sole, ancestor or purveyor of lexemes ('parent
language') for that tongue as X; and the suspected source ('etymon') of a, as
x. Let us further, by way of beginning, hypothesize that a and x sound
(almost) alike. This (near-) identity can mean one of several disparate
things. Conceivably, there were no sound changes in operation to interfere
with the local transmission of x, a situation that we are free to signal with the
more explicit transmission formula a1; or there occurred no uninterrupted
transmission by word of mouth, but x was allowed to perish, and then, at a
distinctly later stage, deliberately borrowed from A" on the tacit assumption
that X continued to be read or recited (and, perhaps, to be written) while its
spontaneously spoken forms had been allowed to advance by leaps and
bounds (=a2). Where the evidence available allows us no clear decisions as
to whether a] or a2 is involved, we can mark that stage of indeterminacy by

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having recourse to the symbol a}. Finally, language A had cognates,
descended from the same source (X): B, C, D, . . . , some of them
foreseeably more conservative than A. Conceivably, a, virtually unchanged,
was preserved in B or in C, then loaned, in exceptional words, to A at a
discernibly later stage, thus producing a4.
Contrary to first impressions, however, all the situations so far surveyed
are slightly abnormal. The ideal development includes foreseeable sound
changes, in response to 'sound laws' (or, less conventionally speaking,
'sound correspondences') - such shifts, to put it differently, as carry with
them no special messages. The product of a given ancestral form so
developed deserves to be labelled a5; but if special conditions attach to such
an evolutionary curve, other tags may be preferable. If sound changes have
coincided with some semantic innovation, we are free to speak of an a6
variety of evolution; if the pattern holds solely in heavily stressed, lightly
stressed, or entirely unstressed syllables, no commitment prevents us from
classifying products thus conditioned by the symbol a7, which invites further
subdivision. Should the degree of heaviness of stress stand in alliance with
semantic conditioning, a8 would be an apposite formulaic description.
We have so far tacitly operated with the reassuring assumption that the
territory assigned to a gradually emerging language is practically indivisible.
But suppose the principle of basic territorial integrity and unitariness holds
for the most part in a given case, except that East and West, with respect to
certain stressed vowels, display slight divergences, an areally co-conditioned
result of a form bequeathed by the ancestral language deserves some
separate marking apt to catch the reader's attention, for example, as a9. In
certain complexly structured societies, one layer of the population (for
example, men as against women, the old as against the young, the educated
as against the illiterate) may tend to go its own ways in matters of
decision-making bearing on features of speech; the analyst, to show that he
has been forewarned, may confidently have recourse to the symbol a10.
Among certain groups of speakers and listeners, in selected cultures,
considerations of decorum or reverence may make certain sounds, or at
least sequences of sounds, highly undesirable and may invite either the
complete avoidance of appealing words, or the substitution of neutral, less
objectionable sounds, or sequences of sounds, for those deemed offensive:
a11. In some languages, the choice of the root vowel may carry a message of
its own, by signalling, primarily among adjectives, some such meaning as
colour, or a person's physical defect; to other languages such signalling (a12)
is wholly unknown. Observe that all such idiosyncrasies must not be
confused with basic phonological peculiarities, as when one language allows

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its syllabic architecture to exert a direct influence on the growth and

distribution of certain sounds, while another (perhaps its next-door neigh-
bour) does not.
Such cross-language catalogues of potential conditioning factors, far more
elaborate and sophisticated than the sketchy presentation of a few element-
ary examples here undertaken, have been experimentally toyed with
before. Scholars have included in the fine-tuning of their schemes the
presence, in certain quarters, of reduplicative formations; the vulnerability,
of certain contingents of speakers, to homonymy, synonymy, and anto-
nymy; the varying effects of exposure to phonosymbolism, and the like. But
few, if any, attempts have so far been made to study in depth special
constellations of conditioning factors on a genuinely cross-language scale. It
could be very profitable for etymologists to have, within comfortably easy
reach, monographs examining, in a wide variety of languages (both kindred
and unrelated) the clashes between (a) changes of form fostered by
polarization of meaning and (b) sound changes 'regular', 'pure and simple',
i.e., semantically unmotivated. Unfortunately, polyglottal studies of this
sort, which might help one immensely to assess the plausibility of a newly
proposed etymological hypothesis, are readily available only in very excep-
tional instances.
There is, above all, a major difference, rich in all sorts of implications,
between the etymological technique needed at the start of the entire
operation and the skills required at more advanced stages of an etymo-
logical assignment. A person highly qualified to do the former job may not
at all embody the perfect choice for the accomplishment of the latter task,
and vice versa. Even teams of three workers are readily conceivable.
Suppose a new member of an already roughly established language family
has all of a sudden been tentatively identified as a result of some, let us
assume archaeological, chance discovery. In order that the impression-
istically proposed identification becomes more solid, an etymologically
inspired analyst will feel obliged to step in. He will be required to establish,
as speedily as possible, the network of gross connections between the
hypothetical older stage ('reconstructed or recorded ancestral language')
and the suspected later stage ('the language newly stumbled upon'), mainly
where the resemblances and differences observed smoothly fall into major
patterns - with occasional side-glances at the previously identified members
of the family. He will also be asked to weed out and reserve for the next
round whatever seems to be refractory to such accelerated treatment.
Ideally, the operator in charge should be a deft, experienced phonologist,
grammarian, and student of lexis, but need not have accumulated special

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expertise, tailored to local needs, through prior exposure to that same
language family.
To pursue this report on an 'ideal' strategy, the next person in charge of
the etymological decipherment of that same (presumably, refractory)
addition to the language family at issue might be well-advised to come
equipped with complementary talents and different chunks of information
at his ready disposal, since he will be held responsible for handling the
residue of the material aimed at: lexical items affected by taboo, lexical
polarization, homonymy, expressivity, folk etymology, and the like; and,
above all, unusual, even unique, combinations of such salient features. To
understand the gambits made by each past generation of speakers of the
given tongue, he must have acquainted himself with both linguistic and
extralinguistic (broadly speaking, cultural) features of the society under
investigation.
From the third investigator in this imagined procession of analysts it
would be unfair to demand speed and measured efficiency. It would be
more realistic to imagine him as a very slow and purposeful worker, eager to
come to grips with the residue of difficulties, which are often entirely
unforeseeable at earlier stages of the inquiry. He will have to be equipped
with a superb mnemonic faculty. Having committed to memory the entire
residue of difficulties, seeming contradictions, and irremediable lacunae in
the corpus available and in adjoining provinces of knowledge, he will also
have to train himself to be constantly on the look-out for very unlikely clues,
obtained from fragmentary evidence, to a blurred and eroded turf. He will
necessarily be expected to have developed a special flair for associating and
reconciling utterly diverse bits of evidence.
It almost goes without saying that the pattern here toyed with of three
categories of experts is purely arbitrary. With a spark of imagination, one
can project many more such types that contain, under an exceptional, for
the most part unavoidable, set of circumstances, a single truly brilliant
etymologist who, by striking three or more diverse attitudes, as it were, can
all by himself successfully perform what amounts to a number of fairly
different assignments. Despite the availability, at rare intervals, of such
exceptions, the mastermind in charge of the entire undertaking will, in most
instances, want to pause before doling out assignments to chosen indi-
viduals, to make sure that the phase of research in need of immediate
attention actually matches the candidate's temperamental and intellectual
talents and idiosyncrasies. Where better-known or longer-studied languages
(like those of the Romance or the Germanic family) are involved, it is
usually the 'third type' of investigator that one can safely expect to produce
the finest results. Under certain conditions, teamwork (with the appropriate
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complementarity of responsibilities) can be particularly rewarding. If the

same individual is called upon to perform three (or more) duties, critics and
continuers are apt to discover at a later juncture that his performance has
been discernibly uneven.
A few concrete examples might conceivably lend a more welcome
illustrative service in this context than continued discussion in a purely
theoretical vein. Let us suppose that an etymologist had all along known
that iguarla 'titbit' in Portuguese, adequately documented since the Middle
Ages, was still lacking an acceptable etymon. (This kind of awareness or
suspicion obviously produces a very advantageous climate for chance
discoveries, on which the researcher, driven by his properly whetted
appetite and guided by the forewarning, can almost literally pounce.) Let us
suppose further that in thumbing through, by sheer coincidence, a collection
of glosses traceable to Late Antiquity, he comes across a long-neglected
entry, namely iecudria 'meal prepared of (chopped?) liver', which appears
to stem from Classical Latin iecur 'liver', a lexical item practically overlaid
by *ficdtuml*ficdtum and their variants (cf. Spanish higado, French foie,
etc.), as has been demonstrated in a number of masterly analyses ever since
c. 1900. The lucky discoverer is overwhelmed by the temptation to argue
that this is the long-sought last surviving vestige in Romance of the
otherwise dislodged iecur family. But into how many obstacles is he apt to
run in trying to consolidate his seemingly arbitrary speculation into a truly
defensible opinion?
For a small minority of the shifts assumed to have taken place a quick
consultation of any good historical grammar surely will do. The voicing of
ancestral intervocalic /k/ to /g/, pronounced in certain contexts as /-y/, is a
well-established fact, which can safely be taken for granted. The preserva-
tion of word-final -a, at least in script (it may as early as the Middle Ages
have been pronounced [B]), is a thoroughly credible assumption. The raising
here of pretonic [c] or [e] to [i] before /w/ of the following syllable - a
product, in turn, of parental [u] before stressed vowel - will raise no
eyebrows. Virtually everything else, however, that the lucky conductor of
the inquiry is before long apt to discover, seems problematic, not on
account of its inherent implausibility, but as a consequence of the well-nigh
ever-present existence of alternative /k/ solutions, i.e., of counterexamples,
and also as a result of the lack or scarcity of suitable monographic
investigations. Baffling questions arise at every turn. Here are a few of the
relatively least complicated:

(a) The lack of any reflex of word-initial 1)1 is astonishing, cf. Latin
idn(u)a 'threshold' vs. Portuguese jan-ela 'window'. Since a lone trace
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of yegueria has been detected in Old Spanish, could iguaria be an

adaptation of yegueria to Atlantic Coast conditions?
(b) The suffix of iecu-dria is ordinarily rendered by -eira in Portuguese
and by -era in Spanish. In this instance, however, a stress-shift has
occurred, even though semantically Latin un-stressed -ia had little
in common with Greek-Latin -ia, used chiefly to coin adjectival
abstracts, ranks, and the like, rather than tags for choice food. Have
any parallels been recorded?
(c) Could there have occurred any blend with some other word-family
through a subtle interplay of formal and semantic resemblances?
Could aequdre be suspected of interference, on condition that a
pattern of partitioning the choice morsel into equal shares (pieces,
chunks) could have been surreptitiously hinted at? Is the word-initial
segment ig- somehow reminiscent of (f)igu-eira 'fig-tree', on the
theory that extra-savoury animal livers could be obtained by letting
pigs devour whole piles of figs? Might yegueria have been abandoned
as a consequence of the threat of its infelicitous association with yegua
'mare'?
(d) Was the basic reason for the abandonment of iecur its heteroclitic
declensional paradigm: iecur, io- or ie-cineris? Could a parallel be
drawn with cor, cordis 'heart', an erratic declensional type which so
weakened the status of the Old Spanish cuer, Portuguese cor as to
have left the door wide open for the infiltration of the intrusive,
innovative rival type Old Spanish/Old Portuguese coraconl
(e) To avoid any repetition of intervocalic r (*iecurdria), was the total loss
of one of them practised as the sole available cure, or could some
dissimilatory process have been seized upon with equal chances of
success (for example, in Old Spanish if not so easily in Old
Galician-Portuguese, the switch from -r - r- to, let us say, -/ - r-)?

We shall delay drawing any sweeping conclusions from the consideration

of just a single, manifestly intricate, case history, and turn our attention to
other word biographies, which have more recently stood in the focus of
attention. The etymological kernel of French Noel 'Christmas', our second
example, is scarcely at issue for anyone who bothers to take into account
Italian Natale, Portuguese Nadal, and, indirectly, Spanish Na(ti)vidad,
which is basically semi-learned, yet secondarily syncopated; even Russian
Rozdestvo chimes in, as does the occasion of the holiday. So (die) ndtdle,
extracted from ndtus 'born' (contrastable, in turn, with mortdle, from morte
'death' and mortu(u) 'dead'), is a secure starting point, despite the limited
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co-existence of rival forms such as Nael, Neel in regional Old French. Still,
the pretonic o in hiatus is an unexpected feature, which has disquieted
generations of scholars. Now, without immediately pressing the issue, one
may recall that Italian nuotare stands for 'swimming', erratically enough if
one recalls its starting point in Antiquity, namely ndt-dre, witness Spanish
nadar. The point is that, at the Latin stage the two nuclei nat- 'born' and nat-
'swim' failed to stand in each other's way as long as distinctive vowel
quantity counted, keeping near-homonyms apart, at least marginally. With
this barrier to any hazard of merger or confusion before long eliminated, the
responsibility for discrimination between vowels was assigned to a dissimila-
tory process, with *not- and nat- standing in mutual confrontation, except
that *not-, in Italy, prevailed for 'swimming', much as no-, in medieval
French, temporarily could stand for the same sport. Yet, the perilous
proximity of no(u)er 'to tie (a knot)' and of such offshoots as denouer 'to
untie' < Old French desnoer ultimately counselled the adoption of nag(i)er,
literally 'to navigate', for 'swimming'.
This is a grossly simplified account of what, at the outset, seemed a fairly
plain sequence of events, except that the reality behind the schematic
reconstruction was, in all likelihood, even more complicated. We have
skipped any incidental mention of the change of Classical Latin nurus
'daughter-in-law' into, first, nura and, next, into reconstructible *nura,
*nora as a precondition for the rise of Spanish nuera, echoing suegra
'mother-in-law'; also, we have refrained from elaborating on the biography
of Spanish nuez 'walnut', which, unlike Italian noce, cannot have been
directly bequeathed by Classical Latin nuce, etc. To put it differently: the
one, at first sight, minor, if not utterly trivial, irregularity of French Noel, a
word otherwise entirely transparent, has stirred up hornet's nests of
threatening difficulties. The turning point, we recall, was our discovery of a
seemingly different knot in the history of Italian lexis, save for the fact that
the two trouble spots, contrary to our initial expectation, stood in a relation
of mutual complementarity.
Barring the analysts' awareness of some atypical sound change (for
example, the emergence of an auxiliary vowel before word-initial s impu-
rum), or their alertness to the special status of the word-openings Cons. + /,
or their ability to identify an isolable prefix where none had been suspected,
or else their flair for the simplification of word-initial consonant clusters like
hr- or wr- as the price a Germanic word, or name, had to pay for its new
admission to membership in a Romance language, Romanists have gradually
come to expect a given word's initial consonant, followed by a vowel, to
have already figured in its prototype. Hence their helplessness throughout
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the nineteenth century in those instances in which such an expectation

simply has led nowhere.
Our third example here, Spanish and Portuguese tomar 'to take', is a case
in point. It is tragicomic to observe even reputable comparatists (among
them Hugo Schuchardt and Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke) coming up with abs-
truse, not to say absurd, conjectures, to the effect, for example, that tomar
was an onomatopoeic (expressive) formation, or one of exotic background,
and so on. They might at least have observed that tomar was not the sole
word for 'taking' in the peninsular language; that it lacked cognates; and
that it was accompanied by an astonishingly small retinue of derivational
satellites.
It was an outsider, an Italian literary scholar endowed with a superb
command of Latin, who, being free from the aforementioned prejudice,
advanced the candidacy of autumdre 'to affirm, think, believe', a proposal
greeted with mixed feelings by professional etymologists (the account of
that reaction has been traced earlier in painstaking detail p. 77). What
mattered most was not the overall felicity of that particular proposal (which,
as a matter of fact, was not unquestionable), but the willingness of, at first, a
single scholar, and, soon thereafter, of a small contingent of investigators,
to cut loose from the obtrusive, obsessive tyranny of /- bases for tomar.
Three quarters of a century later the problem (long deemed practically
insoluble) may indeed have been cracked when the spokesman for another
generation declared that the elusive base at issue was older Latin aestumare
'to estimate, esteem' on its way to shifting to aestimdre, a stage better
remembered at present. Beginning, at a certain point, to sound quaint,
hence mildly ridiculous, at a time when maxumu 'greatest' and optumu
'best' were being converted, through regular sound development, into
maxtmu and optimu, respectively, aestumare could be jokingly divided into
aes 'money' and *tumdre 'to grasp, seize, take', involving a special allusion
(by the scoffers) to the hated Roman tax-collectors who were eager to make
estimates of the value of taxable provincial estates.
The sole assumption here freely made is situational, simply because not
all the jokes that were circulating found the right satirists or epigrammatists
to perpetuate them for posterity. The wide use of aes, aeris 'copper, alloy,
coin, money', not least in colloquial Hispano-Latin (cf. modern alambre,
originally arambre 'wire'), vouches for the realism of the reconstruction, our
third example.
Over a period of centuries, scholars, who were eager to confront the
etymological problem underlying Spanish rincon '(inside) corner' (as in a
room), perhaps without being entirely aware of that fact, made certain
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preliminary assumptions which then co-determined each of their further

gambits. Of those presuppositions, some of them idle in retrospect, a few
deserve to be called characteristic of our fourth case history. The following
turned out to be particularly influential: (1) rincon, it was argued,
represents an indivisible unit, involving a single root morpheme; (2) rincon,
highly characteristic of Spanish, is confined, within the Romance domain, to
the Iberian peninsula (the speakers of cognate languages have alternative
lexical devices at their disposal to convey the same message); (3) variant
forms of rincon (for example, rencon) may indeed have been randomly
observed in older texts, or have been culled from samples of present-day
dialect speech, but they constitute mere curiosities, hardly apt to provide
clues to the ultimate source of the noun; (4) the fact that rincon, in sharp
contrast to esquina, never refers to the outside corner, as seen, for example,
at the intersection of two streets, was also either wholly overlooked or
treated as a detail of minor relevance.
Within this sort of orientation, etymologists would come up with the
wildest conjectures, which were mutually exclusive. These, on account of
their irreconciliability, need not be specified here at any length.
The (relatively) most promising guess involved an Arabic word (or, more
accurately speaking, a colloquial derivative therefrom), which alone would
satisfy the demands of the interplay of sound correspondences. In the first
third of the present century, this 'colourful' Orientalist thesis temporarily
enjoyed a certain vogue.
By way of spadework for a critical evaluation of the motley material
assembled, it is, first of all, necessary to grasp realistically the number and
the structural design of the old and new variants of rincon. Features apt to
be subject to variation include: (a) the presence or absence of a nasal before
the /k/; and (b) the quality of the vowel presiding over the first syllable. The
total range of emerging possibilities, unevenly distributed, gives this impres-
sion: racon, recon, rancon, rencon, rincon. There is no way of accurately
hypothesizing the sequence of events, except that rincon unmistakably
presupposes the prior existence of rencon (note the total absence from the
scale of *ricon), and that broader phonological experience with nasal inserts
urges one to posit the anteriority of racon to rancon, and of recon to rencon.
This reshuffling of raw data, in turn, shatters two broad expectations.
With re- serving as a very common prefix both at the Latin and at the
Romance phases, the demand for the prototype's indivisibility, clearly,
should be abandoned. Then again, the isolationist view that events must
have steered a course in Spain incompatible with the sequence of events
observable in other Romance territories invites radical liberalization.
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If, then, one elects to start one's moves from recon as, presumably, the
most archaic of the five variants at issue, one runs into no serious trouble in
trying to dissect it into re- + con; and this elusive *-con element, unavailable
in isolation, begins to look beguilingly similar to French coin 'corner', which
was pronounced /kofi/ in the Middle Ages and has, independently, been
traced to Latin cu-ne-u 'wedge' compressed into cu-neu. The genuinely
Spanish, native product of cuneu has all along been known as cuno 'wedge'
(with the by-form cuna, endowed with remarkable semantic potentialities of
its own). Consequently, *-con should be classed as an adaptation to local
conditions, or a borrowing, of French coin as it was pronounced in the
Middle Ages. To crown this hypothesis, the fourth in our arsenal of
contentions, we are free to remind ourselves that French coin has, for
centuries, been flanked by recoin 'nook, recess', which is present in the
standard language as well as in certain groups of dialects, including those of
the south-west coast of the Bay of Biscay, from where recoin could easily
have penetrated into northern Spain, as a term of navigation and recon-
noitring.
Does this reconstruction exclude the Arabic alternative? Not necessarily,
but it subordinates it to the stronger thesis. Once firmly absorbed into
Spanish, the palaeo-Gallicism reco(i)n could secondarily have allowed the
Arabic word to contaminate it, presumably near the Peninsula's southern
tip.
The epic quest for the ultimate root of Spanish and Portuguese matar 'to
kill' - our fifth illustration - has needlessly become a notorious web of
disappointments, in part avoidable, through difficulties, that could have
been foreseen and thus eluded (e.g., inattention to certain very old
branches, such as Spanish amatar 'to slay', rematar 'to finish off). An
additional factor, equally supererogatory, has been some influential re-
searchers' romantic infatuation with the crowning performance of a matador
at bull fights or with the elegant gambit of a checkmate in a courtly chess
game. To a large extent, the positing of such connections was simply
anachronistic, since matar was widely used centuries before the crystalliza-
tion of any refined courtly culture in Western Europe. Yet, for a century
and a half, the only alternative to Arabic mat 'dead' (as used, in reference to
the Shah, by way of a formulaic exclamation uttered by the victorious
chess-player), was, among serious etymologists, a Latin verb referring to
ritualistic slaughtering (mactdre 'to offer, sacrifice, immolate') which, if
assigned this role, would break an elementary and practically exceptionless
sound correspondence: Latin -act- > Spanish -ech- /ec7, rather than /at/.

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The second major point overlooked until a very recent date in virtually
every quarter was the existence, in Italian, of the widely used verb
ammazzare 'to kill, murder, slay, slaughter', which, on the semantic side,
displays amazingly close resemblance to Spanish/Portuguese matar and,
additionally, on the formal side, comes close to agreeing with Old Spanish
amatar, except for the not so easily reconcilable contrast f.zz. It does help to
remember that Italian matto means 'mad, crazy' and that the corresponding
verb ammattire, appropriately enough, is equivalent to 'going mad', a state
of affairs which, indeed, makes ammazzare 'to slay', vastly preferable to
*ammattare, the ideal counterpart of Old Spanish amatar; but such a
comment does not explain away the basic difficulty: Did the Italophones
have any choice and, if so, when?
Now, ammazzare happens to be genetically transparent. It is squarely
based on mazza 'cudgel, club, hammer, stick, staff, mallet, mace' as well as
on mazzo 'bundle, club, stick', a typical pair of words differentiated by
gender and referring to tools (or weapons) of varying size, labels which
scholars in unison have traced, for generations, to the ancestral lexical type
*mattea 'club', flanked - according to the reconstructionists - by *matteola
and *matteuca. All three bases are readily inferrable from numerous
Romance languages, including - so Wilhelm Meyer-Liibke would assure
his readers - Catalan, Romaunsch, Sardic, and Romanian, a remarkable
network of representation. The relevant forms in Spanish encompass
maza (original spelling: maca) 'mace, maul, hemp brake' and mazo 'mallet,
maul, clapper', while in French mass-ue 'club, bludgeon' has made itself
more conspicuous, and less ambiguous, than masse 'sledge hammer', with
the substitution of the spelling -5S- for de-affricated -c-.
The relation of Italian ammazzare to mazza, mazzo is nothing short of
self-explanatory. But in Spanish the bridge - if there ever existed one - that
may once have directly connected the nouns maza, mazo to a verb of the -ar
conjugation is no longer visible. *Amazar has been conspicuously absent
from the record for a considerable length of time, and there is no positive
proof that it was dislodged by amatar, from which matar ultimately cut
loose, thus allowing for remalar and its offshoots (remote, etc.) to sprout.
Even if the sequence of events we have optimistically been toying with
turns out to have been basically correct, there still remains, by way of
unaccountable residue, the one (inflectional?) shift from a *-tiare to a *-tare
infinitive.
The relation of -tare to -tidre (and, in its close vicinity, the one of -sare to
-sidre) in provincial Vulgar Latin is a singularly difficult issue, into which

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there exists a single inquiry, lamentably enough still left unpublished

(Thomas J. Walsh's Berkeley dissertation). The verbs here hinted at must
have been used by the Roman soldiery stationed in the various provinces,
being in the legionaries' slang equivalent to 'killing with a bludgeon,
finishing off, doing in'. While it is not unprecedented that there should have
sprouted, from the same primitive, in one corner of the Republic or the
Empire an -are verb (better still, a parasynthetic a-dre verb) and, in some
other corner, a -idre or a-iare verb, the details of the differentiation
(including the controlling factors for the sharp split it eventually produced),
typically, still elude us. We realize that Italian abbassare 'to lower, diminish,
reduce' rests squarely on bassus (a Late Latin substitute for Classical Latin
altus, when endowed with that meaning), and we credit the same starting
point to French baisser alongside bas, to Spanish bajar (Old Spanish baxar)
alongside bajo (baxo), and to Portuguese (a)baixar alongside baixo, all
these based on *-idre. Could such a verb have derived from the comparative
degree (bass-ior, -ins), as not a few adjectival verbs have, or appear to have,
behaved in German? Contrast erweitern, schmalern, verbreitern, verlangern
with abkurzen, einebnen, einengen, vertiefen, within the single category of
dimensional qualities.
There still remains a host of side-issues for the future advocate of this
conjecture to try to disentangle. Why, for example, has the single nominal
offshoot of matar in Spanish been a derivative in -anga (modern -anza)
'slaughter, massacre' in consistent preference to, for instance, a radical-
stressed postverbal or to a word geared to some rival suffix? Can the
absence from Spanish lexis of any straight counterpart of Italian matto
'crazy' and the weak representation (despite matiz 'nuance') of the lexeme
mat- 'pale' familiar from French be construed as direct consequences of the
entrenchment, to the south of the Pyrenees, of the verb matar? Which is the
most felicitous formula for reconciling the rapid spread of matar with the
equally sudden decline and subsequent elimination of occldere, literally 'to
fell' (well preserved in Italian: uccidere, no less than in Old French: occire),
not to mention the collapse of interficere and the re-interpretation of necdre
(> Spanish negarse, French se noyer 'to drown')? Is it legitimate to draw
any conclusions from the semantic shrinkage of amatar in dialectal Portu-
guese (Transmontano) 'to extinguish [a light]' as to the semantic history, in
reverse direction, of French tuer < Latin tu-tare, from tutus 'safe'? Perhaps
surprisingly, the well-known Arabic verb ka.tala 'to kill', ka.tala 'to
murder' is not represented here; however, the startling Spanish construction
le hart muerto 'they have killed him' (lacking any counterpart in French)
may have been suggested by an Arabic causative model. It is also fitting to

158
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mention here asesinar, demonstrably an Orientalism, to be sure, but one

absorbed through special, unique channels.
In the past, etymological discussions have, upon occasion, been made
gratuitously complicated and abounding in self-contradictions through
almost wanton disregard of certain basic facts - in part linguistic, in part
historical and environmental - which, as sober thinking teaches us, must
have significantly co-determined the course of events. Spanish combleza
'concubine (of a married soldier)' is a case in point, and may here be
presented as our sixth and concluding illustration.
The word itself, slightly obsolescent at present (in part because the status
of such a woman is no longer being institutionalized under the current set of
conditions), is actually, perhaps contrary to first impressions, by no means
one of insuperable difficulty in terms of etymological probing. One should
start out, of course, from the non-committal gathering of forms actually on
record, preferably in texts that are both old and regionally coloured.
Combleza, when exposed to such critical sifting of raw data, turns out to be
a fairly recent, namely Golden Age, substitute for medieval combtueca,
occasionally combrueca, which corresponded to comborca (or, less fre-
quently, combroca) in Old Galician-Portuguese. These few authentic
forms, if accurately pinpointed along the axes of space, time, and social
setting, actually suffice to set the inquiry in motion. The initial segment
com- at once gives the impression that we are dealing here with a Latin
base, whether documented or merely reconstructible; and since the initial
reference, under this set of circumstances, was plausibly made to the
life-style and mores of the Roman legionaries stationed in far-off Hispania,
at some time between the Second Punic War and the age of Pompey and
Caesar, the Latinity involved could, transparently, be of archaic, although
not necessarily preliterary, and hence not purely hypothetical, type. In that
Latinity, which was peculiar to the Republican rather than the Imperial era,
the verb uorto, -ere 'to turn' prevailed as the predecessor of Classical Latin
uerto, -ere; and there existed (and was, in all likelihood, still productive) the
suffix -iax for the designation of females, as in filia 'daughter', auia
'grandmother' (alongside auus 'grandfather'), atauia 'greatgrandmother',
and, in Folk Latin, neptia or, occasionally, nepotia 'niece' (the direct
forerunner of French niece and, indirectly, of English niece) in eloquent
preference to the standard form neptis and to such variants familiar, for
example, from tomb inscriptions as nepta and nepota as opposed to the -ia1
of abstracts. *Conuortia, so analysed, consequently might have meant 'a
woman (or female) turning her attentions, or affection, to . . . '; Old
Portuguese comborca would beautifully fit it in every phonologically

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relevant respect, and the assumption of a trivial instance of subsequent

metathesis would suffice to allow us to postulate Old Spanish combrueca as
a forerunner of better-remembered comblueca (cf. templar 'to moderate',
via temprar from ancestral temperare) and, eventually, of combleza arrived
at through monophthongization of ue, as in the familiar derivational suffix
-dero in lieu of older -duero. These concluding shifts no longer pose any
serious problems.
In itself, the conjecture for which I have here taken up the cudgels (and
which goes back to a heavily documented inquiry made available in 1985)
represents nothing remarkable. It may acquire limited importance when
placed alongside some choice alternative explanations excogitated over a
period of, approximately, four centuries, by conjecturalists who, presu-
mably, were very much in a hurry. (The relatively few scholars who, in the
wake of L. A. de Cueto, were honest enough - when their turn to speak up
approached - to confess their agnosticism or scepticism: a Castro, a Cuer-
vo, a Meyer-Liibke, a Wagner, have in comparison earned our admiration.)
The roster of experts who became embroiled in all sorts of invariably very
far-fetched etymological hypotheses bearing on combuercalcomborca in-
cludes such names, in alphabetical order, as Juan Corominas, Sebastian de
Covarrubias, Vicente Garcia de Diego, W. Giese, F. del Rosal, J. da
Silveira, and Leo Spitzer. A few of them came up with two or more
proposals which were advanced consecutively and not always mutually
compatibly. It cannot be stated that the later explanations were simpler or
more persuasive than the initial excogitations; and the stridency of the tone
increased steadily with the passing of time. Here are a few specimens of the
ideas that have been toyed with from the late sixteenth century to the
mid-1980s.
Among the most striking older conjectures one is tempted to mention
one not devoid of a moralizing tone (cum or con + pellice, from pellex),
castigating the relationship as adulterous. More colourful was the sug-
gestion of the locale where such an affair, typically, takes place: a sort of
outdoors or fresh-air bed: 'cama que se arma sobre c,arc,os', with special
reference, by implication, to combreza, an arbitrarily selected variant
which empowered the etymologist at issue to cast a bridge to older
Spanish brezo or brizo, a cognate, one learns, of French berceau (de
treille). Though apparently made aware of the erstwhile existence of
combreca, in all likelihood through readings of older texts, the ety-
mologist, in his own discussion, had recourse to combleza, and for no
good reason, let his imagination stray to the dialectal, rustic use of the noun
brico and the verb bricar, irreconcilable in both form and meaning
160
 The second half of the twentieth century

('concamerario'?): 'En algunas panes de las montanas hazen a los nirios

unas cunas colgadas en el ay re con sogas . . . '.
Phytonymic curiosity about brezo and brizo, in addition to broza, began
to develop in the late nineteenth century among otherwise respectable
scholars, who allowed their fancy to move away from the lovers' behaviour
in the direction of the bed allegedly suspended between the branches of a
tree or half-hidden by the greenery of the meadow (three experts suc-
cumbed to this temptation).
A few late nineteenth-century Hispanists, apparently aghast at this sort of
unbridled fantasizing, now began to admit their ignorance of the ultimate
provenance of the elusive word, and preferred to collect stubbornly its rarer
variants, culling them chiefly from older, less easily accessible, sources.
Combl{u)eqalcomborqa began to loom important in the context of ongoing
inquiries into the sources of the Old Spanish sibilants.
Authors of etymological dictionaries faced the special problem of finding
somewhere a niche for a word of highly controversial extraction. One of
them, over the years, wavered between *bersium and *bertiumlbretium
'cradle, box' as appropriate entries, but, ironically or paradoxically, used
this device to state his disbelief in the given derivation (without seeing fit to
offer any superior solution).
The human urge to engage in guesswork being well-nigh irresistible, a
former student of the prudent sceptic chose, of all channels of communica-
tion a book review to launch a new conjecture upon stumbling over Old
Spanish combluega 'pellex' and comblueco 'rivalis'. For a change, he chose
as his starting point a hypothetical verb, to wit, *convoltiare, based on
convol(u)tus, the past participle of convolvere. Obviously, he was less
fascinated by the configuration of the bed than by the lubricity of the lustful
lovers' movements; the fact that the oldest variants displayed an r rather
than an / seemed relatively unimportant in such an exciting context.
Has the bed, elaborately nuptial or merely makeshift, now at long last
been banished from the etymologists' laboratory? Not so, contrary to one's
expectations. It makes its reappearance towards the middle of the twentieth
century, to be sure, clad in a more pretentious garb. The starting point
(pre-Roman, conceivably Celtic) is now being spelled *combortial
*combrottia, and is connectible with *bertiuml*bretium on the assumption
of Palaeo-Indo-European apophony. Berco, comborca, and French berceau
can, through this sleight-of-hand, allegedly be traced back to a single
starting point. We have meanwhile reached the mid-1950s, and to lend
company to our bold reconstructionist, a Portuguese scholar, who is not
injudicious on other occasions, sets out to posit *cumbolottea as the
161
Etymology

foundation of comborca. A few years later, however, he abruptly changes

his mind, choosing on that occasion in favour of concumbula, and the
derogatory suffix -otteu. The segment cumb- was, obviously, evocative of
the Latin verb for 'lying (outstretched), leaning upon', cf. English recum-
bent and, less transparently on the semantic side, incumbent. The major
advantage of his new interpretation, its proponent argued passionately, was
the fact that it dispensed with any need to have recourse to a Celtic base.
This is not the end of the story. Sufficient material, however, has been
marshalled to demonstrate how a relatively simple problem can be com-
plicated, indeed distorted beyond easy recognition, through the rash
introduction of all sorts of basically gratuitous assumptions.
Traditionally, etymology has been tied up very closely with phonology;
yet, the regularity, to the point of predictability, of sound changes - the
familiar battlefield of Neogrammarianism - can neither be championed
nor, for that matter, impugned without, it would seem, constant references
to issues in lexical identity. Without challenging this tradition, one can
legitimately point out certain instances of a very close connection of
attempted etymological identification with successful attacks on inflectional
(i.e., at bottom, morphological) problems.
One case in point is offered by the biography of Portuguese perder 'to
lose', which abounds in all sorts of twists totally alien to its Spanish
counterpart perder. Suffice it to mention the disquieting fact that in the
north-western corner of the Iberian peninsula regional and obsolete forms
for the 1st person singular present indicative in -co, -go, and -go, rather than
expected -do, have been ferreted out, with the entire paradigm of the
present subjunctive, as usual, chiming in. The starting point for the zigzags
was doubtless the fact that perdo, -ere was not a typical Latin compound
verb, and that its fit into the do, dare family, right at the start, was erratic.
As the leading French Latinists Alfred Ernout and Antoinc Meillet,
unaware of the service they were obliquely lending Romance scholarship,
remarked sixty years ago, perdo's compositional design, before long, was
blurred. New compounds sprang up, their genesis being observable through
the texts: deperdo alongside disperdo; the latter especially was not infre-
quently confused with dispergo, which belongs to spargo, -ere 'to scatter'.
In most daughter languages and dialects the oscillation was eventually
brought under control. But in the Portuguese-Galician-Asturian zone, on
the one hand, and, on the other, in southern Italy, the vibrations of the local
descendants of perdere have continued for centuries. The individual attrac-
tions of synonyms, near-homonyms, and polar antonyms to which the
regional outcomes of perdere fell prey were, little by little, identified by the
162
 The second half of the twentieth century

pioneer Lusophiles Jules Cornu, Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos, the

Marquis of Valmar, H. R. Lang, J. Leite de Vasconcelos, and others. But
the general reason for the centuries-long restless comportment of the local
reflexes of perdere in certain territories did not immediately become visible
to them. Neither did they at once grasp the basic difference between (a) the
split of the Tuscan preterite into perdei, perdetti, and persi and (b) the
division of the corresponding past participle into perduto and perso, all five
forms by no means abnormal, and such thoroughly erratic relationships as
perco/perca (which has survived to the present), or pergo/perga, or else
perco/perga:perdere, truly unique, and traceable to the Iberian peninsula.
Old-style philological precision-work has in the meantime clarified var-
ious details: pergo /pcrs-/ preceded perco /perk-/ in Old Portuguese proper;
pergo /perg-/ was characteristic of Old Galician notarial style and, indepen-
dently, calls to mind certain findings in South Italy vouched for by the
authority of Gerhard Rohlfs.
The problems that have emerged as pivotal at a fairly late stage of
investigation, i.e., after the basic issues in normal correspondences - such
as those relevant to historical grammar - have been duly brought under
control, are, to confine ourselves to mere random samples, those peculiar to
diachronic lexicology. Here are a few illustrations:

Contamination, predominantly, starts not at the centres, but at

the peripheries of far-flung, complexly structured word-families
{perdere vs. spargere); the explorer's romantic infatuation with
sports, military exploits, colourful local customs, spasms of
love-life can be as damaging to the analytical cause he has
espoused as is stern morality (matar, combleza), sober concern
with documented archaicity as against addiction to musing about
hypothetical prehistoric layers bids fair to yield sound results
(uortere vs. uertere, aestumare vs. aestimare); such processes,
elusive on account of their sporadicity, as vowel dissimilation
(which involves a tendency rather than a set of 'laws'), invite
very careful inspection, since their neglect in the past accounts
for many impasses (witness the cases of Italian nuotare and
French Noel, viewed against the background of a-d > o-d); as
regards the consequences of the loss of vowel length, i.e., the
eventual collision of near-homonyms, etymologists have only
scratched the surface (ndt-lnat-); apparently justified appeals to
metathesis lack cogency, as long as that area remains neglected
(combuerga < combruega); chronological and other implica-

163
Etymology

tions of the rise of nasal inserts remain to be provided (racon vs.

rancon); semantic peculiarities cannot be overlooked with im-
punity (rincon vs. esquina); practically unavoidable simplifica-
tion of initial consonant clusters (for example, in Romance
adaptations of Germanic hr-, wr-) are a sharp reminder that
base and product need not have started with the same consonant
(tomar); saltatory change of stem vowel may signal semantic
affinity and social hegemony, as when niira is subordinated to
soc(e)ra; the switch to a sex-suggestive vowel is visible in
nurus > * niira; syllabic syncope is observable even in learned
words (Navidad); the role of an accent shift has only in rare
instances been carefully defined (iecudria > iguana, yegiieria).
Other sources of doubt are: the wisdom - still left undef-
ined - of reckoning with the interference by some other word
(iecur aequarei); humorous exploitations of some ongoing
sound change (aes-tumare); hazards courted in positing an effect
of onomatopoeia or expressive orchestration (tomar); are
variant forms mere trifles, or possible clues to the sequence of
effects? (rencon, rancon); indivisible unit as an alternative to
operating with a combination of derivational morpheme + root
(rincon); dearth vs. ready availability of special social channels
(French assassiner, Spanish asesinar); semantic expansion vs.
shrinkage (French tuer vs. Portuguese amatar); soldiers' slang,
regionally differentiated (*mattare vs. *mattiare); consequences
of inattention to a given word-family's very ancient branches
(a-, re-matar); delayed discovery of long-overlooked congeners
(French re-coin, Spanish re-, ren-con); conjectures convergent
(autumdre —» aestumare) or irreconcilably divergent (older
statements on rincon).

This is, to be sure, a very loose collection of scattered ideas

('Einfalle') - ideas not even tentatively organized into a coherent whole.
Some of them bear on salient features of the material brought together,
others emanate from the interpretative schema proposed; yet others remark
on the varying attitudes that consecutive generations of investigators have
tended to strike in coming to grips with problems of that sort.
Whether a fuller and more deftly arranged corpus of such loose individual
observations can ever be pared down to a single, tightly worded theory, or
method, or technique of etymologizing remains highly problematic. Show-
ing what kind of doubts the model word biographies succinctly presented

164
 The second half of the twentieth century

above tend to raise (their number could effortlessly have been doubled or
tripled) is all that has been provisionally aimed at. These questions, for all
their chequered appearance, differ sharply from those (equally legitimate)
that had previously been raised by over-confident architects of historical
grammar and, at later stages of planned research, by dialect geographers (or
diffusionists), by students of deliberate lexical borrowing, and especially by
advocates of the 'Worter und Sachen' approach who were often oblivious of
qualifiers, quantifiers, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions.

165
 Conclusion

Almost exactly a century ago etymological research reached its all-time

peak of appeal and recognition, at several levels of intellectual life. The
legitimacy and even desirability of etymological inquiries went unchallenged
in practically all advanced countries, as did the inclusion of etymology in the
ensemble of historico-linguistic disciplines. Ambitious scholars made a
point of their ability to engage in etymologizing, while editors of respected
learned journals, usually characterized as 'philological', were only too eager
to reserve a prominent section of each number for brief, pungent discus-
sions of this kind. Earlier pronouncements of the 'pre-scientific' era were
mentioned, at best, in more or less casual manner and, not infrequently, in
an ironic or condescending tone.
Such a favourable situation does not at all obtain at present, but strangely
enough, the current state of affairs in the linguistic' domain is self-
contradictory, with participants and policy-makers (as if to complicate
things still more) seldom stooping to ventilating such inconsistencies. A
dispassionate observer quickly becomes aware of a certain confusion of
values, but may search in vain for any enlightening analyses of what makes
etymology 'unscientific' (subjectivity of pronouncements? insufficiently
objective tone? the general air of archaicity?).
There obtains, to begin with, a hazardous discrepancy between the
degrees of attention our societies tend to reserve for dictionary-style
compilations of comments on word-origins as against monographic investi-
gations into them. Where world languages are involved (especially such as
are still living), one notices that the laconically brief identification of the
background of each entry unquestionably has become a desideratum; in
fact, it serves as one of the criteria that helps a lay user distinguish between
a good and an excellent dictionary. Of course, the mandatory succinctness
167
Conclusion

of each comment allows the editor to set off the dubious provenance of
certain words solely by parenthetic qualifiers such as 'perhaps' or
'probably', or else to confess 'of dubious provenance', unless simply a
question mark in parentheses is used. The lay reader's naive curiosity may
thus be momentarily aroused, but is seldom if ever satisfied, i.e., channelled
into a series of systematic assessments of probability.
On an unavoidably more limited scale, our book markets also - at least
marginally - tolerate certain etymological dictionaries designed for special-
ists and non-specialists alike, i.e., comprehensibly worded rather than
formulaically phrased. For languages such as English, French, German,
Spanish, or Italian, such select dictionaries - typically compressed into a
single volume - are launched every twenty or thirty years. Then, for ancient
tongues, or for languages newly discovered or for social and regional
dialects restricted in actual use, there predictably develops an, at least,
temporary demand, but only among true professionals (Hittite being an
example in point). In such instances, the budgetary support of a government
agency or of a learned society can be taken for granted, provided the quality
of the research involved justifies such subsidy.
Over against this, all told, not unencouraging landscape stands the grim
picture of today's society's almost total indifference to monographic explo-
rations in this field, unless they are somehow disguised (starting with the
titles: 'word origins', 'Herkunftsworterbuch', and the like). The very term
'etymology' has virtually disappeared from announcements of journal notes
and articles, or from series of academy memoirs. For a young scholar, it is at
present inadvisable, at least for career purposes in the teaching field, that he
or she be known as aiming to qualify mainly as an etymologist, the way his
next-door neighbours may safely declare their eagerness to pass off as
phoneticians, phonologists, semanticists, pragmaticists, syntactitians, and
the like.
Now it is, indisputably, desirable that one should not cultivate etymology
in strict isolation. Its study can be very fruitfully combined with inquiries
into models of regular sound change, phonosymbolism, morphology (with
particular emphasis on derivation and compounding), and so on; even a
certain partnership with the fashionable probing of newly coined words
might be highly commendable. But society is in error if it, directly or
indirectly, encourages, or even provokes, the publication of reference
books, which, practically by definition, should contain no entirely new facts
or ideas on the side of word origins, but instead, provide only novel
approaches to relationships established elsewhere, while sorely neglecting
the diffusion of purely exploratory writings.
168
 Conclusion

Over the last forty years or so, there have appeared, in fairly quick
succession, introductions to the methodology (theoretical presuppositions,
techniques, familiarity with auxiliary tools such as dictionaries and atlases,
and so on) of etymology, as practised today in many quarters.
Most - unfortunately not all - of these initiations have come from seasoned
practitioners of the discipline, call it an art or a science, and to that extent
they have been welcome indeed. But, while the methods of etymological
inspection have indisputably undergone a change as a whole, the history or
record of cutting a path through every language's etymological jungle is also
apt to change radically with the pressure of time, regardless of the calendar
date. To clarify this point, it is useful to operate with successive 'stages'
of a typical ongoing operation. A gross division of the entire task of
etymologizing a given lexis into Stage A and Stage B may here be advisable,
despite the crude simplification involved in this proposal.
At Stage A, the advance proceeds at a fairly predictable rate, assuming
the ready availability of guides to the chosen language (X) as well as to the
impressionistically (or thoroughly) identified ancestral languages (Y p Y,,
Y v . . . ) as well as of tongues of the past and the present with which X
is independently known to have been in contact, friendly or hostile, at
consecutive periods.
The two preconditions additionally required for the application of this
scenario are: (a) the analyst's pre-existent familiarity with the sets of normal
sound correspondences between successive phases of the growth, as well as
with the standard ranges of inflectional, derivational, and compositional
patterns; and (b) his or her earlier exposure to the varying latitudes of
semantic shifts. The rate of progress, I repeat, under these conditions is
roughly predictable, and the punctual appearance of fascicle after fascicle of
an announced reference work can safely be guaranteed. Where the an-
cestral configuration of the language at issue cannot be textually ascer-
tained, it can often be reconstructed through systematic comparison with its
ancestors.
As a rule, the above-stated simplistic techniques peculiar to Stage A leave
a shockingly high percentage of etymological 'riddles' unsolved. This
residue (B), whether it comprises one quarter, one third, or one half of the
whole, is illustrative of individual developments, i.e., of word biographies
that exhibit the more or less sporadic intervention, to varying extents, of
forces that refuse to fall into any rigid schemata: lexical diffusion and
contamination; phonosymbolic appeal (or 'expressivity'); temporary avoi-
dance of a given word under pressure from social taboo; interplays of
assimilatory or dissimilatory tendencies; the crystallization or dilapidation
169
Conclusion
of vocalic scales; also the impacts of folk belief, mythology, material
civilization, and playfulness, and the like. At intervals, five or more such
interferential factors must be identified before the investigator dares to
come up with a new interpretation. Since not a few requisite discoveries
tend to be made incidentally (if they turn out to be at all possible), a scholar
who espouses this philosophy cannot make firm commitments to his
publishers as to the deadline for the promised delivery of the manuscript.
Given the high degree of controversiality of this kind of material, not to say
the typicality of relevant clashes of opinion, every new proposal is normally
accompanied by a scrupulous 'historique du probleme', a requirement
which further slows down the process of completion.
Readers will meanwhile have recognized the resemblance of Stage A to
the neogrammatical style of stringent analysis, while Style B may call up
memories of the virulent reaction to it. But the whole point of the present
statement is not to repeat what has long been known, namely the facts that
the neogrammarian movement reached its peak around the year 1890, while
most of its tenets were abandoned or relaxed half a century later. If
etymological probing in reference to a newly identified language were to
start around 1990, there would, in all likelihood, still emerge, perhaps
unannounced, a Stage A, presumably with different terminological accou-
trements, to be succeeded, in due time, by the advent to influence of Stage
B, however cleverly disguised.
Our society, by favouring the etymologically tinged dictionary, yet
simultaneously discouraging the necessarily lengthy monographs (as
essayed for the first time, qua innovative genre, by Hugo Schuchardt) thus
renders a potential disservice to the steady advance of etymology.
This mild rebuke does not mean that the scholars themselves have been
consistently blameless. The incessant launching of meagrely controlled
etymological conjectures in regard to languages already well investigated
may amount to a source of urbane entertainment for weakly motivated
readers, but will not fail to irritate fellow-workers. Another infelicity of
which some of us have of late been guilty is the confusion of the formal
establishment of a corpus, whether inscriptional or culled from the testi-
mony of living languages and dialects, with an etymological dictionary,
which can and should be compact and may well concentrate on essentials
rather than devoting hundreds, even thousands of pages in consecutive
volumes to lexical units perfectly transparent from the start, as are most
Hellenisms and Latinisms in modern languages.

170
 Conclusion

The threshing-out of such organizational disagreements can be quite as

stimulating and free from acrimony as experimental returns to the dwindling
residues of etymological unknowns.
But what is the wisdom of the moderns' occasional return to pre-1800
pronouncements, especially if those verdicts, measured by present-day
standards, have turned out to be faulty? It seems permissible to furnish two
answers to that question: first, one can expect to improve one's own
methodology by taking into account, at intervals, the aberrations of
pioneers; second, the incidental bits of factual information that those
pace-setters, perhaps by virtue of their naivete, were sometimes in the habit
of providing can turn out to be priceless.

171
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208
 INDEXES

Index of names
Abel. K.. 24 Bonfante, G., 84-5
Aebischer, P., Bopp, F.. 9-10, 110. 140
Alcala. P de. 6 Bouton, C. P., 123
Aldrcte, B., 5, 14 Brachet, A., 11, 27-8.48
Alessio. G.. 107, 139 Breal, M.. 10, 27, 28, 34, 35-6, 98
Alfonso X, king of Castille and Leon, 3 Breuer, H , 47. 138
Algeo, A., 122 Browne. W. R., 45
Algeo, J., 122 Bruch, J., 81, 127
Anderson, J. M.. 37. 108 Brugmann, K., 98
Anglade, J., 65 Bruneau, C , 128
Anttila, R., 37 Brunei, E.. 123
Arlotto, A., 37 Brunot, F., 128
Ascoli, G. I., 14 Buck, C. D.. 140
Avitus, Alcimus, 65 Buhler, C , 33
Burchfield, R. W., 108
Bailly, A., 28, 36 Burrow, T., 101, 108
Baist. G., 34, 51 Bynon, T , 37
Baldinger. K., 52, 92
Barbier. P., 50 Cabrera, R.. 14, 32
Barnhart, R. K., 109, 112 Caix, N., 106
Bartoli. M., 84-5 Calvet, L.-J., 123
Baltisti.C, 107, 139 Candrea-Hecht. J. A., 46, 86
Bedier. J., 138 Canello, U. A.. 28, 48
Behrens, W., 52 Carter. C M . . 120-2
Benfey, T., 21 Castro. A.. 52. 114, 115
Benveniste. E., 38, 95. 96. 98. 125 Cayley. C. B., 12
Berneker, E., 56 Chambon. J.-P.. 106
Bertoldi. V., 39, 92 Chiappelli, F., 129
Bindseil, H. E., 12 Chiappini. F., 128
Bloch, O., 29, 105 Cihac. A. de, 46
Bloch, R. H , 3 Clark, M. E., 122
Blondheim, D. S.. 30. 100 Clifford. P. M., 107
Bloomfield, L., 38, 42, 101, 109 Coelho, F. A., 14
Bloom field. M , 41 Cohen, M., 95-6
Boas, F . 41 Cornu. J.. 47, 163
Bolza, G. B , 32 Corominas. J., 50, 102, 115, 116, 140-2,
Bonaparte, Prince Louis-Lucien, 45 143. 160

209
Indexes

Coromines see Corominas Gauchat, L.. 58, 80

Cortelazzo, M., 107 Gauthiot, R., 98
Covarrubias (H)orozco, Sebastian de, 5, 6, Ghinassi, G., 130
14. 160 Giese, W., 160
Creore, J. A., 108 Gillieron, J., 33, 39, 58-9, 61, 71-2, 74.
Cuervo, R. J , 46 79-80, 86
Cueto, L. A. de. 160 Gobineau, J. A., comte de, 14
Curtius, E. R., 3 Goddard, Y , 100
Curtius, G., 18-19 Goetze. A., 142-3
Gonzalez-Llubera, I., 107
Darmesteter. A.. 28-9, 30, 34, 51 Gotze, A , 56
Darwin, C , 18 Goyvaerts, D. L., 37
Dauzat. A., 37, 102, 112, 119, 124 Graff, E. G.. 10
Densusianu, O..46, 52, 86 Grammont. M., 30
Devic. L. M., 27.46 Grandgagnage, C , 56
Devoto, G., 102, 107, 129 Gray, L. H , 38
Diez, F., 9. 10-11. 52, 56, 61, 110, 140 Grebe, P., 134
Donalithius, C., 17 Green, J. N., 107
Dozy, R. P. A., 46, 47 Grimm, J., 7, 8. 10. 36. 43, 110, 112. 140
Dubois, J., 102, 112 Grimm, W , 43. 112
Duden, K., 112, 133 Grober. G., 24, 51, 56, 65, 77
Duro, A.. 102, 107, 128 Guarnerio, P. E., 86
Guiraud, P., 120, 123-7, 132
Eastwick, E. B., 10
Ebel. H., 17 Haeckel. E. H , 18
Edgerton, W. F , 140 Hall, Jr. R. A., 85. 106
Edgren, A. H., 21 Hamp, E. P.. 37, 110
Edmont, E., 58 Hanssen, F., 42, 137
Eggcr, E., 27 Harris, M., 108
Eguilaz y Yanguas, L. de. 27, 46 Hatzfeld, A . 29
Eilers. W., 113 Heinimann, S., 87
Emeneau, M. B., 101, 108 Heinrich von Veldeke, 76
Engelmann, W. H., 46 Henriquez Urena, P., 78
Ernout, A. ix, 29, 50. 91, 96, 97, 162 Henson, J., 122
Herzog, E., 52, 73
Falk, H.,94 Hesseling, D. C , 90
Farinelli, A.. 78 Hiersche, R . Ill
Feist, S., Ill Hildebrandt, R., Ill
Fick, A., 18, 35 Hockett.C. F., 38
Fillmore. C. J., 108 Hofler, M.. 47
Flechia, G., 106 Hofmann, J. B.. 56, 102, 124
Foerster, W., 47, 138 Hofstra, T , 114
Folena, G.. 129 Hoijer, H., 38
Ford, J. D. M.,47, 138 Horning, A., 65
Forstemann, E., 19-20 Hotzenkocherle. R.. 94
Fortunatov, F., 53 Hubschmann, H.. 54
Foulet. L., 47. 138 Hubschmid, J., 92, 118
Foy, W., 54 Humboldt, W. von, 12, 13-14
Friedrichsen. G. W. S., 108
Frings, T., 74-7 lordan. 1, 72, 107, 123
Funk, C. E., 103 Isidorus, bishop of Seville. 3
Ivic, M.. 37
Gabelcntz, G. von der, 12. 13, 33
Gamillscheg, E., 39, 50, 80. 81, 102, 105. Jaberg, K., 39, 79, 86, 87-8. 129, 137
116, 127 Jakobson, R., 13, 125
Garcia de Diego, V., 52, 114, 140, 160 Jespersen, O., 101. 125
Gardiner, A. H . 33, 36 Johanson, K J.. 53

210
 Index of authors

Jokl. N., 92 Menage, G., 5, 6, 16

Joseph, B. D., 122 Menendez Pidal, R.. 47. 51, 52. 83, 85,
Jud, J.. 44, 77, 79. 86-7, 92, 93, 129, 137. 92, 101, 113, 114, 138
140 Meringer, R., 26. 60, 61-2, 98
Justus, C. F., 37 Meunier. L.-F., 28, 65
Meyer, L.. 17
Kahane, H., 89, 110, 117 Meyer-Lubke. W., 23, 50, 52, 56, 59, 60,
Kahane, R , 89. 90, 110, 117 61. 62, 65. 69, 73. 80, 84. 85, 93-4,
Kalepky, T.. 33 99, 102, 110. 114, 116, 117, 137, 140,
Karg-Gasterstadt, E.. 76 154
Klaeber, F. F., 47 Michaelis de Vasconcelos, C , 28, 34, 48,
Klein, E., 103 51,78, 163
Kloeke, G. C , 94 Migliorini, B., 102, 107, 119. 120, 127-33
Kluge. F.,22, 46-7,48,56, 112 Mikkola. J..61
Knoop, U., Ill Miller. R. A., 142
Kbrting, G., 52, 114 Mitterand, H.. 102, 112
Krahe, H., 56 Mitzka. W.,56, 112
Kretschmer, P., 54, 94 Mongin, J . 86
Kronasser, H., Ill Monlau, P. F., 14,31, 117
Kuhn. A., 15, 53 Morel-Fatio, A , 11
Much. R.. 60-1, 62
Lang, H. R., 163 Miiller. B , 98, 106
Langdon,M, 37 Muller. M., 21. 41
Lapesa, R., 128 Murko, M., 61,62
Lehmann, W. P., 37, 111 Murray. J. A. H., 45
Leihener, E., 75
Leite de Vasconcelos, J., 163 Nebrija. E. A. de, 5
Lejeune, M., 96, 99 Neu, E., Ill
Lenz, R., 41 Niedermann, 98
Lepschy, G. C , 37 Noydens, B. R., 14
Leroy, M., 37
Leskien, A., 17 Olivieri, D., 107
Leumann, M , 98 Onions. C. T., 102, 108
Levi, E., 106 Orr, J., 33, 72,79, 107, 123
Lidade Malkiel, M. R , 78 Orion, H , 33
Littre, E., 26-7, 28, 46 Osthoff, H , 22
Lloyd, A. L . Ill
Lokotsch, K , 27 Palmer, E., 38
Lommatzsch, E., 105 Panzini, A . , 127-8
Luft, W., 54 Paris, G.. 11, 28, 30
Lutz, F., 48 Pattison, D. G., 107
Paul, H., 22, 23, 25, 33, 38, 134, 140
Mahn, K. A. F., 14-15, 35 Pedersen, H , 53
Malkiel. Y., 37, 114 Peile, J., 21
Malmberg, B . 37 Pellis, U., 84
Manno, G., 128 Persson, P., 98
Martineau, R., 44-5 Pezzi, D., 17
Matisoff, J. A., 109 Pfister, M.,39, 43, 82, 106, 139
Matzel, K.. I l l Pharies, D. A., 51
Mayans y Siscar, G., 5 Pianigiani, O., 106
Mayer, K., 26 Piel, J. M., 117
Mayrhofer, M., 110, 113 Pisani, V., 38-9, 106
Meid, W., Ill Plautus, 65
Meier, H., 42. 52. 114, 115 Pogatscher, F., 62
Meillet. A., ix, 29, 33, 50, 91, 95-8, 123, Polander-Suolahti, H , 94
140, 162 Posner, R., 107, 123
Meister, R.. 54 Postgate, J. P., 44

211
Indexes

Pott, A. F., 12-14, 34, 35 Steinmeyer, E. von, 76

Preobrazenskij, A. G., 4 Steinthal, H.. 3, 14, 33.37
Price, G., 37 Stevens, J . 30
Puhvel, J., 110 Stewart. G. R., 103
Puscariu, S.. 46, 52, 62 Stokes, W., 54
Sturtevant, E. H., 37, 42, 100-1, 140
Ouadri. B., 93-5 Subak, J.,52
Sweet, H.. 32,33.45
Radin, P., 38 Symphosius, 65
Rajna, P., 77
Ramisch, J., 75 Tagliavini, C , 90, 129
Rask, R. C.,7 Tappolet, E., 58, 59, 81, 83, 87
Read, W. A.. 100 Techmer, F. H. H.. 15
Rey, A., 124 Tedesco, P., 142
Rheinfelder. H , 78 Tekavcic, P.. 137
Richardson, H. B., 138 Terlingen. J. H , 90
Richter, O. 54 Terracini, B. A., 130
Rieu, C..45 Thomas, A.. 22, 29-30, 51, 65, 73, 99
Robert, P., 124 Thumb, A., 54
Robins, R. H., 37 Tietze, A., 89-90
Rohlfs, G., 117, 137, 140, 163 Tilander. G., 100
Rolandi. U., 128 Tobler, A., 105
Roques, M., 39 Trautmann, R , 98
Rosal, F. del, 160 Trier. J., 94
Ruiz, J., 138, 141 Trubacev, O. N., 105

Sachs. G., 101 Ullman, S., 107

Sainean, L., 125
Salvioni, C 52, 62 Valkhoff, M . 90
Sanchez, T. A., 6 Valmar. Marquis of, 163
Sapir, E., 38,42, 100, 109 Vasmer, M., 90, 105
Saussure. F. de, 20, 33. 38. 55, 107 Vendryes. J., 38, 140
Scheler, A., 27. 56, 124 Verner, K., 21
Schiaffini, A., 128 Vidos, B. E., 90
Schirmer, A., 56, 134 Vidossi, G., 84
Schleicher. A., 17-18. 29, 36. 73, 140 Virgil. 65
Schmidt. J., 17, 53^» Virgilius, Grammaticus, 65
Schmitt, R., 113
Schuchardt, H., 24-6, 30, 34. 59. 63-74, Wagner. M. L.. 61, 86, 117, 140
80, 99, 154, 170 Walde, A., 56, 102, 124
Schulze. W., 98 Walsh. T. J., 158
Schwarz, E., 94 Wartburg, W. von. 29, 43, 50, 76-7, 80-2,
Sebeok. T. A., 37 90. 105, 129. 147
Seebold, E., 39 Watkins. C , 32. 110
Sherwin, R. T . 103 Weekley. E., 33. 36
Shipley. J . T . , 103 Wenker, G., 75
Sievers, E.. 76 Whitney, W. D., 20-1, 109
Silveira. J. da, 160 Windisch. E., 18
Singer. S., 94 Winter, C . 60
Skeat. W. W.. 31-2,45 Wood. F. A.. 94-5, 101, 109
Solmsen, F., 98 Wrede, F.. 75
Sommer. F., 98 Wrenn, C. L., 47
Spiro, S..90 Wright, R.. 107
Spitzer, L., 80, 81, 100, 115. 127, 130, 160 Wundt. W., 33
Springer, O., Ill
Staaff. E . 83 Zaccaria, E., 90
Steiger. A.. 90 Zambaldi. F . 65. 106

212
 Index of concepts

Zamboni, A., 39. 106 Belgium, 26

Zauner, A., 13. 59 Berber, 25. 118. 144
Zimmer. H.. 54 borrowings, 6, 22, 31, 133 see also lexical
Zink, G.. 123 diffusion
Zinsli. P.. 95 Breton, 91. 106
Zolli, P., 107 British Isles see United Kingdom
Zupitza, E . 53
Canada, British. 100
Caribbean languages, 100
cartographic approach, 58, 59, 74
Index of concepts
case histories, etymological, 14-15, 19
adoptions, culturally conditioned Catalan, 102, 141
deliberate, 22 Arabisms in, 90
Aegean territories, 144 Old, 141
affixation, 131 see also prefixation; Celtic, 6, 10, 12, 19, 91, 97, 118
suffixation celtomania, 6
African, South and Central, 13 Central Europe. 41-2. 95. 99-100, 112-13, 133
Albanian, 53. 54 charters, 83
Alpine words, 118 Chinese, 142
Alpino-Lombard, 92 chromonyms, 126
American English, 121-2, 144 Churwalsch (Grisons' dialect. Western
analogy, 97 Rhaeto-Romance). 64
versus sound laws. 22, 23 classical education, 117-18
Anatolian, 110, 118 coinage, 28
Ancient, 100 colloquial mistakes', 119
Anglo-French. 32, 45 comparative linguistics, 3, 34
anthologies, with appended etymological compounding, 28, 131
bric-a-brac, 47 tautological and advocative, 126
anthropology, and etymology, 60 concordance of dialect forms. 80-2
anthroponymy. 13, 28, 35, 42, 83, 113 contamination. 163. 169
antique etymologies, 3 conversational formulas. 144
antonymy. 149 core vocabulary, 22
Arabic, 6, 11.46, 144 correctness of spelling and grammar. 133-4
Egyptian, Italianisms in, 90 costumes, local, 68
Aragonese, 115 cross-linguistic research, 144
Aramaic. 46 conditioning factors, 147-9
archaeology, links with etymology, 26 cultural considerations. 1. 99
archaisms. 97 customs, local. 68
areal characterization
of Indo-Iranian, 97 Dalmatian. 84
of Latin and Celtic. 97 Darwinism, 18, 29
areal distribution, 84-5 data collection, 146-9
Argentinian Spanish, 140 Denmark, 7
Armenian, 10 derivation, 115-17
Old, 54. 98 derivational morphemes, included in
articles etymological studies. 115-16
on etymology, 44 diachronic lexicology. 96. 99
development of, 51-7 and etymology, blurring of boundary,
historique du probleme approach. 55-7. diachronic linguistics see historical
170 linguistics
Aryan (Proto-Indo-European), 31. 32, 45 diachronic phonology, 45
Auseinandersetzung technique, 65-6 diachronic semasiology see lexical
Austria. 34 semantics
Avestan, 10, 12 diachrony, 135
dialect geography, x. 34, 58-9, 80. 84. 87.
Balkan-Romance. 64, 84 112-13
Basque. 13, 25. 35. 67. 106, 118. 144 impact on etymology. 72-7

213
Indexes

dialect glossaries, 30, 82 etymological miniatures, 18-19, 29-30, 70,

dialect maps, 113 128
dialectology, and etymology, 30, 128 etymological research
dictionaries, 4 changing network of alliances, 136
of standard languages, etymological hypotheses of reconstructibility, 91-2
information in, 134, 167-8 legitimacy and perfectibility of modern
of word origins, in Language X analysis, 143
expounded in Language Y, 105-6 Meillet-school approach, 95-9
dictionaries see also etymological status of in mid-nineteenth century, 16
dictionaries etymological riddles, 78, 103, 122, 169
didactics, 57 •etymologies obscures', 124, 125, 127
documentation, 58-9, 112 etymologists
growth of, 78-9, 80-2 pioneering, use of rival hypotheses from
and time level factor, 91 earlier treatises, 6
doublets, 27, 31,48 'pure'(1500-1800). 5
Dravidian, 101, 108 separatist, 12-14
Dutch, 31, 46, 144 talents of, 85-7, 130
Gallicisms in, 90 etymologizing
development of the art or science of,
Eastern Europe, 'etymology' designating 58-9
morphology and inflection, 4 from modern speech to prehistoric
Eastern Romance, 84 languages, 118-19
economic considerations, and publishing, innovations in, 71
effect on etymology, 42-3 introductions to the art of, 106
Egyptian, Old, 13, 24, 33 methodically assembled recording, 82
English, 30, 31, 32, 33, 47-8, 91, 102, 103, methodological stages, 169
108, 116, 139, 144 witty approach to, 79, 103
Middle, 90, 116 etymology
Old, 32. 90 absence of theory, 135, 146, 164
erosion, 113 as an identificational discipline, 2, 85
erotic words, 124, 125 attitudes to its role in linguistic practice,
ethnography, and etymology, 26, 60 16-21, 107-8
Etruscan, 78 bracketed with lexicology, 107
etymological counterdictionary', 114-15 and collateral interests, 113
etymological dictionaries, 2, 34, 168, 170 concern with residual problems, 54
assessments in journals, 52 crisis of self-contradiction, xi, 167
comparative, 145 development as a genuinely historical
fate after wars, 43 discipline, 29
as a genre, 101-4 for etymology's sake, 30
link with lexical thesaurus, 147 exclusion from serious linguistic
merge with dialectological material, 43 pursuits, 55
merge with historical dictionary, 43 in the first half of the twentieth century,
origins of, 4 41-104
scale and selection of marginal guides to, bibliography. 38-9
elements of lexis, 138-9 integrative approach, (with
shared responsibilities, 29 historico-comparative grammar), 8,
standard layout, 14 9-12
status in early twentieth century, 44 loss of esteem for traditions, 135-6
etymological glossaries, and philology, 47, multidimensional, 60-3
48 multiple causation, 67, 125-6, 136-7
etymological inquiry in the nineteenth century, 1-39
amateurishness, pre-1800, 7 prestige in academic linguistics, 103
dilettanti, 103 proposed hypothesis, 149-64
leisurely and circumstantially conducted, proposed modern method of data
63-71 collection, 147-9
trouvaille or windfall, 73 reasons for contemporary loss of status.
etymological legends, from Antiquity, 13

214
 Index of concepts

in the second half of the twentieth Old High, 76, 134

century, 105-65 Old Low, 31
a semi-autonomous discipline, 88 Rhenish dialect, 76, 144
separatist approach, 12-14 Standard, 76
status in academic environments, second German scholarship, zenith of, 41-2
half of the twentieth century, 134-5 Germanic, 8, 10, 11, 12, 61, 67, 94
structural, 125-6 Germanicist research, 94-5
styles of research, first half of the Germany. 34, 114-15
twentieth century, 95 birth of historico-comparative linguistics,
suggestions for rejuvenation, 143-65 7-8
transmuted into an academic discipline, folk etymology, 19-20
16 post-war, 110-12
use of term, 1, 96 rise of Neo-grammarians, 21
avoidance of use of term, 142, 168 glossaries, 17, 138
Whitney's endorsement of, 20 emergence of, 4
see also 'false etymology"; folk modern language for words of oriental
etymology; 'popular etymology" extraction, 46
Eurafrican, 118 to literary texts. 101
Europe. 15(KM800, etymological see also etymological glossaries
scholarship 4-6 see also Central glotto-diachrony, 134
Europe; Eastern Europe glottologists, Italian, 84. 92
exotica, etymological vocabulary of, 27 Gothic, 10, 12, 54, 134
expressivity', 169 Graeco-Latin, 11
graphic illustrations see pictorial
'false etymology', 20 representation
false regression (or restoration), 59, 79 Greek. 2, 10, 12, 18-19, 28, 35, 36, 50, 54,
fieldwork, 30, 79 61. 67, 96. 106. 117, 118, 119, 131
Finnish, 114 Byzantine variety, 110
Finno-Ugric, 99 Middle, 89
folk etymology, 19-20, 55, 59. 72, 79 Modern. 89, 90
folklore, and etymology, 35, 36, 60, 68 Grisons dialect (Western
foreignisms, dictionaries of, 90 Rhaeto-Romance), 64
France, 34, 42, 123-7 grouping of words, for etymological
historical linguistics, 26-30 research, 142-3
Franco-Provencal, 118 gypsy language, 14
French, 11, 27, 28, 46, 50, 51. 56. 64, 80,
102, 105. 126, 130, 133. 146 Hebrew, 6, 46
Castilianisms in, 6 Hellenisms. 146
Italianisms in, 6, 90 Hispano-Basque, 118
Middle, 124 Hispano-Romance, 59, 84
Old, 90-1, 106, 115. 123, 124. 125 Arabisms in, 140
French-Swiss, 64 historical grammar, bonds with etymology.
8. 96-7
Gallo-Romance. 80, 105 historical linguistics
Northern, 144 bibliography, 37
Gascon, 59. 118 establishmentarian, 24
general linguistics. 33, 55, 147 status of, 103
general philology see general linguistics historico-comparative linguistics
genetic explanation in etymology, and birth of. 7-12
cross-temporal concordances in and etymology. 9-12
philology. 57 Historische Wortforschung', 111
'geographico-linguistic' inquiries, 14 history, influence of discipline on
German. 19. 47. 48. 76. 105, 106, 112, etymology, 2
114. 134 Hittite. 110. 142-3, 168
Danubian dialect, 76, 144 homonymy.31. 33, 113
Latinisms in dialects of Rhine and avoidance of, 72, 79. 146, 149
Danube valleys, 76 homophony, threat of, 59, 97

215
Indexes

humour, effects of, 146 contact-through-conflict, 114

Hungarian, 67 study of maritime zones, 114
hydronymy, 35, 91, 113 lexical diffusion see also borrowings; loans;
migration of words
Iberian, 118 lexical losses, 97
Ibero-Romance see Hispano-Romance record from languages of Antiquity and
Icelandic, 31 early Middle Ages, 145
iconography, 34 and substitution, 112-13
identification formula, 85 lexical semantics, 13, 28, 34, 60, 94, 112
individual word studies, 112, 132 see also sematology or semasiology
individualism, in etymological research, lexicography. 22, 43, 82, 102
63-74 lexicology, 17, 27, 34, 43, 59, 60, 72
Indo-European, 9-10, 17-18, 21, 24, 26, bracketed with etymology, 107, 109
31-2, 85, 91-2, 96, 97, 103, 106, 110, and grammar, 28
143 and material civilization. 113
Indo-Hittite hypothesis (Sturtevant), 100-1 pure. 68
Indo-Iranian, 97 linguistic atlases, 89
inflection, 7 linguistic science, 7, 41
inflectional morphemes, included in linguistics, histories of, bibliography, 37
etymological studies, 115-16 linguists, advanced and the layman, 103
interjections, 144 literary research
interview techniques, 79 and etymology, 3, 76, 77-8
Iranian, 118 loosening of bonds with etymology, 138
Old, 95 medieval literature, and etymology, 11,
Irish, 54. 91 83
Old, 54 Lithuanian, 10, 12, 17. 36
isoglosses, 75 loan words, 42
Italian, 11, 16, 64, 89. 102, 106, 107, 128, Lombard, 62
130, 137, 139 Luso-Romance. 84
Anglicisms in, 132
Hispanisms in, 90 magic, and etymology of personal names,
North, 133 1
Old, 129 Manx, 91
South-Central dialects, 25 material civilization
Italianisms. 90, 146 and etymology, 25, 60-3
Italo-Romance, 117 and lexicology, 113
Italy, 106-7. 127-33 maurofilia, 6
medieval Europe, mysticism and
Japanese, 13 etymology, 1-2
Javanese. 13 microtoponymy, 91, 133
journals see periodicals migration of words, 2-3, 25, 89-90
Judaeo-French, Old, 30, 100 missionaries, 5
Junggrammatiker see Neogrammarians monographs
etymological, 34, 44, 145, 167, 170
kinship terms, 58, 83, 126 development of, 63-72
Kullurgeograph (Frings), 75 morphology, 7-8
and the Neogrammarians, 21-2
language families, 91-2 relationship with etymology, 115-17,
Latin, 2, 5, 10, 12, 28, 36, 42, 50, 54, 56, 162-3
59, 64, 67, 78, 91, 96, 97, 102, 106. mysticism, and etymology, 1-2
110, 115, 117, 118, 119, 131, 145, 146 mythology, and etymology, 35, 36
Folk, 144
Medieval, 24 Near East. 113
Vulgar, 24, 141 Ancient, 100
Latinity, circum-Adriatic, 84 neo-etymology, 119-23
'lexical archaeology', x Neogrammarians, 7, 21-4, 136
lexical diffusion. 3, 133, 169 and etymology, 21-4, 170

216
 Index of concepts

reaction to, 24-6 conversational formulas, 144

Neolinguistic school, 74, 84-5 place names see toponymy
neologisms, 127, 130, 132 political change, and etymology, 41-3
etymological study of, 117-19 polysemy. 2
scientific, 139 'popular etymology', 20, 33
'new etymology', 74-7, 87 Portuguese. 11, 46, 71
Nordic, 83 Arabisms in, 90
Norse, Old, 134 post-Renaissance etymology, 6-7
North America, 109 prefixation. 115-16, 131. 139
notes, etymological, 44, 48-50, 54 'prefixoids', 131
noun, concentration on the, x, 112, 113 proper names, ix. 1, 33, 113
numerology, 13, 86, 88 changes in later life. 1
ancient, 99 for children, 1
Indo-European, 96, 97-8 and etymology, 13. 35
migration of, with fashion, 89
obscurity, degrees of, 91-2 popular studies of, 43
Occitan, 29, 118. 125 shifts to common nouns, 127
palaeo-Hellenisms in, 90 study of, and etymology, 36-7
Oceanic languages, 96 Proto-Germanic, 134
onomasiology, 13. 34, 59-60, 87, 92-5, 112 Proto-Indo-European, 53, 134
and dialect geography, 92-3 proto-language, 17
use of term, 13. 59 Provencal, 11
see also semasiology, synonymies Old, 6, 125
onomastic studies, 13, 33 psycho-linguistic inquiry, 26
Oriental languages, 21, 110 publishing
origins of languages, 5 expenses of, 137-8
oronyms, 91, 113 restrictions on etymological research,
Osco-Umbrian, 92 145
status of etymology in, xi, 42-3
Palaeo-Indo-European, 53, 99, 109 puns, 146
Palaeo-Slavic, 10 'pure' etymology, 5, 14, 140
parables, 1-2
periodicals Quellenforschung, 11
(1840s), 15-16 questionnaires, use in data collection, 58
and neo-etymology, 119-23
status of etymology in, xi, 167 reconstruction of lexical forms, 24, 91-2
periodization. in search for word origins, recurrent meaning, 92-5
90-1 reduplicative formations, 149
Persian, 10. 12, 45. 46, 54 Reliklwoner (residual Romance words), 92
Middle, 98 Renaissance etymology, 6
Old, 13, 28, 36, 54 reviews of etymological articles in
personal names see anthroponyms periodicals (mid nineteenth century),
philology 15-16
cross-temporal concordances, and Rhaeto-Romance dialects, 92
genetic explanation in etymology, 57 Western, 64
and etymological glossaries, 47, 48 rhetoric, 57
phonologies, miniature historical, 5, 6 Romance, 22-3, 24, 25, 28. 35, 42. 50, 56,
phonology 58,59, 67,83,85, 88,91,99, 110, 114
contrastive synchronic, 45 Romance comparative etymology, forms
diachronic, effect on etymology, 8-9 rather than meanings, 22-3
and the Neo-grammarians, 21 Romance scholarship, 63-73. 88-9, 116-17
phonosymbolism, 13, 81. 88, 125-6, 146, United States, 110
149, 169 Romanian, 11. 46, 52, 62, 67, 84, 99
phytonymy, 80, 92 Romano-Germanic symbiosis, 77
pictorial representations, x, 25, 60-3, 68, Romaunsch, 62
79, 121 Russia, 4, 106
pitch contour, of interjections and pre-Revolutionary, 4

217
Indexes

Russian, 4, 105, 144 Tartar, 144

Teutonic see Germanic
Sanskrit, 10, 12, 21, 53, 101, 106, 110 thesaurus, and etymological dictionary, 43,
Sardic, 25, 71, 117, 118 147
Old, 86 Thuringian. 17, 36
Saxon, 75 toponymy, 13, 27, 31, 35, 42, 45, 83, 91,
Scandinavian, 31 92, 113
Schlimmbesserungen (unintentional Turkish, 46, 89, 110. 144
changes for the worse), 56 Anatolian. 118
scientific terms, 119 Italianisms in, 90
semantic adaptation, 133 Turkish-Caucasian, 118
semantic rapprochement, 97
semantics, 124 see also lexical semantics United Kingdom, 30-3, 107-8
semasiology, use of term, 59 see also United States, 42. 100-1, 109-10, 120-3
lexical semantics; onomasiology Upper Garonne valley dialect, 140
semiology see semantics Urschopfung (spontaneous creation) of
Semitic, 96, 109 words, 23. 25
Serbo-Croatian, Neo-Hellenisms in, 90
settlements, history of, and Vedic, 21
word-and-name-history, 113-14 Vietnamese, 106
Sicilian, Arabisms in, 90 vocabularies, 4
Sino-Tibetan, 109 Volkseiymologie, 19
slang words, 119 'Volkstum und Kultur' perspective, 68
Slavic. 10, 12, 19, 56, 67, 142
Slavonic, Old, 10 V/anderwoner 89 see also migration of
Slovene, 62 words
sociolinguistics, debt to dialect geography, Welsh, 91
74 West Germanic, 8
Sogdian, 95, 98 word biographies, ix, 25, 29, 129-30, 169
sound laws, 12, 148 ethnoglottal selection, 45-6
versus analogy, 22, 23 related to literary text or genre, 46, 47,
sound symbolism see phonosymbolism 77-8
source languages, outside Graeco-Roman, restricted by social class, 46, 47
6 as separate individual inquiries, 45-6
South American, 143 single form-class, 46
Spanish. 6, 11, 30, 31. 46, 51, 71, 106, specialized topics, 46, 47
113, 114, 116, 137, 141, 143, 146 word families, 139
Arabisms in, 90 etymologically bracketed, 23
Italianisms in, 6, 90 or word clans (Wortsippen), 61-2
Old, 143 word histories, 9, 27, 34, 66
Southern, 144 anecdotal, 43
standardization. 133-4 and areal distribution, 80
structural etymology, 125-6 prehistory and stratification, 83
systematic analysis of primitives, 143-4 word indexes, 130, 137
stylistics, 57 word origins, 133
subjectivity, 54-5, 136 dictionaries of, 105-6
suffixation, 70-1, 116-17, 131 periodization, 90-1
superstitions, 68 scholarly inquiry into, 43-4
Switzerland, 34 word-and-name-history, and history of
symbolism, 1-2 settlements, 113-14
synchrony. 132, 135 word-formation, 28
synonymies, 34, 57-9 see also bracketed with historical grammar,
onomasiology 116-17
synonymy, 149 Romance, 131
cross-linguistic. 93-4, 149 word-order, 107
Woner und Sachen school, x, 26, 33, 34,
taboo, social, 150, 169 60-3, 84, 165

218
 Latin and other bases

Zend see Avestan 'ficatum (Lat.), 151

zoonymy, 13, 81, 87, 113 firmdre (Lat.), 7
formosus (Lat.), 84
fungidus (Lat), 65
Index of words
genkulumlgenuculum (Lat), 59
Latin and other bases gingiua (Lat), 59
glis (Lat.), 93
aequdre (Lat), 152, 164 grammatica (Lat.), 132
aesumare (Lat.), 154, 163
aestumare (Lat.), 77, 154, 163, 164 Hispdniscus (Lat), 83
affldre (Lat.). 85 Hispanus (Lat), 83
amita (Lat.), 83
amygdala (Gk.), 83 -ia (Lat), 159
-antia (Lat), 121 idn(u)a (Lat.), 151
aperire (Lat), 95, 98 tecur (Lat.), 28. 151-2, 164
-arius (Lat), 83 •(i)eniia (Lat.), 121
autumare (Lat.), 77, 154 ilex (Lat.), 73
avunculus (Lat), 83 indicare (Lat), 98
interficere (Lat), 158
'Parxar (Sogdian), 98
bassus (Lat.), 158 iudex (Lat), 98
BAST- (Gk., Germanic), 61
bastdzem (Gk), 61 jelek (Turkish), 68
bellus (Lat), 84
'bonakia (Lat), 121 'kosja (onomatopoeic), 94
bottom (Eng.), 122
bucca (Lat.), 59 longinquus ( L a t ) , 98
mactare (Lat), 156
casa (Lat). 136 malakia (Gk), 121
cerno (Lat), 96 malakos (Gk), 121
cilium (Lat), 59 malefdlius (Lat), 64
cisterna (Lat), 73 mat (Arabic), 156
clocca (Lat), 68, 69 maxilla (Lat), 59
cochlea (Lat), 68, 69 •mo- (Lat), 97
'combonia (Celtic?), 161 mola (Lat), 59
concerno (Lat), 97 molere (Lat), 62
concrelus (Lat.), 97 musculus (Lat), 69
'conuortia (Lat), 159 'muslidus (Lat), 65
convolutus (Lat), 161
cor (Lat.), 59, 152 nasus (Lat), 59
cresco (Lat), 96 nat- (Lat), 153, 163
crumena (Lat), 93 nature (Lat.), 153
cubitus (Lat), 59 natus (Lat.), 152
cuneu (Lat), 156 necdre (Lat), 158
cusculium (Lat), 69 nitela (Lat), 93, 94
nurus (Lat), 153, 164
dare (Lat), 44
'-dere (Lat), 44 occidere (Lat), 158
dlcere (Lat), 95, 98 operire (Lat), 95, 98
dikeln (Gk), 8 opus est (Lat), 87
discus (Lat), 8 •ora (Lat.), 83
diskos (Gk), 8
paries (Lat), 98
est opus (Lat.), 87 pectus (Lat.), 59
pendeo (Lat), 62
ferrum (Lat), 7 pendo (Lat), 62

219
Indexes

perdo (Lat.). 162. 163 Romance and other outcomes

persona (Lat.), 78
pinsere (Lat.), 62 abaixar (Port.), 158
pons (Lat), 62 abbassare ( I t ) , 158
pronus (Lat), 94 abeille (FT.). 58, 72
propinquus (Lat.), 95, 98 acezar (Sp), 143
protos (Gk.), 96, 99 achar (Port). 85
aeromobile ( I t ) , 131
allende (Sp.), 143
rapum (Lat), 94
alter (Fr.). 57, 102
re- (Lat), 116, 155
alrededor (Sp.), 143
rubidus (Lat), 65
amatar (Old Sp), 157
ruga (Lat.), 83
amatar (Port). 158, 164
ruscidus (Lat), 65
amatar (Sp), 156
ruscum (Lat), 65
ammattire (It.), 157
'ruspidus (Lat), 65
ammazzare ( I t ) , 157
rusium (Lat.), 65
Amparo (Sp), 1
aquende (Sp), 143
'sabius (Lat), 64 archi- (Eng.), 139
sabucus (Lat.), 83 arci- ( I t ) , 131
salus (Lat.), 95, 98 arpado (Classical Sp). 78
saluus (Lat.), 98 asesinar (Sp.), 159, 164
sambucus (Lat), 83 aune (Fr.), 86
sanus (Lat). 98 avec ( F r ) , 102
sapere (Lat), 64-5 avette (Fr.), 58
"sapere (Lat), 64 aveugle (Fr.), 144
sapidus (Lat), 64, 65-6 avuec (Old F r ) . 102
sapiens (Lat), 64
'sapius (Lat), 64 baisser (Fr). 158
sari (Lat), 65 (a)baixar (Port.), 158
skiurus (Lat.), 94 bajar (Sp), 158
'skurius (Lat), 94 barba (North It.), 85
sollus (Lat), 98 barocco (It.), 133
sonare (Lat ), 78 baxar (Old S p ) , 158
spargo (Lat), 162, 163 beaulbelle ( F r ) , 84
spe'ndo (Gk), 62 belka (Russian), 93
spondeo (Lat), 62 bellaco (Sp), 143
bello (It.), 84
thia (Lat.), 83 berceau (Fr), 160, 161
thius (Lat.), 83 bobo (Sp), 144
-to- (Gk.), 97 Bodensee (Germ), 19
'tomjan (Germanic), 77 bonanza (Amer. Eng), 121
'torquidus (Lat), 65 bostezar (Sp), 143
turba (Lat.), 69 Braue (Germ), 62
lurbare (Lat.), 26. 64, 68, 69, 70, 71 brezo (Old Sp), 160-1
tutare (Lat), 158 brizo (Old Sp.), 160-1
tutus (Lat.), 158 Briicke (Germ), 62
bum (Eng), 122
-burg (Germ), 19
uenter (Lat.), 59
uerto (Lat.). 159. 163 calvo (Sp.), 143
uiuerra (Lat.), 93 cansar (Sp./Port.), 23
uorto (Lat), 159, 163 cansare (It.), 22
caracoi (Sp), 143
Vauxhall (Eng.), 133 carattere (It.), 132
veruculum (Lat.), 7 casa (Florentine), 136
vihara (Sanskrit). 98 casa (Port.), 136

220
 Romance and other outcomes

casa (Sp.). 136 /7ao> (Sp). 144

charmelcharmer ( F r ) , 132 foie (Fr.). 151
checkmate (Eng.), 156 formoso (Port.), 84
chez (Fr), 136-7 frumos (Romanian), 84
chiquer (Fr), 126
Churwalsch (Orison's dialect. Western garra (Sp.). 143
Rhaeto-Romance), 64 gilet (Fr.), 68
ciego (Sp.), 143 gim(ant)- (Hittite), 143
cteus (Old F r ) , 144 glamour (Eng.), 132
com (Fr.). 156 Graubundner (Grisons dialect. Western
cojo (Sp.), 143 Rhaeto-Romance), 64
colmar (Sp), 93 grimoire (Fr), 132
colmena (Sp), 93 guisanle (Sp), 143
colmo (Sp), 93
combleza (Sp.), 159-62, 163 haise (Fr.), 77
comblueca (Old Sp), 160, 161 hallar (Sp.), 85
comblueco (Old Sp), 161 hameSha(nt)- (Hittite), 143
comborca (Old Port), 159-60 Hees (Germ), 77
combrueca (Old Sp), 159, 163 Heister (Germ), 77
Consuelo (Sp), 1 hermoso (Sp.), 84
cor (Port), 152 hetre (Fr.), 77
coracon (Old Sp./Old Port), 152 higado (Sp.), 151
cormena (Sp). 93 hueco (Sp), 143
corvo (Sp), 144 hyper- (Eng), 139
cuer (Old Sp), 152
curio (Sp), 156 •ico- ( I t ) , 131
iguaria (Port), 151-2. 164
-dam (m) (Germ), 19 incanto (It), 133
de- (French), 116 infra- (Eng.), 139
desco (It), 8 inter- (Eng), 139
desk (Eng.). 8 m/ra- (Eng), 139
disc (Old Eng), 8 iper- (It.), 131
discus (Eng.), 8 tfpan/- (Hittite), 143
dish (Eng), 8 -ma- ( I t ) , 131
dish (Middle Eng), 8 -istico- (It), 131
disk (Eng.), 8
Do/orej (Sp), 1 janela (Port), 151
Dotty (Russian), 89 joroba (Sp), 143

ecureuil (Fr), 94 *a.(a/a (Arabic), 158

Eichkatzchen (Germ), 93 kat:ala (Arabic), 158
embadurnar (Sp), 143 Kitty (Russian), 89
-en (Eng), 115-16 Klotz (Germ), 62
en- (Eng), 115-16
escarmiento (Sp), 143 lelo (Sp.), 144
esquirol (Aragonese), 94 lerdo (Sp.), 144
essette (Fr.). 72 liu (Chinese), 142
eslovoir (Old F r ) , 87 lukat- (Hittite). 143
extra- (Eng), 139
madrono (Sp), 73
/a//ar (Old S p ) , 85 malia ( I t ) , 133
farxar (Middle Persian), 98 manco (Sp), 144
fascinolfascinare (It.), 133 marrano (Sp), 78
fashionable (in Russian), 89 masse (Fr), 157
fermare ( I t ) , 7 massue (Fr.), 157
fermer (Fr.), 7 matador (Sp), 156
/erro//io(Port), 7 malar (Sp./Port), 156-9, 163

221
Indexes

malto ( I t ) , 157 rincon (Sp.), 154-6, 164

mauvais (Fr), 64 Rozdeslvo (Russian), 152
maza (Sp), 157 rue (Fr.), 83
mazo (Sp.), 157
mazza (It.), 157 sabe (Ladin = Central Rhaeto-Romance),
mazzo (It.), 157 64
memo (Sp), 144 sabi (Catalan), 64
mensonge (Fr.), 87 sabi (Ladin = Central Rhaeto-Romance),
menlira (Sp), 87 64
menzogna (It.), 87 sabi (Old Provencal and modern Occitan),
mouche a miel (Fr), 58 64
mudo (Sp), 144 sabio (Sp. and Port), 64
sabiu (Sardic), 64
Nadal (Port), 152 sage (Fr), 64
nadar (Sp), 153 sage (Old Provencal and modern Occitan),
Nael (Old F r ) , 153 64
naglb (Slavic), 142 saggio (Tuscan and Neapolitan), 64
narc (Amer. Eng.), 121 saive (Old F r ) , 64
nark (Eng.), 122 sapio (Tuscan and Neapolitan), 64
narky (Eng.), 122 saudade (Port.), 78
Natale ( I t ) , 152 savi (Catalan), 64
Na(ti)vidad (Sp.), 152, 164 savi (Old Provencal and modern Occitan),
/VeW(Old Fr.), 153 64
negarse (Sp.), 158 savi (Piedmontese and Lombard), 64
nekut- (Hittite), 143 savio (Tuscan and Neapolitan), 64
Noel(¥r.), 152-3, 163 savio (Veneto), 64
nouer (Fr), 153 Schalk (Germ). 62
mwra (Sp), 153 scipidu (Sardic), 65
nuez (Sp), 153 se noyer (Fr), 158
nuotare (It), 153, 163 iiwat- (Hittite), 143
snark (Eng.), 122
occire (Old F r ) , 158 snarky (Eng. /Amer. Eng), 121-2
okay (Amer. Eng), 144 soidade (Port), 78
oltra- (It.), 131 sonso (Sp.), 144
oltre- (It.), 131 sopra- (It.), 131
-ons (French), 116 sor- (It.), 131
orondo (Sp), 143 sordo (Sp), 144
sotto- (It.), 131
parson (Eng.), 78 sourd (Fr), 144
paiata (Sp), 78 sovra- (It.), 131
perder (Port), 162-3 squirrel (Eng.), 92-4
perder (Sp), 162 stra- ( I t ) , 131
personne ( F r ) , 78 sub- (It.), 131
pessoa (Port), 78 subier- (Eng), 139
*pllbn^ (Slavic), 142 super- (Eng), 139
poutre (Fr), 86 super- (It), 131
praeter- (Eng.), 139 supra- (Eng.), 139
pre- (Eng), 139
proto- (Eng.), 139 taquer (Fr), 125-6
pulsen (Germ), 70 tia (Sp), 83
tio (Sp.), 83
Rachel (Heb), 1 liquer (Fr.), 125-6
radiodiffusione ( I t ) , 131 rise (Old High German), 8
re- (French), 116 iisk (Old Saxon), 8
recoin (Fr), 156 tomar (Sp./Port.) 77, 154, 164
rematar (Sp.), 156 lomate (Sp.), 78
rencdn (Sp), 155 tonto (Sp.), 144

222
 Romance and other outcomes

toquer (Fr.), 125-6 uccidere (It.), 158

Ira- (Eng), 139
trans- (Eng.), 139 voksdl (Russian), 133
tripular (Sp.), 143
irobar (Provencal). 67 (Hi(tjt ,43
Irou (Fr.), 71
rrowver (Fr.), 25, 57, 64, 67, 68, 71, 102
;„ / i o yeeua (Sp), 152
frovare ( I t ) , 68 ' s.. ) , ' c . 1C T
/rOwer (Old F r ) , 67 J ^ 1 1 ( O l d S P »' 1 5 2
rruwar (Rhaeto-Romance), 68
/u?r (Fr.), 158, 164 zamfo (Sp.), 144
me»o (Sp), 144 zena(nl)- (Hittite), 143
z»'a(It.). 83
•u (French), 116 zio (It.), 83
uber- (Germ), 131 zonzo (Sp), 144

223