Words, Words Words!

Eric Partridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317426431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

First published in 1933 (this edition in 1939), this book sees Partridge introducing the reader to the eccentric lexicographers Wesley and Captain Grose. In an entertaining way, the book jovially explores and discusses various words and phrases such as "bloody", euphemisms, the Devil's nicknames, various versions of slang, and familiar terms of address. He does so with light-worn learning making the book of interest to a whole variety of readers.

I
An Etymological Medley

Offensive Nationality¹

WE have all heard nationalities used offensively in such phrases as Dutch courage, French leave, and young Turk and felt that it must be a crime to be a foreigner; not so many have noticed that English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish are also so used, even among ourselves.

Early in the sixteenth century, Greek and Turk were employed in an offensive way; from about 1580 to about 1650, Spanish was the scapegoat; in the seventeenth century, Dutch was common as an insult; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, French meant unpopularity, as, in a less general manner, did English, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish; and during the War, and for nearly ten years afterwards, German conveyed an adverse opinion.

There were reasons, of course! For every word and every usage of words there is a reason—if only one can find it. Let us take in turn the ten ' national insults ' just mentioned as typical of all such epithets, for Swiss, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, and others not dealt with here are also used in the same insulting manner. Greek designated a cunning person, a cheat, a card-sharper, as early as 1528, the great Oxford English Dictionary's example being ' In carde playinge he is a goode greke'. In these senses, Greek, though nowadays rare, was much used during the next three centuries. The phrase a Greek gift, which implies treachery, has a rather different origin, the reference being to the wooden horse so helpful in effecting an entry into Troy and to one of the most famous of all Latin verses, ' Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes '—' I fear the Greeks even (or especially) when they bring gifts.'

Turk (the name arose during the Third Crusade) became ' offensive ' about the same time as Greek: the first written record of the former follows that of the latter within a decade. In a ballad of 1536, Turks signifies cruel men, tyrants, savages, and some thirty years later the word did duty for a human figure on which to practise shooting; at the end of the sixteenth century it became a bugbear with which foolish nurses frightened children; towards the end of the next century, Turk—as we learn from B.E.'s dictionary of' thieves' slang '—described ' any cruel hard-hearted man ', a usage recorded by Captain Francis Grose, wit, porter-drinker, and antiquary, in his Rabelaisian 'Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue ^' (1785) and prevalent until the present day. Late in the nineteenth century, young Turk became popular to designate a mischievous child; in 1904 a certain magistrate said to a very youthful offender: 'You are a young Turk, and a bad Turk, too; I think I ought to send you to a reformatory school.' Turks, ever since the Crusades, have had a bad reputation, though it is pleasant to remark that in 1915 the British troops on Gallipoli found them to be brave and fair-minded soldiers.

The rivalry with Spain that became acute in the reign of Elizabeth soon had a result in language: in 1584 we note Spanish used unfavourably in the phrase, Spanish practice, deceitful or treacherous action. A survival was Spanish coin, which in eighteenth-century slang denoted ' fair words, and compliments ', as we learn from Captain Grose, who records also the colloquial Spanish trumpet, ' an ass when braying ', this being a good pun: an ass is a donkey, don a Spanish title; hence, Don Key. A still later survival is the nineteenth-century sailors' Spanish navigator, which Frank C. Bowen in his valuable and interesting little book, ' Sea Slang ', defines as ' a term usually used in American ships for a foolish seaman whose only asset is his strength '.

Sailors likewise use Dutch in many unpleasant ways, a malpractice due to the tremendous trade rivalry between Holland and England in the seventeenth century, a rivalry that, though lessening, has continued. From the delightful Mr. Bowen we quote the following terms, used in the nineteenth century, but—some of them at least—originating in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: The Dutch Brig, ' cells on board ship or in the naval prisons'; Dutch reckoning, ' a faulty reckoning of position or distance run '; Dutchman's anchor, ' anything left at home, from the Dutch skipper who explained after the wreck that he had a very good anchor but had left it at home '; Dutchman's breeches (very wide and full), ' a small patch of blue sky '; Dutchman's cape (sometimes called Cape Flyaway), ' imaginary land seen on the horizon '. Sailors used the phrase Double Dutch coiled against the sun in the same way that we employ Double Dutch when we mean unintelligible, gibberish, nonsense, a usage that dates from the sixteenth century: in 1547 one Andrew Boorde remarked that' In Denmark . . . theyr speche is douche', an example that I take from Professor Ernest Weekley's most fascinating ' Etymological Dictionary of Modern English', though rather more of my examples necessarily come from the Oxford English Dictionary. The irrepressible Grose gives four Dutch phrases: Dutch comfort, ' thank God it is no worse', which, later, became Dutch consolation; Dutch concert, ' where everyone plays or sings a different tune', which, later, was often changed to Dutch medley; Dutch feast, ' where the entertainer gets drunk before his guests ', with which compare the later Dutch treat, everyone ' paying his own whack '; and Dutch reckoning. Two other phrases call for mention: The Dutch have taken Holland, an earlier form of Queen Anne is dead; and Dutch courage, or courage excited by drink, to which in 1665 the poet Waller alludes in the couplet:

The Dutch their wine and all their brandy lose,
Disarmed of that by which their courage grows.

French became ' offensive ' towards the end of the sixteenth century (Ben Jonson in 1597 using Frenchified contemptuously), but not at all general until near the end of the seventeenth, for the grandeur of Louis XIV, le Roi-Soleil, stank in the nostrils of all good Englishmen; the chief eighteenth-century national offensive epithet was therefore French, which remained so until late in the nineteenth century. As examples we may cite the following nineteenth-century terms: French pigeon, a pheasant shot by mistake in the partridge season; French prints, indecent pictures—this we owe to Thackeray. In many British dialects, French still means new or foreign, Frenchy a foreigner; and in old East Anglia French signified very bad, or in great trouble. To take French leave is not altogether ' offensive ', for, recorded first in Smollett, it refers to the eighteenth-century custom of departing from a reception or an at-home without bidding good-bye to one's host or hostess; the French, by the way, have given us tit for tat by applying filer á l'anglaise (to go off in the English fashion) to an unheralded departure.

German was rarely used unpleasantly before the Great War. Early examples, however, are German Duck, which Captain Grose defines as ' half a sheep's head boiled with onions', a name given—probably— because this was a favourite dish of the German bakers in London; the plural has, in Yorkshire, long meant bugs, especially bed-bugs. German is also applied to things not genuine, as German measles, dating from just after the Franco-German War, and German silver. The War made German a very unpopular word; in 1915 an indignant defendant in the Middlesex Police Court excused himself by saying that ' he called me a German and other filthy names'. Sometimes Hun and Hunnish were used instead. That folly, however, died out some five years ago.

Now we come to Great Britain and Ireland. English is the rarest of all the ' nasty nationalities' considered in this article: it is used in only two connexions, English burgundy, which, meaning porter, is recorded by Grose in 1785, while seventy years later it bore the same meaning in the United States, where it has degenerated into thieves' slang; and English Malady or English Melancholy (that typically English complaint, the ' spleen '), these terms being seldom employed later than the year 1800.

Welsh, with its earlier form Welch, is so much more prolific that I can give only a few instances here. Welsher, a betting sharper, and welsh, to swindle out of money laid as a bet, are comparatively modern, there being no record of either before 1857, when ' The Morning Chronicle ' spoke of a man who ' got his living by " welching " and taking in the " flats " ' (flats, the opposite to sharps, sharpers, is a musical pun that has become part and parcel of colloquial English), while the respectable Miss Braddon, a best-seller of the mid-Victorian period, could use welsher in a transferred sense six years later and expect to be understood by her no less respectable public. It is not absolutely certain that to welsh and welsher are connected with Wales, but probability is all for the connexion. The very old nursery rhyme, ' Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief', may be responsible. Welsh is also a synonym for Greek and double Dutch as meaning unintelligible speech; spelt Welch, it occurs in this sense as early as the year of Charles the First's death. Captain Grose gives Welch comb, ' the thumb and four fingers '; Welch fiddle, ' the itch', as indeed is Scotch fiddle; Welch mile, '. . . His story is like a Welch mile, long and tedious.' He records Welch rabbit, ' bread and cheese toasted ', but is wrong when he adds ' i.e. a Welch rare bit'. Welsh rabbit is correct: compare Scotch rabbit for the same thing, and Bombay Duck, meaning fish, the term representing a sailors' joke on the Mahratti word bombila.

The inimitable Grose is no less informative on Scotch (Scottish, by the way, is more literary). He cites Scotch bait,' a halt and a resting on a stick, as practised by pedlars '; Scotch chocolate, ' brimstone and milk '; Scotch mist, ' a sober soaking rain: a Scotch mist will wet an Englishman to the skin '; Scotch warming-pan, which had better remain undefined; and Scotch fiddle, already noticed. Several other phrases—there are many!—that call for mention are Scotch casement, the pillory; Scotch coffee, hot water flavoured with burnt biscuit; Scotch greys, lice; Scotch prize, a capture made by mistake; answer Scotch fashion, to reply to one question with another, a conversational method with New Testament authority.

And last, but very far from least, is Irish. Both Irish itself and the colloquial Paddy are used for anger; but to get up one's Dutch likewise means to become angry, as, in America, does get one's Indian up. In America, where almost every policeman and many politicians are Irish, the notice No Irish need apply hints ' You're not wanted here'. Remembering such phrases as ' talk double Dutch and ' that's Greek or Welsh to me ', we come with interest on You're Irish, you're talking gibberish. Irish has been a derogatory term since about 1650, though a certain type of beggar was called Irish toyle ninety years earlier. Grose in 1785 records Irish beauty, ' a woman with two black eyes '; Irish evidence, ' a false witness '; the Irish arms, thick legs; Irish apricots, potatoes. Before closing the offensive, we may note that Irishman's dinner is a fast, Irishman's hurricane a dead calm, Irishman's harvest the orange season, and Irishman's fire one that burns only at the top.

¹ Cf. Professor Weekley's very different (and much better) essay in his ' Words and Names ', published four months after this essay was written.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• PREFACE
• Contents
• I. AN ETYMOLOGICAL MEDLEY
• II. SEMI-BIOGRAPHICAL
• III. ASPECTS OF SOLDIERS' SLANG: 1914-18
• APPENDICES
• INDEX