August 11, 2018
The words “size”, “temperature”, “altitude”, and “age” are all borrowed words: Old French sise (1300ad), Latin temperatura (1670), Latin altitudinem (1300s), and Old French aage (1200s). Why should words for such basic concepts be borrowed? This is particularly the case when we have words such as “length”, “height”, and “depth” derived from the adjectives “long”, “high”, and “deep”. Why shouldn’t adjectives such as “big”, “hot”, “high/tall”, and “old” give rise to analogous derived abstract nouns?
Note that we talk about “length”, derived as it is from “long”, even for short things. Likewise, we have: “height” from “high”, even for short things; “depth” from “deep”, even for shallow things; and “width” and “breadth” from “wide” and “broad”, even for narrow things. Further note that the biggest or positive polarity is taken as the default, just as elsewhere in the language; there is “happy”, “sad”, and “unhappy”, but “unsad” is marked and odd-sounding.
Therefore, as weird or comical as these may sound at first, I think the following are the logical and sensible Saxon English alternatives to their Franco-Latinate counterparts:
- “size” becomes “bigness”
- “temperature” becomes “heat” or “hotness”
- “altitude” becomes “highness”
- “age” becomes “oldth” or “oldness” (I feel that “oldth” is just about passable, despite -th no longer being productive, whereas “bigth” and “heath” don’t work for me on an intuitive level, and “heighth” is an informal, dialectal, and humorous form of “height”)
I feel that “altitude” is different enough from “height” that we can’t always use the latter instead; “what’s the altitude of this plane” seems to work, but swapping in “height” seems not to. But as so often is the case, the Latinate word is used where the plainer, Saxon word could be: “What altitude are we flying at?” can be perfectly well said as “how high are we flying?” My proposal of “highness”, just like “bigness”, “heat/hotness”, and “oldth/oldness”, should only be used where the more basic word is inappropriate.
© Bryan A. J. Parry
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Anglish, conlang, vocab, words | Tagged: age, altitude, anglish, Anglo-Saxon, bonework, English Linguistics, Greek, inkhorn, inkpot, Latin, linguistic creativity, linguistic purism, plain English, pure, pure English, pureenglish, Saxon, Saxon English, size, temperature | 
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Posted by bryanajparry
May 25, 2018
I quite like the sound of the word skeleton; it’s very “cellar door“-ish to me. It has a fairly quirky word-history. It comes from the Latin sceleton, which in turn comes from the Greek skeleton soma: literally, ‘dried-up body, mummy’. Therefore, being a Greco-Latin word, this project aims to replace it!
Early English forms were more English-sounding: skelton and skelet. These would make excellent bishop-shifted forms. But could we come up with a wholly English form instead?
First, let’s ask: what is the skeleton? It is the bony framework of the body. Therefore, a more Saxon name for it might be “bonework” or “bonywork”. Think network and such.
There are other extended meanings of skeleton, too. How might these be put into Saxon English?
- In the sense of “bare outline”, “skeleton” can be replaced with… bare outline!
- “Skeleton crew” therefore become bare outline crew, bare crew, or outline crew.
- “Skeleton in the closet” becomes “dead body in the cupboard” — closet also being a French word.
© 2018 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://skeletonpictures.org/large/6/Skeleton-Pictures-6.jpg
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Posted by bryanajparry
April 30, 2018
Shipwright, cartwright, wheelwright, playwright (not “playwrite”!).
The word “wright” is related to wrought and work. A wright is, in short, a worker. But as you can tell from the above words, “wright” really implies a kind of craftsman or skilled worker, not just a regular slogger. This is clearly a useful word, but only pops up in these historic and set formations, and as a last name (Ian Wright! Wright! Wright!).
This nameword (noun) comes from the deedword/workword (verb) to work. But given the difference between a mere “worker” and the noble “wright”, we might wish to backform a new verb to wright, meaning to work in the specific sense of crafting or as a craftsman.
Let’s take this potentially useful nameword wright, and our new idea of the deedword to wright, and see how we can use them.
A carpenter (from the Latin root carpentum) is someone who works wood, but with the craft-like connotations. Woodworker is a nice formation; indeed, I try to smuggle this word into everyday talk. Woodcrafter or woodcraftsman work, too, altho I feel not as well. Workwood, like turnkey or sawbones, are also fairly neat Saxon alternatives to “carpenter”. But I think woodwright really gets to the craftsmanlike aspect in an unambiguous way. Old English had the form treowwyrhta, which is literally “tree-wright”.
What about the stone mason? “Mason” itself is Old French masson of unclear parentage; it may ultimately be from a German tongue or Latin matio. Surely, we could say stonewright instead. Indeed, the Old English word was stanwyrhta “stone-wright”. Personally, I really like the sound of this even more so than the above alternatives to “carpenter”.
Maybe “wright” could be regularly treated as the English equivalent to Greek tekton as found in architect. Therefore, perhaps architect could be buildingwright? The following words also work, but are more unwieldy: buildingcrafter and buildingcraftsman. Old English had the nice form heahcræftiga “high-crafter”, but maybe that wouldn’t be as self-clear as “buildingwright”.
© 2018 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://thecarpenterandthecook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Carpenter.jpg
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Posted by bryanajparry
March 7, 2018
The word deduct is very Latin-sounding. Which is no surprise, because it is Latin:
early 15c., from Latin deductus, past participle of deducere “lead down, bring away;” see deduce, with which it formerly was interchangeable. Technically, deduct refers to taking away portions or amounts; subtract to taking away numbers. Related: Deducted; deducting.
–Etymonline, http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=deduct&allowed_in_frame=0
The natural Saxon word would be “take away”. But it is interesting to see that “technically” deduct means to take away amounts, whereas subtract means to take away numbers. I’m not wholly sure if anyone follows this usage, to be honest. But if they do, us Anglishers have two options.
- Just replace both deduct and subtract with “take away”.
- Try to find another word so we can replace both words.
In option two, English has the handy little word “dock”. You can dock a tail, and you can dock wages. Both cases, we are taking about “portions or amounts”.
Therefore, it seems clear: in non-technical usage, both subtract and deduct can be replaced with either take away or dock, but in technical contexts, subtract becomes take away and deduct becomes dock.
© 2017-2018 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://www.funpawcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ear-cropped-and-tail-docked.jpg
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Posted by bryanajparry
July 27, 2017
Sadly, I haven’t posted anything new on Wrixlings for more than month. Lack of time and a bunch of personal commitments were responsible. But it was nice to be busy with other stuff and have a hiatus. Or should that be break? I can’t really see the point in the word hiatus myself — but to make the user sound clever.
Break is actually quite a useful word, coming up in all sorts of compounds.
Breakup (noun) or break up (verb) means “to disintegrate / disintegration” and comes from the literal sense of breaking up plough land.
Breakdown (noun) or break down (verb), of course, means “collapse”: a mental breakdown, a machine breaking down.
Breakeven (adjective, noun) is the point outgoings and incomings meet.
Breakaway (noun, adjective) can mean succession, separation, departing from the normal routine, or a person who does any of these.
Breakout (noun): an escape, manifestation or appearance especially of a disease, an itemisaton; (adjective) sudden increase, advance, or success, as in “Tom Cruise’s breakout film was Top Gun“
Break in (noun, verb): unlawfully getting into someone’s home, car, office, and so on.
Heartbreak (noun): great sorrow, grief, anguish.
Ground-breaking (adjective): originating or pioneering new work or ideas.
What a fruitful word!
© 2017 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/36/MPW-18388
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Posted by bryanajparry
June 19, 2017
The English town “Shrewsbury”. How do you say it? Some, like me, say it as “shrowes-bury”, to rhyme with “owes”. Others say “shroos-bury”, to rhyme with “shoes”?
This town’s name is quite interesting as it shows how the Norman’s mucked our speech up.
In the beginning, the town was “Scrobbesbyrig”.
The Normans couldn’t pronounce “scr-“, which was said more-or-less like the modern “shr”. So they spelt it, and said it, as “sr”. That also proved too hard for them, though, so they then changed it to “sar”. To make things worse, the sounds /n/, /l/, and /r/ often change their positions (“metathesis”) or swap for each other, hence Latin parabola but Spanish palabra and English palaver, or Spanish playa but Portuguese praia. Thus, Normanised “Saropesberie” became “Salopesberie” — and remember, the Old English form was “Scrobbesbyrig”! This is also why the shortening of the shire’s name, Shropshire, is “Salop.”
Lay folk carried on saying it as they always did. Throw in a few regular sound changes from the Middle Ages, such as b–>v–>u, and we got the modern pronunciations and spelling around 500 years ago.
Wow, did the Normans muck our speech up!
But what of the “right” way to say the town’s name: “Shrowesbury”, or “Shroosbury”? The simple answer is that both are right; enough folk say both to warrant both being considered right, and that includes folk who grew up in the town itself! But I reckon “Shrowesbury” might better represent the continuation of ancient “Scrobbesbyrig”, whereas “Shroosbury” looks to me like a spelling pronunciation based on the animal “shrew”. Look at the northern spelling pronunciations of “tong” (to rhyme with “long”) set against the southern pronunciation which rhymes with “young” and which represents a continuation of the original “tung” of Old English.
The moral of this tale is twofold. One, there isn’t always one right way of saying a word. Two, don’t get scribes who can’t speak the language to devise or modify a spelling system for it!
© 2017 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://www.aeroengland.co.uk/shrewsbury.jpg
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Posted by bryanajparry
June 6, 2017
This is a really short post but, seriously, why say “miles per hour” or “once per day” when you can say “miles an hour” and “once a day/daily”?
The “a/an” we see here is not a corruption of “a/an”, but rather comes from the Old English for “on” which was an. It first meant “on (each)”, but in the end the meaning spread from times to measures, prices, places, and so on.
In other phrases, we might feel we still need “per”, but honestly, be brave! We don’t need it! Per annum, per diem, per capita, per se: all Latin. Just use the English when speaking English: a year/every year/once a year/by the year/yearly. And the same can be used of the others, too: a day, by (the) head, by itself.
So what is the point of “per”? Let’s chuck it.
© 2017 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://www.helpful-baseball-drills.com/images/100mph.jpg
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Posted by bryanajparry
