Friday, 30 December 2011

Glamorous Grammar

I've been pootling through William Goldman's The Princess Bride and came across this line:

glamour is an ancient concept. See "glamer" in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Well... depends what you mean by ancient as glamer is merely eighteenth century. But the fun thing about glamour is that it's grammar.

The glamour of grammar is a bit easier to understand if you consider the French grimoire, meaning book of incantations and spells. Once upon a time, grammar meant any sort of writing or learning. Writing, to those who don't do it, is a mysterious business and so a book of spells and magical incantations became known as a grammar or, by slight French alteration, a grimoire (which has nothing to do with grim).

In Scotland such magical grammars started to be pronounced with a L instead of an R, and thus a Scottish word for a spell was a glamer, usually in the phrase to cast a glamer over. Glamer became glamour and was imported back into English English by Sir Walter Scott, usually in the phrase to throw a glamour on somebody.

And so by the late nineteenth century, our modern glamour had emerged.

So it's just the old L-R confusion. And, if you want to know how that works, watch the video below:

Requiescat In Pace

Thursday, 29 December 2011


Sometimes, a word simply sounds right. Such a word is mungy, with a soft, j-like G. Say it. Mungy. I barely feel it needs explanation, but in case you can't guess it means overcast and damp. You might find mungy stuff under a woodpile, although the word usually applies to the weather; and always applies to the weather in the Lake District.

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Hob and Nob and Hobnobbing

I have been asked by Twitter whether there is any connection, however tentative and tangential, between hobnobbing and hobbledehoy. The short answer is No, because nobody has any idea where hobbledehoy comes from. However, I did discover the true meaning of hobnobbing, which is much more fun than I expected.

The first record of hob nob is found in Twelfth Night where an angry duellist is described thuslyly:

He is knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorced three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give't or take't.

Hob appears to come from the Old English for have, and nob from have not. However, the meaning of hob nob seems to have shifted slightly to give or take - in this case the knight will either give death or take it, but it is a mortal duel.

However, hob or nob quickly became a much more friendly term when combined with a few drinks. If I fill a festive flask and say, 'Here's to you, dear reader of this ridiculous blog,' and you say 'No, here's to you, dear writer of this ridiculous blog,' then we can be said to have toasted each other hob a nob.

Hob nob became a shortening of such mutually amicable bibosity, so that in 1762 Oliver Goldsmith could have the line:

Hob nob, Doctor, which do you chuse, white or red?

And soon such friendly exchanges became known as hobnobbing.

Anyway, after nearly a week at number one on the Amazon bestsellers list, I can gaze with monumental patience on The Etymologicon's comfortable lapse to second place. I shall go and unearth for myself a beaker of the warm South, pop the cork and drink a toast to all of you, dear readers. I shall hob, whether you nob is up to you.

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Lurgy, Lurgi or Lurden




Merry Christmas one and all.


Saturday, 24 December 2011

Trivial Musings

I am not here. This post is programmed and, all being well, I am probably somewhere on the M6 Toll in the back of a car, sleeping the sleep of the unjust. That means that all you get today is this lovely little piece of prose from a book called Trivia from 1917. I have spent much too much time on Oxford Street in the last week, and this description of that occidental bazaar therefore bores into my very soul:

One late winter afternoon in Oxford street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant and sad - into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum - I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus.

Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and anger.

Merry crimble.

Friday, 23 December 2011

Christmas in Bedlam

My life, my flat and my diary are all utter bedlam, which is rather appropriate for Christmas. You see, bedlam is simply a variant form of Bethlehem.

The Wycliffite Bible of the fourteenth century says that Jesus was born in Bedleem, but the King James Version took us back to Bethlehem because it's closer to the Hebrew. However, the two pronunciations were pretty much interchangeable until the end of the sixteenth century.

So the chaos and pandemonium of Christmas? That is down to the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem for the poor distracted people of London. Distracted in this context means mad, for St Mary of Bedlam was the original English madhouse. As the C17th playwright and inmate Nathaniel Lee put it


As the Bethlehem/Bedlam hospital was the most famous madhouse in Britain it easily became a byword for any disordered place filled with poor distracted people like me.

The reasons for my distraction are legion. The Etymologicon is still number one in the Amazon charts, which is playing havoc with my liver. This success is despite my writing, and purely because it has been read so well by Hugh Dennis, whose last instalment can be listened to here. And as a result of all this curiousness I've just been interviewed for this evening's Channel 4 news. Link will follow.

The Bethlem Royal Hospital still exists, is still a psychiatric hospital, and is now based in Bromley in South London.

And here is Hogarth's great painting of Bedlam Hospital:

File:William Hogarth 019.jpg
The Inky Fool checks into his hotel

Thursday, 22 December 2011

A Pair of Links

There's a little piece by me in today's Scotsman, which you can read upon line by clicking on this link. It's all about the origins of Christmassy words like satsuma and advent, and explains why Xmas is the original spelling.

The reading of The Etymologicon continues on Radio 4, and today's episode can be heard by following this link. It's being read so well that my litel bok has found itself, like a stage-frightened actor shoved from wings to spotlight, number one on the Amazon bestseller lists. This has, I'm afraid, resulted in pot-fury followed by ale-passion.

Wednesday, 21 December 2011










*I know it shouldn't be, but do try it.

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Not a Bibliophile











Monday, 19 December 2011

An Egg Dance

Over on the Dear Dogberry page, a reader has asked why we have the phrase walking on eggshells when walking on eggs would make much more sense. For myself, I can't understand why you would do either. However, upon investigation I've discovered that walking on eggs was the original version of the phrase. The OED records it from 1734, where as the walking on eggshell doesn't pop up until 1860.

A much more amusing variant is a thing called an egg dance, which can be performed at home, but probably not on your best carpet. All you'll need is a bunch of eggs, which you arrange on the floor, and a blindfold, which you put over your eyes. You now dance around trying not to tread upon any eggs however lightly.

Egg dancing gets a mention in a sixteenth century play called The Longer Thou Livest, The More Fool Thou Art.

Upon my one foot prettily can I hop
And dance it trimly about an egg.

And there's a good description of it from 1801:

This performance was common enough about thirty years back, and was well received at Sadler's Wells; where I saw it exhibited, not by simply hopping round a single egg, but in a manner that much increased the difficulty. A number of eggs, I do not precisely recollect how many, but I believe about twelve or fourteen, were placed at certain distances marked upon the stage; the dancer taking his stand, was blind-folded, and a hornpipe being played in the orchestra, he went through all the paces and figures of the dance, passing backwards and forwards between the eggs without touching one of them.

As you can imagine, an egg-dance became a byword for any intricate and difficult task, and makes a lot more sense than walking on either eggs or eggshells.

Scrambled eggs at the Inky Fool offices

P.S. The first part of the Etymologicon was read out by Hugh Dennis on Radio 4 this morning. You can listen to it by following this link.

Friday, 16 December 2011

The Big Chiz

It's a delightful little oddity of the English language that the phrase the big cheese has nothing whatsoever to do with milk products.

The Urdu word for thing is chīz. This meant that back in the days of the British Empire Anglo Indians wouldn't talk about something being the real thing, but the real chīz. Chīz became a term of approbation used for anything that was the pinnacle of its kind, but it wasn't spelled chīz, it was spelled cheese. From there it was a trifling step to making a man a cheese, and then the big man became the big cheese.

That is all for this week (unless the importunate muse comes upon me on Sunday), so do remember that the serialisation of The Etymologicon will begin on Radio 4 at a quarter to ten on Monday.

The opposite of a big cheese

P.S. What's the only cheese that's made backwards?

Thursday, 15 December 2011


Just in case you were looking for a word to describe today's weather oorie is defined in the OED as:

Dismal, gloomy; cheerless; miserable as a result of cold, illness, etc.

Which just about sums it up.

P.S. I'm going to be lingering at the Waterstones Covent Garden author's evening tonight from five till eight-thirty. If you're in the area, do come along and say hello.

Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Vainglory, Hubris &c

Yes, I know you're bored with my wittering on about The Etymologicon. You've been reading this web-log for eons and you wish I'd just get back to a post a day. But you must remember that this is my baby, my masterpiece, my pride, my hope and my joy. And I want you to buy at least fifty copies each. So, as my ego is as frangible as it is vast, here's a little round-up of what the press have been saying about my baby.

First off, The Etymologicon is going to be Radio 4's Book of the Week next week. Every weekday morning at a quarter to ten Hugh Dennis will be reading extracts to an expectant nation, and the whole thing will be repeated at half midnight and be available on the Listen Again thingummyjig. This is also the Radio Times' number one radio choice for Christmas.

Anyway, to the papers:

"But this year's must-have stocking filler – the angel on the top of the tree, the satsuma in the sock, the threepenny bit in the plum pudding, the essential addition to the library in the smallest room – is Mark Forsyth's The Etymologicon"  - Ian Sansom in The Guardian

"I'm hooked on Forsyth's book ... Crikey, but this is addictive" - Mathew Parris in The Times (who also made it one of his books of the year).

"The stocking filler of the season... How else to describe a book that explains the connection between Dom Pérignon and Mein Kampf?" - Robert McCrum in The Observer

"The snappy section lengths and the perky writing style, plus the comely jacket-less cover, makes this prime fare for the Christmas market. You can read it through at a sitting or two, or dip in as fancy takes. A perfect bit of stocking-filler for the bookish member of the family, or just a cracking all-year-round read. Highly recommended." - Matthew Richardson in The Spectator

"Kudos should go to Mark Forsyth, then, author of The Etymologicon, who has tried to sort out this linguistic mare’s nest and help us see the wood for the trees. Clearly a man who knows his onions, Mr Forsyth must have worked 19 to the dozen, spotting red herrings and unravelling inkhorn terms, to bestow this boon – a work of the first water, to coin a phrase." - The Sunday Telegraph

And then there's all the lovely ones from around the web that I shall bore you with some other time. For the moment, I shall be available for signing and the like at Waterstones Covent Garden tomorrow (Thursday) night.

And if you want a useful word to describe this post you can choose between omphaloskepsis and quomodocunquizing.

He shall be me, or vice versa

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Homicidal Orthography

I've spent a jolly morning looking at the Murder Map, which is a map of London marking the spot of every homicide, fratricide, patricide, uxoricide &c in London. You can even filter the results by murder weapon. The reason it was such a jolly sight to me was that I appear to live in a small, murderless island. In fact, the only murder round my way was committed with a ligature.

Now that surprised me because, as a linguistic sort of chap, a ligature is just something that connects two letters, and I am afraid of no man who tries to kill me with joined up writing.

A ligature is... well, it's hard to explain, given that blogspot doesn't allow me medieval script but take, for example, double U. You don't see that written down much do you? Looks a bit odd. Double U is the full spelling of the letter W, because the letter double U is made of two ligatured ues (that's something else you don't see much).

Anyway, the reason for my murderous confusion is that ligature comes from the Latin ligare meaning bind. That's why you have ligaments, and medical ligatures which are pieces of thread used roughly like a tourniquet. And if you take some binding string, wrap it round somebody's neck and pull then you have murder by ligature. And if you do that ten minutes walk from me, then I think you're beastly.

It's terrifying to think that this is going on only ten minutes walk from my flat.

Monday, 12 December 2011


The other day somebody asked me where the phrase oops-a-daisy comes from. Of course, I didn't know, but I never feel that Ignorance should stand in the way of Opinion, so I muttered something about lackadaisical and tried to look wise. By extraordinary coincidence, it turns out that I might have been right. Oops-a-daisy has a strange and meandering history that goes like this.

First, oops-a-daisy predates oops and whoops. Oops only appeared in 1925 and whoops is even younger having stumbled into the language in the 1930s. They're both variants of the original upsidaisy which was something you said to a child as you lifted it up back in the nineteenth century.

Upsidaisy is a variant of up-a-daisy which dates back to 1711, also addressed to a child to make him rise. So where does the daisy come from? Well, the OED says compare lackadaisy. You see, words influence each other. When the word bunkum already exists, it encourages people to change hocus pocus to hokum. In the same way, lackadaisy (and lackadaisical) appear to have influenced the formation of up-a-daisy from up.

Lackadaisy is formed from lackaday, which is a shortening of alack the day! which means something along the line of curse the day on which something happened, which comes from lack meaning failure, fault, reproach or shame.

And thus did a tour through the dictionary pretty much confirm my nebulous and face-saving guesswork. Who needs scholarship when you have bluff?

P.S. For anybody who particular wants to hear my brief appearance on Friday morning's Today Programme, the relevant segment can be found here.


Friday, 9 December 2011






The Inky Fool has a new car

Thursday, 8 December 2011

Fewtrils and Fattrels

Fewtrils and fattrels are little things of no value, like this blog-post. They are toys and trifles, mere baubles. The words may therefore be useful for those of you sending Christmas presents, as in "These few festive fattrels I found for you."

That's all for today as I'm horribly busy, but for those of you of a North-West-Londoney disposition I'm doing a reading and book-signing of The Etymologicon at West End Lane Books in West Hampstead tonight at seven-thirty. And, for those of you who get up early, my career as a radio-strumpet* continues apace and I'll be on the Today Programme tomorrow sometime between seven and seven-thirty in the morning.
*I dislike the term media-whore.

Wednesday, 7 December 2011


A fellow on twitter asked me whether justice was the only thing that can be meted out. The short answer is that other things can be meted [out], and the long answer is that justice is one of the very few things that cannot properly be meted.

Tennyson's gorgeous poem Ulysses begins thusly:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,

Here, meting is pretty much a synonym for giving. And that could be that unless you remember the responses in the Order for Holy Communion as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.

Priest. Let us geve thanckes unto our Lorde God.
Aunswere. It is mete and right so to do.
Priest. It is very mete, right, and our bounden duety that we should at al times, and in all places, geve thanckes to the, O Lord holy father, almighty everlasting God.

And here, mete is pretty much a synonym for appropriate. So who's right? I always find it hard to choose between God and Tennyson, or even, occasionally, to distinguish the two. It is therefore a great theological relief to me to be able to tell you that they are both right, for they are each giving two extremes of one general meaning. Mete means measure.

Or it did once. But then its meaning drifted to something that had been measured, or meted, until something of the right dimensions was mete. And therefore something that was appropriate was mete. That's what's going on in the Communion service. But also if you measure out to a person the amount that is due to him, then you are meting something out.

That's why you can mete out punishment. It means that you are giving a sentence that is measured and appropriate to the crime. And here's the problem with justice: justice is that which is appropriate. So if you mete out justice, you are giving the appropriate amount of appropriateness, and then you drown in a vortex of tautology.

So the full answer is that you can mete out anything you like - fines, food, sharks or champagne - but you can't mete out justice.

At least medioxumate.

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

The French Have A Word For It

Merely a link today to this article in The Guardian about French neologisms. It includes the word attachiante, which is a portmanteau of attachant (charming) and chiant (bloody annoying) and means a lady that you can't live with and can't live without: beautiful yet unbearable, intoxicating but intolerable.

Such words are terribly necessary if you're a Frenchman.

Monday, 5 December 2011


A jornada is a Mexican (originally) term for a day's journey without water. If there is no water there is no reason to stop your horses and so a jornada has neither pause nor relief. It's not a word we use much. It's hard to travel for a day in England without it bloody raining, let alone avoiding all rivers. Nonetheless, I think that jornada could usefully be revived to mean a day without an alcoholic drink, or indeed an occasion or ordeal where the wine flows like concrete. Thus "That team-building exercise was a complete jornada. Anyone want to go to the pub?"

Sunday, 4 December 2011

Stationary Stationery

Those who have never liked the fine distinctions of English spelling will rejoice to learn that the first recorded use of the word stationery, in Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary of 1727, goes thus:

Stationary, Stationers Wares

The -ary -ery distinction was only introduced in the nineteenth century to annoy schoolchildren.

But what is it that makes stationery so stationary? Why so still?

Well, once upon a medieval time, most books were sold by itinerant tinkers and traders who would set up shop in a different place everyday, or often only on market day. An exception to this rule was the stationarius. This was an official position within a university. A stationarius was given a shop from which to sell books and parchment and the like. This meant that unlike most of his competitors he was a stationary booktrader and thus became known as a stationer. In return for the shop he was required to swear fealty and obedience to the institution.

The stationer only slowly became differentiated from the bookseller. It wasn't until 1656 that Blount wrote in his Glossographia

Stationer is often confounded with Book-seller, and sometimes with Book-binder; whereas they are three several Trades; the Stationer sells Paper and Paper-Books, Ink, Wax, etc. The Book-seller deals onely in printed Books, ready bound; and the Book-binder binds them, but sells not. Yet all three are of the Company of Stationers.

Which hardly clears things up. The distinction didn't really catch on until a hundred years later, and the -ery until a hundred years after that.


Friday, 2 December 2011













Smithfield still feels like this on a Friday night.


Thursday, 1 December 2011

Incensed Incendiaries of Incense

Just a little object lesson today in how a word's meaning can branch with time, like the delta of a river.

Once upon a time there was a Latin word incendere, which to burn. Its meaning is pretty much perfectly preserved in the word incendiary, especially incendiary weapons, which still set fire to things.

However, the word is also preserved in that to which fire is set, namely the incense that is burnt in the higher kind of church in a thurible.

And finally the word is preserved figuratively as a synonym for angry - incensed. This of course merely means that your passions have been fired, your tinderbox sparked and that you're about to explode like an incendiary in a censer.