France’s New Dictionary.

Hugh Schofield of BBC News reports on French lexicography:

Forty years after they began the task – and nearly four hundred years after receiving their first commission – sages in Paris have finally produced a new edition of the definitive French dictionary. The full ninth edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française was formally presented to President Macron this afternoon in the plush surroundings of the 17th century Collège des Quatre-Nations on the left bank of the Seine. […]

“The effort is praiseworthy, but so excessively tardy that it is perfectly useless,” a collective of linguists wrote in the Liberation newspaper on Thursday. This ninth edition replaces the eighth, which was completed in 1935. Work started in 1986, and three previous sections – up to the letter R – have already been issued. Today the end section (last entry Zzz) has been added, meaning the work is complete.

In its press release, the Academy said the dictionary is a “mirror of an epoch running from the 1950s up to today,” and boasts 21,000 new entries compared to the 1935 version. But many of the “modern” words added in the 1980s or 90s are already out of date. And such is the pace of linguistic change, many words in current use today are too new to make it in. Thus common words like tiktokeur, vlog, smartphone and émoji – which are all in the latest commercial dictionaries – do not exist in the Académie book. Conversely its “new” words include such go-ahead concepts as soda, sauna, yuppie and supérette (mini-supermarket).

For the latest R-Z section, the writers have included the new thinking on the feminisation of jobs, including female alternatives (which did not exist before) for positions such as ambassadeur and professeur. However print versions of the earlier sections do not have the change, because for many years the Académie fought a rear-guard action against it. Likewise the third section of the new dictionary – including the letter M – defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, which in France it no longer is. “How can anyone pretend that this collection can serve as a reference for anyone?” the collective asks, noting that online dictionaries are both bigger and faster-moving. […]

Among the “immortals” is the English poet and French expert Michael Edwards, who told Le Figaro newspaper how he tried to get the Academy to revive the long-forgotten word improfond (undeep). “French needs it, because as every English student of French knows, there is no word for ‘shallow’,” he said. Sadly, he failed.

Discussions – lengthy ones — are already under way for the commencement of edition 10.

I confess I’ve never been sure what, or who, the Academy’s dictionary is for, but it’s a grand thing to be sure. (Thanks, Trevor!)

Headland.

This unexpected term was brought to my attention by Jen in Edinburgh here, and I was flabbergasted enough to give it its own post. I knew the word headland, of course, but only as “A steep point of land projecting from a coastline into the sea or other expanse of water; a cape or promontory”; this is the OED’s sense 2, attested from ?c1475 (“Betwene the hedelonde and houndeclif fote, the cours is northwest and southest” in J. Gairdner, Sailing Directions 11), much later than sense 1, which goes back to OE:

1. Agriculture. (Each of) the strips of land at the end of a ploughed field, left for access and for convenience in turning the plough at the end of the furrows or near the border. In early use also: †a boundary formed by this; cf. headroom n. (obsolete).
In some districts the headland is left only at the two ends of the ridges or ‘lands’ (see land n.¹ 7), but in others it runs parallel to the fence round all sides of the field. It is typically ploughed last, with furrows parallel to the fence, crossing the ends of the regular furrows of the field at right angles.
In quot. OE¹ rendering the plural of classical Latin līmes (see limit n.), ult. reflecting Isidore Origines 15. 14. 2 (on field boundaries).

OE Limites, hafudland.
Antwerp-London Glossary (2011) 85

OE Of þam pytte andlang riþiges on þæt heafodlond; of þam heafodon andlang fura.
Bounds (Sawyer 587) in S. E. Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, Part 2 (2001) 294

a1325 Un vileine vint e ma forer [glossed] In myn hevede lond [a1325 Arundel MS. heved-lond].
Glossary of Walter de Bibbesworth (Cambridge MS.) (1929) 319
[…]

1573 Now plough vp thy hedlond, or delue it wᵗ spade.
T. Tusser, Fiue Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry (new edition) f. 24

1637 There shalbe two Rod of hadland lying next to every mans particular meddow.
in Watertown (Massachusetts) Rec. (1894) 3
[…]

1793 I see no account of the head lands being plowed at any place except River Farm.
G. Washington, Letter 4 August in Papers (2007) Presidential Series vol. XIII. 344
[…]

1863 After the centre of the field has been ploughed, the headlands will remain to be ploughed separately.
H. Fawcett, Manual of Political Economy i. vi. 81
[…]

2010 Our boots sank into the sludge and we slipped and slithered our way back to the safety of the headland.
R. Stirzaker, Out of Scientist’s Garden viii. 72

The etymology is boring (head n.¹ + land n.¹), but the Note is worth reading:

The word occurs frequently as a boundary marker in Anglo-Saxon charters; compare quot. OE² at sense 1. It also occurs as a field name in Middle English (e.g. Hefedlant, Gloucestershire (a1243), Longhadlond, Gloucestershire (13th cent.), The Havedlond, Tilehurst, Berkshire (1462), etc.), and such attestations are sometimes difficult to distinguish from lexical use of the word (in sense 1).
It has been suggested that the early surname John de Hevedlond (1275 in a Suffolk source) perhaps implies earlier currency of the word in sense 2.

As you can see from the 2010 citation, it’s still in use, and it astonishes me that I was completely unaware of it. Are you familiar with the ‘strip of land’ sense?

A Boundary Is Not a Field.

I watched Alexander Dovzhenko’s famous 1930 movie Земля (Earth), which is terrific filmmaking (it’s “commonly regarded as Dovzhenko’s masterpiece and as one of the greatest films ever made,” to quote that Wikipedia article) and also a celebration of Stalin’s forced collectivization, which killed “on the order of 12 million people” and destroyed Soviet agriculture, so it might well be compared to another famous and morally dubious filmic masterpiece… but I digress. I want to complain about a badly translated word in the version I watched. The hero of the movie, Vasyl, is (of course) a Bolshevik agitprop guy, and he’s convincing the villagers to give up their individualistic fields and flocks and join the kolkhoz; the villains are (of course) the kulaks who don’t agree and want to keep their own stuff. When the community’s first tractor arrives to much fanfare, it eventually (after it stops because of an overheated radiator, which the villagers solve by pissing into it, a scene cut by prudish Soviet censors) starts plowing much more efficiently than the peasants’ horses and oxen, those relics of the outmoded past. And at one point we see a guy rush up to one of the kulaks and holler “Хома! Василь межу трактором переехал!” [Khoma! Vasyl plowed over the field boundary with the tractor!]; later, after the furious Khoma has killed the noble Vasyl, at the funeral service (a Bolshevik service, with singing and dancing and no priest!) a speaker says “Большевистским стальным конем разворотил Василь тысячелетние межи” [Vasyl broke up thousand-year-old field boundaries with his Bolshevik steel horse]. Unfortunately, whoever did the subtitles didn’t understand the word межа́, and rendered it “field” both times, which makes nonsense of the dialogue (and counterrevolutionary nonsense at that — accusing a Bolshevik of destroying the peasants’ fields will get you ten years without right of correspondence, citizen). So if you ever see the movie, remember this post!

Rowen, Roughings.

I’ve always liked the word aftermath (which sounds so old I’m surprised to learn from the OED it only goes back to 1496: “Item iijs. iiijd. yat ye same Water r[eceyved] of Recharde Andru for aftur mathe of Senjorge Closse” in W. H. Stevenson, Records of Borough of Nottingham III. 296), and I recently learned of a couple of interesting synonyms. Rowen (attested from 1440: “Raweyne, hey [Pynson MS. rawen], fenum serotinum,” Promptorium Parvulorum 424) is from French:

< Anglo-Norman rewayn and Middle French rewaing, revayn second growth of grass, aftermath (c1285 or earlier in Anglo-Norman; compare earlier Old French rewains autumn (mid 13th cent.)), variant of Anglo-Norman and Middle French regain, in the same senses (c1176 in Middle French; French regain) < re- re- prefix + gain harvest (see gain n.²; compare gain v.²); in β forms and probably also in α forms showing folk-etymological association of the first element with row adj. (compare later roughings n.). Compare post-classical Latin rewaynum, reweynum, regainum, rewannum, rewannium, regwannum (frequently from 1230 in British sources).

It’s “Now chiefly English regional (south-eastern and East Anglian) and U.S.”; I’d never seen it, but sure enough, the AHD has it (as New England). And from it, in some obscure fashion, is derived roughings (from c1575: “All the roughen and feedinge of the Edishe is free for the townshippe and parisheners untill Candlemas daye followinge,” Auncient Custoums Dedham in G. H. Rendall, Dedham in History ii. 33), “Originally English regional. In later use also U.S. regional.” That one is unknown to the AHD, but the OED has this citation from the Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News of Aug. 10, 1914: “Plow and harrow the earth very fine and turn under a good fertiliser; some use roughings and manure.”

Huh, and what do you know, there’s yet another word, eddish “Grass (also clover, etc.) which grows again; an aftergrowth of grass after mowing” (from 1468: “Frutex, a styke, a yerde, and buske, vnderwode, or eddysche,” Medulla Gram. in Promptorium Parvulorum 136), but that one is “Of uncertain origin.”

On Proust, etc.

Bryan Alistair Charles’s “On Proust, Judd Nelson, and Some Other Things” (The Millions, October 24) is self-involved, self-conscious, and far more concerned with the actor Judd Nelson and the movie The Breakfast Club (which I have never seen) than I can imagine being, but it’s a good read for all that, and makes me want to dive back into Proust (which I finished back in 2008, inspiring a splendid reminiscence from thegrowlingwolf: “I would fall full-flat snoring asleep after trying to stay with Marcel and this woman as best I could for as long as I could”). After a long excursus about meeting Nelson (set in one of my favorite West Coast bookstores, Book Soup), it continues:

I first started to read In Search of Lost Time in the fall of 2003. I was 29, unemployed, had recently finished graduate school, was still traumatized by a frightening experience in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (and deeply in denial of that trauma), and had picked up, semi-randomly, a copy of Swann’s Way. In a dim sense I was aware that the novel was part of a vaster work that was considered “difficult,” and featured a scene where a guy dunked . . . something into a beverage and then remembered things. But I knew nothing else about the book.

Not long before, I had read Ulysses, and while I ended up loving it, I found it hard to access at first. I felt anxious every time I opened it. The book’s reputation as both the greatest and most challenging novel ever written had been drummed into me (and all of us) for years. I read with companion texts handy, pausing a ludicrous number of times to look up every abstruse reference, stray bit of a foreign language, stylistic shift, parallel to The Odyssey, Dublin landmark.That is no way to read a novel, in my opinion. Only after I stopped trying to understand the book, moved past the sheer awe I felt merely holding it, did I actually begin to enjoy the damn thing.

With Swann’s Way, I experienced no such anticipatory anxiety. From the first, terse sentence, “For a long time I would go to bed early” (in C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin’s Modern Library translation)—whose brevity, I would shortly discover, was uncharacteristic—I was hooked.

He understandably bogs down in the third book (“Two long set pieces—an afternoon soiree and a dinner party—consume hundreds of pages and feature a dizzying number of characters, name upon name, cousins and second cousins, uncles, aunts, spouses, many of whose histories and personal qualities are relayed at length”) and sets it aside for what turns out to be a decade, then restarts with the Penguin version (the one where each volume is by a different translator) and triumphs by using a quota system:

The days and the weeks and the months passed. I established a lovely groove with the novel, came to relish my mornings with it, drinking coffee as I navigated the long sentences, the sometimes pages-long paragraphs, unwilling—almost unable—to move on with the day until I had completed my 10 (or 20) pages.

He doesn’t mention the Raúl Ruiz movie, which makes me suspect he hasn’t seen it, in which case he has a treat in store.

Xhoris.

I forget how I came across the name of the Belgian village Xhoris, but of course I had to look it up to find out how it was pronounced. French Wikipedia informed me it was [(h)ɔʀis]; then, of course, I wanted to know why the devil it was spelled that way, but the Toponymie section didn’t really help:

Le nom de la localité est attesté sous les formes Scuricitas en 902 (acte où Louis l’enfant confirme un échange); Scuritias ou Scurritias en 932; Scorices en 1126 – 1130 (liste du retable de Wibald; Scoriches fin du XIIIe siècle et dans une charte de 1336; Horis en 1310; Xhorice (Xhoris) du XIVe au XVIIe siècle.

Xhoris s’écrit et se prononce Horis’ en wallon. En français, Oriss est la prononciation d’usage.

Scuricitas to Scorices makes sense, and I guess that could get eroded down to Horis, but where on earth did that silent X come from? Any ideas?

Past Tongues Remembered?

Sarah Thomason (LH) posted at Facebook about the article of hers that has been reprinted most often, “one of my little papers on linguistic pseudoscience, not one of my more serious/substantial publications”:

The article is Past Tongues Remembered?, published in the Skeptical Inquirer decades ago. It’s about claims that, under hypnosis, people can be age-regressed to earlier lives and speak the languages they spoke in those earlier lives. This paper has been reprinted four times, three of them in other countries (India, Canada, Germany) and two of them in translation (French and German). Nothing else I’ve written has been reprinted more than once.

I’ve added the link, which will take you to the article (open access); here’s the start:

Suppose you want to convince people that you’ve discovered a
genuine case of reincarnation. If you can prove that your subject can
speak the language of an earlier incarnation, that would obviously be
strong evidence in favor of the reincarnation claim—provided, of course, that
the language is not the subject’s present native language and that you can
also show that the subject has had no chance to learn the “past life’s” language
in his or her current lifetime. The reasoning would go like this: Speaking a
language is a skill that requires extensive long-term exposure to the language.
If a person has that skill, but lacks such exposure in his/her current lifetime,
then the skill must have been acquired paranormally—for instance, in a
previous lifetime whose memory lingers on.

There are several published case studies in which reincarnation (or the
related phenomenon of temporary possession of a subject by another per-
sonality) is proposed as the source of a subject’s ability to speak a foreign
language. The most impressive of these case studies are in two books written
by Ian Stevenson (1974; 1984), who is Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the
University of Virginia Medical School. Stevenson has studied two native
English-speaking subjects who, under hypnosis, manifest foreign personalities
and seem to speak—very haltingly—foreign languages, specifically Swedish
and German, respectively. To establish his subjects’ linguistic competence in
these languages, Stevenson arranged sessions in which native speakers of
Swedish and German interviewed the subjects, questioning them about their
past lives; in the second case, Stevenson himself participated in the interviews,
since he knows some German

She demolishes the claims in satisfying fashion; in one sense, it’s hardly worth the trouble — to a rational mind the whole idea is silly, and someone who believes it is not going to be convinced anyway — but it’s still an enjoyable read.

Dimes in Basketball.

My wife showed me a story about basketball in our local paper and asked “Why do they call assists ‘dimes’?” I (not being a basketball fan) was unfamiliar with the term, and so is the slangmeister Jonathon Green; the OED, however, in its dime entry (revised just this year), has:

6. Sport (chiefly North American). An especially precise or well-timed pass, esp. one resulting in or leading to a scoring opportunity. Cf. Phrases P.5b.

2008 He threw a dime to me, and I just tried to make it happen.
Calgary (Alberta) Herald 2 November f7/2

2015 The 5-foot-8..guard..dished a perfect dime to teammate Brittny Hoover standing under the basket.
Great Falls (Montana) Tribune 20 February s1/2

2023 Rose put in an absolute dime and I got on the end of it. I’m happy for the goal.
Boston Globe 27 July c8/1

Phrases P.5 [to drop a dime] b:
[Read more…]

Bunraku, Snickers.

Two unexpected eponymous etymologies:

1) I just learned that the Japanese puppet theater bunraku (文楽) is named for Uemura Bunrakuken (植村文楽軒, 1751–1810), the puppeteer who established the Bunrakuza theater in Osaka. (The OED, bless its heart, simply says “A borrowing from Japanese” in its 1972 entry.)

2) I recently was confronted with the unexpected Russian verb сникерсну́ть [snikersnut′] ‘to eat Snickers; to speed up [from the advertising slogan “Don’t stop, grab a Snickers!”]’ (apparently used by those perennial culprits, Today’s Youth), and it made me wonder why Snickers are called that. Turns out they’re “named after the favorite horse of the Mars family.”

Cobego.

Once again (cf. 2016, 2019), I was looking something else up in my three-volume New Great Russian-English Dictionary when my eye was caught by an odd entry:

кагуа́н а m zool common cobego (Cynocephalus variegatus).

I had never seen the word кагуан [kaguan], and indeed it does not occur in the Национальный корпус русского языка (Corpus of the Russian Language); I had also never heard of the cobego, common or otherwise, and indeed the OED is unaware of its existence (an advanced search failed to turn it up even in the citations). But Merriam-Webster has it (etymology: “modification of Malay kubong”), defining it as ‘flying lemur’ and saying that the latter is “called also colugo” (which is “perhaps from a language of the Philippines”). Meanwhile, the Russian word is said by Wiktionary to be from Cebuano kagwang.

A Google Books search turned up plenty of hits for cobego (1901: “found that it was a female cobego”; 1905: “Thus the cobego feeds upon leaves”; 1914: “It was that curious animal, the cobego”; etc.), so it surprises me that the OED has managed to ignore it for all these years.