Since this seems to be Italian week at LH — I’ve posted about manco and muers — I thought I’d pass along a couple of interesting lexical items I’ve run into lately.
1) Watching Il generale Della Rovere, probably my favorite Rossellini movie (I’m not a big fan in general, and I especially think his later ambition to educate people via television was misguided), I was annoyed when at a crucial moment a bunch of prisoners are upset to hear that “il federale” has been killed, and the subtitle calls him “the party secretary.” I had no idea what that meant (my main association with the English phrase involves the Communist Party, but that seemed unlikely in the context), and my dictionaries were no help: they had federale only as an adjective meaning ‘federal.’ Finally, persistent googling turned up the entry in the Grande Dizionario Italiano: “B s.m. Nel periodo fascista, segretario di una federazione di fasci di combattimento.” So it’s some kind of fascist official, and the subtitle should have made that clear.
2) I came across the word pieve ‘parish’ and discovered it’s descended from Latin plēbem (acc.) ‘plebeian class,’ which makes it a doublet of the borrowed plebe. That kind of thing is my idea of fun.
Wiktionary claims that the etymology of Italian ‘federale’ is ‘Back-formation from Spanish federales m pl (“federal law enforcement officers”).’ Which seems … improbable? Although OTOH they do quote the relevant Townes Van Zandt lyric as their illustrative sentence for their sense 2 (informal, US, slang) of “federale” in English.
That seems completely improbable. Italian Wikipedia says “Federale” is simply the abbreviation for “Segretario Federale” , which is the person who directs the “Federazione”, which is a party structure at an intermediate level between local and national. In the Fascist Party it was a position that was nominated directly by Il Duce after 1926, and as far as I can tell essentially meant “provincial boss”, as there was one per province. It was considered the 4th highest ranking position in the PNF hierarchy.
Except in the context of powerful figures like the Secretary of State and his colleagues in the Cabinet, “secretary” in AmEng now almost exclusively means someone in a support rather than leadership role. The Soviet style of “general secretary” is obviously inconsistent with that, but for all I know there’s a history of “secretary” being used for leadership/control positions in socialist-adjacent organizations (and Italian fascism arguably started as socialism-adjacent in at least a sociological sense) for “false modesty” reasons. And of course the semantic history of “secretary” in English need not mirror that of the related words in other languages.
Some Protestant sects use “Moderator” as the title of their Head Poohbah, which I suspect is motivated by some false-modesty dissimulation (probably rooted in old-timey rhetoric against “prelacy”) more than a shift over time in semantics, but I could be wrong about that. Is there a literature on this sort of phenomenon? And for all I know there’s some false-modesty backstory to U.S. Cabinet offices, e.g. perhaps an early pretense that the Secretary of the Treasury was merely there to offer the President advice and clerical support on Treasury-related issues rather than being The Man In Charge of the Treasury.
The use of “Secretary” for leadership roles in Socialist/Communist organizations in the late 19th century developed as a title to underline the premise that the director of the organization was not the leader of the organization but an executor of decisions that had been taken in common by the members of the organization. It wasn’t originally false modesty, it was meant as a sincere commitment to collegiate power (then became false modesty/outright fraud). The Fascists certainly borrowed the term from the Socialists, although I don’t think there was ever much of a pretense to collegiality.
I have always vaguely taken ‘moderator’ to imply that the General Assembly needs someone to keep a firm hand on it to keep it from turning into a(nother) row, but I’m not sure where the false modesty comes in – what am I missing?
In the Fascist Party it was a position that was nominated directly by Il Duce after 1926, and as far as I can tell essentially meant “provincial boss”, as there was one per province.
That’s a good description, thanks. I’m not sure how I’d translate it in subtitles, though: “the local Fascist boss”?
“Secretary general” or “general secretary” is the chief of the professional staff of an organization. Since the position is appointed rather than elected, increasing the powers of the general secretary is a handy way for a party dictatorship to keep power and control succession. I don’t think it’s especially ideological.
@JeninEd: I may well be overgeneralizing from current AmEng usage, where the “moderator” who supposedly oversees a debate or panel discussion without himself/herself taking a substantive position is typically fairly toothless and is not necessarily expected to have a very firm hand to apply if things become contentious. I am amused to learn that while I would have thought the Scots Kirk would in its earlier history have gone to pains to select a title untainted by any association with Popery they appear to have failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderator_of_the_curia
Vanya’s account of early Communist-etc. practice seems perfectly plausible but also suggests that the use of “Secretary” for high-ranking U.S. government officials must have a different origin, since the First Congress that enacted the statutes assigning the first batch of such titles was not trying to connote the same “decisions taken in common by the general membership” sort of concept.
I thought that a secretary was originally genuinely someone who knew secrets – a confidential advisor, I suppose, to the king or some other powerful person – so an important post first, eventually watered down to someone who can work a typewriter.
In the UK, the Minister of the Interior is called the Home Secretary.
Jen, you’re right; see Dave Wilton’s Big List: secretary for the early history.
Poking around the google books corpus, it appears that by no later than 1928 the heads of many (but not all) of the departments in the national bureaucracy of the (U.S.) Protestant Episcopal Church held the title “Executive Secretary,” with the adjective presumably being felt necessary to signal that they were the decision-making and leadership-role sort of secretaries rather than the other sort. (The Exec. Sec. for Missions and Church Extension was my great-great-uncle Jack, which is why I thought to look up the specific title.) I think “executive director” would in more recent decades have become the more cromulent sort of title, at least in the U.S. non-profit world generally although ecclesiastical institutions might still vary more.
I’m sympathetic to the authors of the subtitles. Il federale does mean exactly “the provincial party secretary.” In a one-party dictatorship, it seems natural to omit mention of which party is the party.
On a movie note, Il Federale is also the title of a fairly well known movie by Luciano Salce, starring Ugo Tognazzi.
I’m sympathetic to the authors of the subtitles. Il federale does mean exactly “the provincial party secretary.” In a one-party dictatorship, it seems natural to omit mention of which party is the party.
I guess that does make sense. It was just my particular background that confused me.
“ Wiktionary claims that the etymology of Italian ‘federale’ is ‘Back-formation from Spanish federales m pl (“federal law enforcement officers”).’ Which seems … improbable?”
Worse than improbable. The Policia Armada, not too affectionately known as el gristapo, for their gray/gris uniforms and brutal tactics, were the Francoist ‘federal law enforcement officers’. One was very circumspect is their presence.
Wow, it’s been a really long time since I watched Il Generale Della Rovere. I think it’s the best acting performance I’ve ever seen from Vittorio De Sica, who seems to be far more remembered as a director nowadays. That’s a fair assessment though; Il Generale Della Rovere is a wonderful film, but it’s hardly comparable to Ladri di biciclette.
@cuchuflete: Spain, whether before during or after the Franco era, is not the only Hispanophone nation. In AmEng usage, “Federales” generally refers to *Mexican* “federal law enforcement officers.” Which I believe tracks Mexican Spanish usage,* although Mexican Spanish is not particularly likely to have influenced Italian …
*Mexico is organized federally so the distinction between federal and state-level law enforcement makes sense there in much the same way it does in the U.S. but would not have done in Franco-era Spain with its central/unitary government and hostility to any local/regional autonomy.
Vanya’s account of early Communist-etc. practice seems perfectly plausible but also suggests that the use of “Secretary” for high-ranking U.S. government officials must have a different origin, since the First Congress that enacted the statutes assigning the first batch of such titles was not trying to connote the same “decisions taken in common by the general membership” sort of concept.
I would think it is the same origin, in the sense of a person who is executing the power/orders of a higher authority. U.S. Secretaries are executing orders/laws on behalf of the President, Secretary Generals of the Communist Party are (in theory) executing the collective will of the Communist Party members, but it’s not that different a concept.
Mexican federales were, of course, immortalized by Alfonso Bedoya (or whoever was dubbing his dialogue) in this scene. The famous “badges” line was later parodied by Trinidad Silva’s character in Weird Al’s film UHF.
@J.W. Brewer, Everything you say in your most recent post is correct. After posting the gristapo comment I wondered if the Wictionary reference were to federales mejicanos, but that was so far-fetched an etymological source that I didn’t bother editing the comment.
The problem is that Wict. as quoted simply says “Spanish”. It doesn’t distinguish between nationality and language family. Given that ambiguity and my own biases, I chose one. Either way, it’s a reminder to take that source as ‘sometimes useful, sometimes dicey’.
E.T.A. A good Mexican Spanish dictionary supports your comment about ‘Federales’.
Source: https://dem.colmex.mx/Ver/federales
In relation to “pieve”, Welsh “plwyf” from the same Latin word also means “parish”, I wonder how many of the other descendants do?
I think Norw. -lyd as in Nynorsk kyrkjelyd “congregation” could be a calque. The most vital cognate is probably German Leute “people”. It all goes back to P(NE)Gmc. *leutiz “people, crowd”. A meaning “common people as opposed to rulers” can be inferred from the compounds lydkonge “vassal king”, lydrike “vassal kingdom” and in ecclesiastic use ON lýðbiskup, OE lēodbiscop “subordinate bishop”.
The only certain cognates outside Gmc. are Balto-Slavic, e.g. Russian люди “people” and Lith. liáudis “common people”.
You can see the descendants of Latin plebs here (scroll down).
Huh. Welsh plwyf “parish.” Obvious once it’s been pointed out, I suppose. I do feel faintly insulted by it, though. Vicars and plebs …
[Ninja’d by anhweol. Well, not so much ninja’d, as, I wasn’t paying attention.]
@cuchuflete, @J.W. Brewer:
The Wiktionary mistake was very simple. Someone incorrectly copied and pasted into the Italian section the Spanish etymology of English federale, from the opening section of the same entry, where it is followed by a clear explanation of the obvious connection to Mexican federal police.
They should have copied instead the Latin etymology of English federal, which is obviously the same as for Italian federale. Now I did it.
The page always reported correctly that Italian federale is an adjective with the same meaning as English federal, and never a noun with the same meaning as English federale.
As we’ve been discussing here, it can also be a noun in Italian, but only in an historical meaning (PNF provincial secretary) that I feel Wiktionary can be excused for omitting.
In the Fascist Party it was a position that was nominated directly by Il Duce after 1926, and as far as I can tell essentially meant “provincial boss”, as there was one per province.
That seems to correspond to Gauleiter*) in the Nazi party organization.
The Gaue sometimes were identical to the traditional states, but mostly smaller; while the Nazis never abolished the states and took over their administrative structures, from what I read it were the Gauleiter who had the last word in a specific region.
*) No pretense of humble serving in that name, Leiter is “leader / manager / supervisor”.
Whatever else the NSDAP has been credibly accused of, and it’s quite a long list, I don’t think false modesty was one of the offenses.
Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos.
@Hans: Hitler was very loyal to his Gauleiter, and believed in giving them broad authority over their assigned districts. On the other hand, the Nazis made the Deutsches Reich* a unitary state, ending the federal status of the old German states (previously principalities). So the Gaue were used as administrative units, but they had no independent authority, separate from that of the national government. But, I mean, how could they? Federal rights for constituent states seems fundamentally contrary to notions of totalitarianism.
* The name of the state is actually doublet of Theodoric or Dietrich. I recently came across a purported explanation of German(ic) names that being with a Wolf– morpheme—that they meant emulation of natural power and cunning of the wolf. That makes sense for, for example, Wolfgang; it means, poetically, “walks like a wolf.” Or even Wolfram, referencing the totemic animals who served Wotan—two wolves (Geri and Freki**) and two ravens (Hugin and Munin). So far as I can see, however, it does not provide a satisfactory parsing of Wulfdietrich. “Rules our people like a wolf”? The only vaguely plausible explanations I have found were that Wulf was a nickname of the original character who appeared in the saga or Ortnit,*** but that seems like backwards reasoning, trying to justify a name that, on its face, makes very little sense.
** I ordered handmade tankards for my sons, made from horn and engraved with images of Odin. The boys instantly recognized the iconography—the pair of ravens, the pair of wolves, but the missing eye most of all. Unfortunately, one of them had been dremeled at little too deeply and had a slight leak. I wrote back to the guy who made them and said that there was a small leak under Freki’s front paws, and he sent another mug (a size larger) immediately.
*** Has the giving of dragon eggs as a wedding presen in A Game of Thrones been acknowledged as an explicit allusion to the medieval epic of Ortnit?
I always thought lyd- as in lydkonge was the same as in adlyde ~ ‘obey’. (I.e., ‘to hear’). The ODS strangely connects it to Lyd 3 ~ ‘trumpet’ (< ‘sound’ v) as used by heralds, but Leute doesn’t even get a look-in.
Celtic does the “wolf” thing too (though with the PIE “dog” etymon.)
Beside the obvious Cú Chulainn, there is the British king Cunobelinus/Cymbeline/Beli Mawr.
@Brett: The thing is, the Nazis never formally abolished the states, same as they never abrogated the Weimar constitution. They just ignored what they didn’t like. Sometimes, especially in the early phase, they created laws and ordinances in order to legally cover what they did, but later they often didn’t even bother.
Concerning the states, their administrative structures stayed intact; they had governments and prime ministers; the top positions were just given to Nazis. The Gaue were a parallel structure; Hitler created such structures on purpose, because the competing competencies made him the final arbiter. So the power structure was centralized on Hitler, but wasn’t unitary on the levels below him. Attempts by orderly-minded people like Interior Minister Frick to replace that by a systematic unitary structure went nowhere (and in the case of Frick lead to his exclusion from the inner circle of power).
(Found this unposted)
@Lars: I suspect that ON hlýð- and lýð- were confused early on. The h- would also have been lost in late East Norse, so if a compound with “obey” was made in EN, it could have been misattributed to “crowd” when imported to WN. That might explain lýð- meaning “vassal”, but the h- wouldn’t have been lost in Old English, so lýðbiskup is another matter.
@Hans: The 1934 Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs stripped all reserved powers from the states. Gau officials were legally accountable to the Ministry of the Interior. You are correct that Frick overplayed his hand in this regard, but that had more to do with Hitler’s personal faith in the Gauleiter he appointed, rather than any interest in granting the states real powers.
I don’t think you’re supposed to think overmuch about the relations between the elements in Germanic two-part personal names; the parts might be inherited independently from different forebears and who knows, particularly nonsensical combinations may have drawn a giggle even when the bearer was alive. I suppose there will have been “original” combinations like Erick that did make sense, but I have no idea how often they were used compared to combining parts of mom’s dad’s name and dad’s dad’s name, like middle names were used in later days. If you were of the Wolf line, your name started with Wolf and the rest was more or less random.
Like with Pravda & Izvestiya, NKVD/KGB and GRU, FSB and SVR (while the GRU continues to exist), and Trump casinos (that’s half the reason they went bankrupt).
Definitely not. Supposedly, the elements of the father’s and the mother’s name were often recombined for the names of the children. (…That’s currently fashionable in the Philippines, but with syllables instead of morphemes.) In the early Middle Ages many such elements survived nowhere outside of names or only in poetry, and nonsensical combinations were common – there are several that mean “fightfight”, i.e. two elements that each mean “war, battle, skirmish, fight, struggle” or suchlike.
In any case, the elements are all nouns, not verbs.
The juxtaposition of “Hitler” and “arbiter” leads me off on this tangent: I’ve heard people pronounce “arbiter” with a long vowel as if “Arbeiter” were lurking in their brains.
the elements of the father’s and the mother’s name were often recombined for the names of the children
Also racehorses