One of the most intriguing things about a language is how the meaning of words changes over the years. English is one of the most liberally-used languages of all, in that we often have to take the period in which a word was used to know its meaning and use. Also, the use of language often points to the mindset or mentality of the people that use it.
For example, let us take French: it has a stuffy Académie that regulates and standardises the language to the extent that it often (unsuccessfully!) tries to ban words that it deems not "French" enough. It is a behemoth, and makes rulings on the acceptability of usage. In the same vein, the whole legal and governmental system acts in a similar way: there is a rule for everything.
English, on the other hand, goes completely in the other direction: the language is governed by both nobody and everybody at the same time. There is no academy, just the Oxford English Dictionary that listens to what people are saying, and if a new word comes into general use, and survives for a set period, it goes in the dictionary, never to be removed. This also points to the libertarian attitudes in the mindset of the people and their governance.
Why is a word never removed? Because if, in a hundred years, someone is reading a book or an article from today, the reader may not know what a particular word or phrase means, for example "dial-up Internet". Firstly, dialling - we stopped using dials on phones in the nineties, but the verb "dial" kept being used even for push-button phones. By 2120, probably even smartphones will be long gone.
Words also make appearances with variations of themselves and mean similar things, or at least things connected to the original.
Let us take the word "wit": describing this word would provide a variety of ideas amongst a group of Anglophones. For some it is speed of the mind; for others it is the ability to reply instantaneously to a comment in a humorous way; the Oxford English Dictionary has a number of explanations, among them:
1. The seat of consciousness or thought, the mind: sometimes connoting one of its functions, as memory or attention
2. The faculty of thinking and reasoning in general; mental capacity, understanding, reason.
3. Mental faculties, intellectual powers (plural)
4. Denoting a quality: good or great mental capacity; intellectual ability; genius, talent, cleverness; mental quickness or sharpness
5. A person of great mental ability; a learned, clever or intellectual person; a man of talent or intellect; a genius
1. The seat of consciousness or thought, the mind: sometimes connoting one of its functions, as memory or attention
2. The faculty of thinking and reasoning in general; mental capacity, understanding, reason.
3. Mental faculties, intellectual powers (plural)
4. Denoting a quality: good or great mental capacity; intellectual ability; genius, talent, cleverness; mental quickness or sharpness
5. A person of great mental ability; a learned, clever or intellectual person; a man of talent or intellect; a genius
To discover its origins, one needs to look further back in time and to another language, German. A large number of Germanic words in English that have "t" in them are recognisable from their German equivalents as they contain ss or ß. For example foot = Fuß, shot = Schuß, vat = Faß, and even shit = Scheiße.
And so, this evidence, any speaker of German would be able to conclude that the word "Wissen", meaning to know (a thing or fact, not a person or place) would be the most logical word in German that the word "wit" in English would be related to.
Furthermore, the word "Witz" in German means “joke”, which would further clarify any lingering doubts over its beginnings. But digging deeper into their historical backgrounds one would see that this is only one branch of a quite expansive family tree.
As a word with such a long history, "wit" has broadly kept a similar meaning over time. It is a versatile word which symbolises deftness of articulation, quickness of mind and strong attention, making a distinct difference with the idea of learned intelligence, as well as the idea of "knowing", which comes from the Germanic root "kennen", and gives us the fairly outdated word "ken", that is still used in some northern English and Scottish dialects.
The lexicalisation of wit has lasted through the ten centuries since its first recording and although in the 21st century we associate it more with repartee and humorous ripostes, its original meaning lives on in various other guises, for example:
1. In plural form, as in:
a. to keep one’s wits about one, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as “to have one’s mental powers in full exercise”;
b. to be at one’s wits’ end, meaning “to be utterly perplexed; at a loss what to think or do”, according to the OED;
c. to be out of one’s wits, or “insane, mad, out of one’s mind”;
a. to keep one’s wits about one, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as “to have one’s mental powers in full exercise”;
b. to be at one’s wits’ end, meaning “to be utterly perplexed; at a loss what to think or do”, according to the OED;
c. to be out of one’s wits, or “insane, mad, out of one’s mind”;
2. In collocations and compounds, such as:
a. nitwit, dimwit, and half-wit
b. wit and reason and have the wit to
a. nitwit, dimwit, and half-wit
b. wit and reason and have the wit to
3. As a person of great mental ability; a learned or clever person
The word "nitwit" has a very interesting and colourful history: Etymonline says that it probably comes from dialectal German or Yiddish. But it does hint upon it coming from Middle Low German, which is what I believe it to be: from this assertion, it can be suggested that "nit" harks back to German dialect for “nothing”, as in "nicht" or the more dialectal "ned" or "net" rather than to “nit”, the creatures that sit in some people’s scalps. LEO translates nitwit as Nichtswisser, literally a nothing-knower, which cements nitwit’s place firmly in the Germanic structure of English.
"Half-wit" is another fun one: in 1755 Samuel Johnson in his dictionary listed it as “a blockhead or foolish fellow.” Noah Webster entered the same meaning in his American dictionary soon after in 1828.
Lastly, "witness" also hails from this same root: from as early as the middle of the tenth century it meant “knowledge, understanding, wisdom”, but consecutively “attestation of a fact, event, or statement; testimony; evidence…” Another example of this variation on a word could be "wise", and "wisdom", which the OED explains means “having or exercising sound judgement or discernment”. This firmly places the word "wit" as the centrestone of the idea of brain power, as all this shows.
The process of conversion, which is the use of a new word in a different form (such as nominalisation, i.e. a verb becoming a noun) without changing the form of the original word, has given "wit" various meanings that we have seen above, for example “to wit”, which is used to signify a more formal way to say “namely”.
Due to the nature of the ownership of the English language, which differs from French, Dutch and German in that it has no official overseeing body, unlike the latter three, many more words can be formed without hindrance, and a much greater lexical diversity can be guaranteed through this non-interventionist approach.
Never underestimate how many combinations we can make from one small three-letter word!
- Raymond Goslitski
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