Diploma

In June many students receive their diploma, a word ultimately derived from a Greek word meaning “doubling”, which was used for a paper folded in half. By the time it came into English in the 1600s, it was being used for official documents conferring a privilege. Diplomats are called that because originally they had one of these “diplomas” conferring official status on them. But very soon thereafter, “diploma” came to mean a document conferring a degree.

Of Basil and Basilisks

Summer is here and we are all relishing the fresh herbs in our gardens, among them basil. Why is basil called that? And what's the correct way to pronounce it?

In ancient Greek, the word basileús  meant ‘king’. Legend has it that this fragrant member of the mint family had magical curative properties and was used in special ointments that were for the exclusive use of royalty. Thus, it was called basilikón,  literally the royal herb. 

 

The Romans ascribed even more magical properties to the herb, claiming that it could be used as an antidote for the venom of the similarly named basilisk.    

(The basilisk, as you can see from this picture, had a crown on its head, hence its kingly name).  

This particular drug claim was conveniently difficult to disprove, since the basilisk didn't actually exist. It was a mythical creature (I bet you never guessed that from the picture), alleged to be hatched by a serpent from a cock's egg (just take a moment to think about that!).  It was reputed to be able to drive away all other serpents, and its breath, and even its glare, could kill. It is possible that the real-world origin of this myth was the Egyptian cobra.

The Romans were so convinced of the relationship between the herb and the serpent that they conflated their names into one: basiliscus.  In French, this is still the case, with basilic serving for both. 

Before we leave basilisks (which have recently been more in the limelight thanks to playing a role in the Harry Potter books) and move on to basil, as the English language did, you should know that there is an actual lizard called a basilisk. Found in North and South America, it was named after the legendary basilisk because it too has a crown-like crest. Here is some fascinating and cute basilisk trivia, courtesy of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Basilisks commonly live along streams and will run quickly across the water on their hind legs when frightened. They are commonly called “Jesus Christ” lizards because of this trait."

 

By the late 1400s, the English had learned about basil, as about so many things culinary, from their French masters. They still associated it with nasty reptiles, though they seemed to be unsure whether it combatted them:

1562   W. Turner 2nd Pt. Herball f. 66,   Basil..is good for the stryking of a sea dragon.

or caused them:

1589   T. Cogan Hauen of Health (new ed.) xxxvi. 50   A certaine Italian, by often smelling to Basill, hadde a Scorpion bredde in his braine.

Clearly they were already aware of the Italian fondness for basil, which accounts for a resurgence in the herb's popularity in the 20th century. It had rather fallen out of favour as a culinary herb in England, and Keats's poem ‘Isabella, or the pot of basil’ (1820), in which a young woman hides the head of her lover (murdered by her brothers) in a planter and then grows some basil in it, probably did nothing to make it more appetizing. If that doesn't put you off  your pesto, I don't know what will.

Isabella and the pot of basil, by William Holman Hunt

In case you're thinking this might be the origin of the personal name "Basil", it's not (the guy in the planter was called Lorenzo). Like the plant (and also both the word "basilica", originally a royal palace, and the name of the Swiss city Basel), Basil is derived from the Greek Basileios ‘royal’ (a derivative of basileus ‘king’). It became a popular name thanks to the fourth-century bishop St Basil the Great, a theologian considered to be one of the Fathers of the Eastern Church. In North America, it hasn't been in the top 1000 baby names in the past fifty years. In Britain, it was in the top 100 in the Victorian era and even up to 1994, but has since disappeared from view. Personally I can't imagine, as my mother would say, "looking at a baby and calling it Basil".


The thorny question is: how should "basil" be pronounced? The British say "BAZZ'll", while Americans more commonly say "BAYZ'll". A recent facebook poll I conducted confirmed that, as so often, Canadians are divided, with about 75% saying BAZZ'll and 25% saying BAYZ'll. Neither is wrong. If you want to join your voice to the poll, you can find it here.  I have not been able to determine when or why the BAYZ'll pronunciation arose.



For the American/British difference in the pronunciation of the word "herb", see my post "Herb or Erb?" .

Apparently no one pronounces the personal name anything but BAZZLE, which of course brings us to  this classic excerpt from Fawlty Towers, in which a rat called Basil wreaks havoc in a hotel whose owner is also called Basil. No discussion of basil could be complete without it. I wouldn't be surprised if John Cleese -- or BAZZill, as Sybil Fawlty calls him -- single-handedly accounts for the precipitous decline in the popularity of Basil as a baby name.

Finally, here's an easy, tasty, and oh so healthy recipe using basil:

Roasted Vegetable Tart

8 oz. mushrooms
1 zucchini
1 large red pepper (or orange or yellow)
1 red or sweet onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp Italian seasoning (or 1tsp EACH dried basil, thyme, and oregano)
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 cup shredded cheese (something flavourful, like cheddar, smoked gouda)

Crust:
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp dried basil or Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
3 tbsp olive oil

Place a large (17 x11") baking sheet upside down on middle rack of oven and preheat oven to 425 F. Brush another large baking sheet with olive oil.
If you have a food processor with an adjustable slicing blade, set it to fairly thick and slice mushrooms, zucchini (quarter it lengthwise first), peppers and onion. Chop garlic finely. Spread all vegetables over baking sheet, sprinkle with seasonings and vinegar, and toss to combine well. Spread vegetables evenly on baking sheet, place it on top of the upside-down baking sheet in the oven and roast the veggies for about 30 minutes, tossing a couple of times, until tender and starting to brown.
Meanwhile, whirl dry ingredients for the crust in food processor using blade attachment (it doesn't matter if there are still bits of vegetable in the bowl). Add milk and oil and process until combined. Turn out onto a floured board, knead a few times until smooth, then roll out to a rough circle about 12'' in diameter. Place on another baking sheet. Fold about 1/2 inch of the edge toward the centre and pinch into a raised border.
Spread roasted vegetables evenly over crust to rim. Sprinkle with cheese.
Place in oven on top of the upside down baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes.
Makes 4 servings, about 400 calories per serving.

PS I do not know what purpose the upside-down baking sheet serves but that's what the original recipe specified.

Why are striped cats called tabbies?

The received wisdom is that if you want to succeed on the internet, the key is...
cats.

So, since this is a subject near and dear to my heart, I am hereby inaugurating a "Cat word of the month" series.

And what better word to start with than "tabby". (OK, I'm biased.)

 You might think this is a short form of the woman's name Tabitha, an Aramaic name meaning "doe", which was quite popular as a girl's name after the Reformation, thanks to it being the name of a woman restored to life by St Peter as recounted in Acts 9:36-41.

But while many would-be witty cat owners call their stripy moggies "Tabitha" (and I have to admit it is a very fine name for a cat), the word "tabby" has another source. 
 
Way back when, there was a neighbourhood of Baghdad called ʿattābiy, renowned for producing striped silk taffeta. By the 1400s these fabrics were being imported by the French, who called them atabis  or tabis. By the 1600s, the English, too, were using "taby" fabric. It was not long before the word was being applied to striped cats. 

Interestingly, only English made this leap from striped silk to striped cats; most other European languages call them, well, "striped cats" or by their version of "tiger cat" (the Dutch intriguingly call them "Cypriot (cyperse) cats"). What the English called them in the Middle Ages, I do not know, as even the words "striped" and "stripy" are not found earlier than the Renaissance. One candidate is "brinded", (which later became "brindled") a word possibly related to the verb "burn". 

Striped cats have clearly been around for a long time, and are often found in art from the Middle Ages onward.



In this depiction of the Supper at Emmaus by Tintoretto (1540), you can see a tabby cat in the lower left corner:

 

and here's one (possibly Papagena's distant ancestor?) being very cat-like in Bassano's depiction of the same scene from 1538. That snoozing dog had better watch out!

 

Next month we will look at the name for a particular type of tabby, the orange tabby or "marmalade" cat.

Frequent Wordlady readers know that in addition to being a word lover and a cat lover, I am also a ballet lover, so here is the famous "Pussycat pas de deux" from The Sleeping Beauty. If you love ballet, you might want to check out my upcoming season of fabulous ballet trips by clicking here.

 

In Memori... um???

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend in the US, so today we are going to look at three words all having to do with remembering, and all very often misspelled.

The first is the phrase "in memoriam", frequently misspelled "in memorium". It is a Latin phrase, and the Latin word for "memory" is the feminine memoria. If you misspell this, just think of the word "memorial".

The second is "memento", frequently misspelled "momento". This also comes from Latin, being the imperative of the verb meaning "remember!" In the 16th century, it was quite common for people to have skulls or other lugubrious objects about to remind them of the transitory nature of life. Such an object was called a "memento mori", meaning literally, "remember that you must die". 

Over the years, the sense has weakened so that our mementoes  (or mementos) are more likely to be dust-gathering tchotchkes brought back to remind us of a trip. Souvenir shops probably realized quite early that skulls reminding us of our mortality weren't hot sellers. It should not be too difficult to remember how to spell memento, as the first three letters are also found in "memory" and "remember".

Finally, there is the word "remembrance", frequently misspelled "rememberance". Admittedly, this is one of those cases of inconsistent English spelling: why do we have an e before the second r in the verb but not in the noun? Back when we borrowed this from French in the Middle Ages, the French verb was remembrer and the noun remembraunce. (Since then, the French have given up on this verb altogether, preferring rappeler and souvenir.) As with the similar, but unrelated "member" (a word which has a titillating history of its own), which came from membre, by the Middle English period we didn't like having dangling schwas (that indeterminate "uh" sound) at the end of words, so we switched the order of the final consonant-vowel cluster around, and remembre (re mem bruh) became "remember" (re mem bur). But in the noun, we didn't have a dangling schwa problem, so it remained as it was.

Wile E. ... Togony?

Canadians have a remarkable quirk when it comes to spelling and pronunciation variants: each Canadian believes that his or her linguistic practice is the "true Canadian" one and anything else must be wrong -- and probably American to boot. So I have had people who pronounce "missile" to rhyme with "missal" tell me, outraged, that those other Canadians who rhyme it with "mile" are obviously wrong and have sold out to those nefarious Americans. Of course, the truth is that "missal" is the only pronunciation used by Americans, whereas the other pronunciation is used by the British. 

But Canadians don't usually like to let the truth interfere with a little zealous anti-Americanism. A flurry of controversy which arose in Toronto a while ago about how to pronounce the word "coyote", prompted by sightings of the animal in local parks and ravines, is a classic example of this, with the added fillip of a dash of Western anti-Ontarianism. 

Torontonians, whose only previous acquaintance with the animal was seeing it flattened by a cartoon anvil, not surprisingly call it a "ky OAT ee". Westerners, who have lived with the animal longer and traditionally have more commonly said "KY oat" or even "KY oot", may be prompted to launch into a spate of righteous indignation about Ontarians' supposed ignorance, and, worse, their supposed susceptibility to American influences, whereas Westerners are much more impervious to this and can keep true Canadianness alive. 

Being a Westerner myself, I too say "KY oat", but I like to take a more dispassionate view. Perhaps we should look into the facts of the case. Just who does say "KY oat" and who does say "ky OAT ee"? Is "KY oat" more "truly Canadian" than "ky OAT ee"? (One of my colleagues at the Canadian Oxford Dictionary admitted to me that he had always thought that "KY oat" was the "weird pronunciation", and probably American). 

The animal's name is ultimately derived from Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs, for whom the crafty canine was a "coyotl". Reviving this version of the word might solve all our problems. The fact that it no longer exists can be blamed on the Spanish speakers of Mexico, who were totally unable to pronounce the string "tl" at the end of a word and thus transformed it into the three-syllable "coyote", which is what the English speakers in the Southwestern United States borrowed from them in the early 1800s. 

It is unclear how the two-syllable variant arose from this, but it is analogous to what happened to the word "chocolate" as it passed into English from the Nahuatl "chocolatl" via Spanish "chocolate". The fact is that for "coyote" all American dictionaries give both pronunciations, some of them with the "KY oat" version first. 

Dear God, this means that BOTH pronunciations are American!! Now what do we do if we want to be "truly Canadian"?? 

Well, of course they're both American. Where else would we get a Mexican Spanish word for a native animal from? It's hardly likely to have come into Canadian English via Britain, or to have leapfrogged right over the US to land in Canada untarnished. We could of course also ask the philosophical question as to why it would be better if it HAD come from Britain, but the point is moot. 

Now, the coyote does go by other names, such as "prairie wolf" or "brush wolf", which would avoid the pronunciation problem but incur the wrath of zoologists who would point out that it is not a wolf. Perhaps a more uniquely Canadian solution would be to revive the words "mishagunis" and "togony" adapted by English speakers such as Palliser from Algonquian names for the animal in the 1800s. Good luck if you wish to try this. 

It is hardly the environmentally correct thing to suggest that we might enlist the services of a handy roadrunner to ensure that all of Toronto's coyotes are hoist with their own petard (produced by the Acme Petard Company, it goes without saying) and thus spare us the necessity of talking about them at all. 

So perhaps we should take the tolerant Canadian view and say "You say KYoat and I say ky OAT ee; let's call the whole thing ... legitimate pronunciation variation". Try setting that to a Broadway tune!

Premises, premises...

A Wordlady reader has inquired about the use of "premise" to mean "location", instead of the plural "premises". 

It's odd that a word meaning "a starting point for reasoning" also means "a locality". 

This is how it evolved.  

In the Middle Ages, the word meant "the first statement in an argument" (from a Latin word meaning "set before"). Then medieval lawyers started to use it to refer to any foregoing statement in a legal document. In particular,  they used it for the opening statement in a deed or conveyance of property.  In such documents, the things mentioned right off the top were the lands, dwellings, and other buildings, and these were subsequently referred to in the document as "the premises".  Since such things were usually in the plural, or probably referred to in the plural by lawyers just to cover the eventuality that there might be more than one, the plural form took over. 

Gradually, the usage spread beyond the legal profession, and people began to think of "premises" as a synonym for "A house or building together with its grounds, outhouses,etc." [that's "outhouses" in the British sense of outbuildings!]. But there was still a plural notion about it.  Only gradually did the plural noun "premises" come to designate a singular entity like a building or a shop. 

But English just doesn't like plural nouns for things that are (or are perceived as) singular. Stamina and molasses were both originally plural nouns, but have now become singular (it's actually surprising that molasses didn't become molass in the process).  We don't even like singular things having names that sound like they're plural: singular skates, cherise, and pease became skate, cherry, and pea. Under the weight of this pressure, I think it is inevitable that plural "premises" will yield to the singular "premise".

In fact, if you do a Google search on "licensed premise" you find the term in many legal documents, from all over the English-speaking world. 

If this usage bothers you, my advice is: hie you to a licensed premise, drink up, and accept the inevitable.

1. Complain about a licensed premise
   

   www.warwickdc.gov.uk › ... › Your Council › Online Services › Forms

   Use this form to complain about a Licensed Premise.
2. 
   

   TABC License and Permit Description

   www.tabc.state.tx.us/licensing/license_and_permit_description.asp

   Dec 20, 2012 – ... Permit or Wine and Beer Retailer's Permit if food service is the primary business being operated on the licensed premise or to the holder of a ...
3. 
   

   Overview

   www.rld.state.nm.us/.../Special_Dispenser_Permits.aspx

   All laws that apply on a normal licensed premise apply at the location of the SDP or public celebration. For SDP Information Letter 1/7/13, click here. To obtain an ...
4. 
   

   Scottish Certificate for Licensed Premises Staff | SCLPSPersonal ...

   www.personallicencescotland.com/scottish-certificate-for-licensed-pr...

   Licensed Premises Staff includes anyone serving alcohol form behind a bar, sales counter or directly to a table from a licensed premise or temporary event ...
5. 
   

   Rules and Regulations - Maine.gov

   www.maine.gov/dps/liqr/regulations.html - United States

   Whoever is found in charge of a licensed premise or making service or waiting on trade in such licensed premise shall be prima facie construed to be a clerk, ...
6. 
   

   [PDF] 
   

   RSA NSW Section 2 Legislation Part1 Quiz

   www.qhint.com/.../9-... - Australia

   File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
   A customer can remain on a licensed premise when showing severe signs of intoxication if they promise not to drink any more alcohol. 
   
   

To B or not to B

Spelling? Baa!

This coming Sunday is Easter for Greeks, and others of the Orthodox Church. Traditionally, lamb is eaten.

Why is there a silent "b" in "lamb"?

In Old English, this "b" was pronounced, but by the end of the Middle Ages, people had stopped pronouncing it.  Quite sensibly, a few people tried spelling the word "lam" or "lamm", but English spelling has never been sensible, so we stuck with a spelling reflecting a long-dead pronunciation. The same thing happened with "comb" and "dumb", but for the word "crumb", where the explanation is different, tune in to a Wordlady post in June.

We were, however, a little more sensible with the plural form of "lamb". In Old English, this had been lomberu. In the Middle Ages, people reformed it along the lines of other irregular plurals like "children" and "brethren". So for a while we had singular lamb and plural "lambren". This, thank goodness, did not survive, as we decided to make it a regular plural ending in s.

We use the word "lamb" whether the lamb is gambolling in the fields or sitting as a chop on our plates. This is unusual in English, where for most animals we distinguish between the live and cooked versions:
Cow  - beef
Sheep - mutton
Calf - veal
Pig/swine - pork
In all these cases the first word is of English origin and the second of French origin. This is a remnant of the Norman Conquest in 1066, after which French cooking terms flooded the language. The usual explanation is that the Anglo-Saxon (English) speakers would have been tending the animals in the fields while the French speakers were roasting them in the aristocratic kitchens.

Thank you to a Wordlady reader for asking about the silent b in "lamb". If you have questions or suggestions for Wordlady, please feel free to send them to me!

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