Garnish and garnishee

Photo by Frederick Tubiermont on Unsplash

A Canadian (this is significant) Wordlady fan has written with the following question:

The latest TIME magazine features ... One woman [who] had to contend with having her wages "garnished" by a collection agency after losing her job [i.e. she had some money taken off her wages and given to a collection agency before the money even landed in her bank account]. I thought the legal term was "garnisheed"? And is there any connection to the usual meaning of "to garnish," i.e. to enhance or improve by some adornment? How odd that the word can imply both subtraction and addition! Can you explain?

This is a very complicated word. Bear with me; I will get there eventually!

We borrowed "garnish" from French garnir in the 1400s. In Modern French, garnir means "to furnish or provide", and this is what it meant back in the 15th century too, but more specifically

To furnish (a place) with means of defence; to garrison; to supply with men, arms, and provisions.

The means of defending a place, and the soldiers who defended it, were called a "garnison". In time this morphed into "garrison" in English, but garnison is still the word in French.

The French word was probably derived from a Germanic word that had also given Anglo-Saxon the word "warn".  (There are quite a few g-/w-pairs like this between English and French, see also wallop). 

At this point the words "warn" and "garnish" shared the idea "prepare someone to defend themself, by providing either advance knowledge or arms, soldiers, etc."

At the same time, "garnish" was used less bellicosely to mean "provide with embellishments", and by 1600 this was being used particularly of decorating food.  By this time, the verb had long since also become a noun.

The early martial senses died out, and we were left with... parsley.

Meanwhile however, the connection of "garnish" with "warn" took on a life of its own. 

Starting in the 1500s, "garnish" was being used in legal circles to mean "warn a debtor to pay up"; the action of doing this was also called a "garnish". The person who was subject to such a court order was called the "garnishee".

By the late 1800s, things had gone beyond warning to action, and both "garnish" and "garnishee" were being used as verbs to mean "take a debtor's wages by court order".

Although both verbs exist in this sense in all varieties of English, it appears that  the verb "garnishee" is more popular in Canada than elsewhere, because Canadians are more likely to "garnishee" someone's wages than to "garnish" them (though both terms are used). 

In the US, the verb "garnish" is preferred, with "garnishee" being reserved for the noun designating the person being garnished. In British law, a "garnishee order" is now known more transparently as a "third party debt order".

The following, however, is definitely a mistake:

A few weeks later however a more organised rally garnished fifty-thousand protesters

The word they wanted was "garnered", which originally referred to grain being stored up and comes from the same root as "granary" and French grenier (attic).

Unless of course someone sprinkled parsley over the 50,000. Or took part of their wages.

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