On the index

 

As I promised in my post about the plural of "index", here is the story of the word "index".

There were a lot of words competing for the honour of designating alphabetical lists in the Renaissance. I suspect that this is because indexes as a concept only really came into being at the Renaissance (before then “table” was used for such lists). In fact, apparently you couldn't index before the Renaissance, because before then we had no alphabet! 

Well, really we did, but the alphabet wasn't called that till the early 1500s (1513 being the OED's first quotation). The alphabet had been called a "cross row" or "Christ cross row" (more on this in another post) for a while, because a cross sign began it in schoolbooks. 

One famous lexicographer, Cotgrave, even sniffily dismissed the word "alphabet" as vulgar in 1611: "Touching the French abece, for alphabet I will not call it, according to the vulgar error, that word being peculiar only to the Greek tongue." (Yet more proof that lexicographers have less power than you might think, and that usage objections have a way of fading away with time.) 

But back to indexes. Some down-to -earth person wanted to call them “finders” but he was doomed to failure, because the Renaissance was a time of borrowing from Greek and Latin, especially for highbrow intellectual pursuits.The Greek-derived word in the race was "elench" from elenchos (cross-examination). There were three candidates from Latin:

1. concordance, from con (together) and corde (heart)
2. repertory, from reperire (to find)
3. index,  from index (the forefinger, or “pointer” , from indicare to point out). 

In the Middle Ages the index finger had beeen called the “teacher”, because "teach" originally meant "point out", but once again the word of Anglo-Saxon origin had to lose out to a Latinate one. It could have been instead the delightful, and equally Latin, “insignitor”, another word that was popular for the index finger in the 1500s. But for fingers and finders, "index" was the ultimate winner.

For what magpies have to do with indexing, see this post. 

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One pizza, two...?

There's been quite a lot of response to my recent post about the plural of "antenna", some of it of the "shock, horror" variety. The prestige of Latin and Greek plurals has a strong hold on our psyches. Quick, now, what's the plural of "psyche" in ancient Greek? Can you imagine how complicated life would be if we had to know the plural in the original language of every word in English. WAY too complicated, especially when there's that handy English regular -(e)s ending just begging to be used. So we don't phone up the pizza place and order "two large pizze" or stop in our local coffee shop to ask for "two cappuccini". Other languages apply their own pluralization rules when they borrow foreign words, too; the plural of the French word "cameraman" is "cameramans".
Someone asked about "index". Was I in favour of "indexes" rather than "indices"? Well, yes, I am. Not that my being "in favour" of one thing or another has any importance; it's general usage that decides these things.
Here's the Canadian Oxford Dictionary:

index

→ noun  ( pl. indexes or esp. in technical use indices   'IndIsi:z )


If you consult the OED, you will discover that "indexes" (or even, gasp, in the 1500s,"index's") has been around for centuries, and the OED too gives "indexes" as the first plural of the word, stating quite baldly that it is the usual plural for the alphabetical listing.  Now, usage has it that we prefer "indices" for the "sign or indication of something" sense, and when you think of it, that sense hardly exists in the singular anymore. Mathematical and scientific usage favours "indices", but that is just part of the phenomenon of Latin and Greek plurals being more resilient in those fields than in general usage.  I wonder how many mathematicians and scientists nowadays have ever studied Greek or Latin; I doubt that this trend will continue.
In the face of the overwhelming weight of regular English plurals, trying to maintain a foreign plural in English is an uphill battle with few if any benefits.
For more on the history of the word "index", see this post.