So “currying” a furry animal means grooming or brushing it with a currycomb, which in turn comes from the Old French correier meaning “to prepare [something]”, because you prepare a horse for riding by brushing it; it’s most commonly applied to horses but you can get e.g. currycombs for dogs.
If I understand correctly, medieval French folk tales considered chestnut-colored horses to be deceitful and tricky; the Old French word for a chestnut or dun horse was fauvel, and so the Old French expression correier fauvel, literally “to brush the chestnut horse”, meant lying or being hypocritical for personal gain. This turned into “curry favel” in 15th-century English, and then mutated into “curry favor” over the next few centuries as people forgot about the horse.
So “currying favor” is really “brushing the Horse of Lies”, and the reason you can’t curry goodwill, or love, or hatred, or even disfavor is that we didn’t have Horses for those.
And it follows that we can gain the ability to curry other things by assigning them to Horses.
I realize, looking back on this post, that regular readers of my blog may have thought I made this up. Making up a ridiculous etymology is certainly the sort of thing I might do; in fact I’ve been meaning to start a sideblog dedicated solely to sufficiently accurate etymologies, and have a notebook with dozens of them jotted down, I just haven’t had the time to do anything with them.
But I want to stress that this is not one of those cases. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the very real etymology of the phrase “curry favor”.
The Old French fauve or falve referred to the light-brown color that’s sometimes called “fallow” in modern English, but since it also sounded similar to faux, meaning “false”, it was also associated with deceit and trickery ; the idiom estriller Fauvel literally meant “to groom the fallow one” but idiomatically meant “to lie or trick people”.
Then in the 1300s we get the French poem Roman de Fauvel, a satirical poem about a fauve horse, whose name is derived both from the color and from the fact that FAVVEL is an acronym of Flaterie, Avarice, Vilanie, Varieté, Envie, Lascheté (Flattery, Greed, Vileness, Fickleness, Envy, and Cowardice) - all the different vices that this horse embodies.
Fauvel (purportedly modeled after Enguerrand de Marigny [source], an advisor to King Philip IV) is a sinful, conniving, and very rich horse who has various religious and secular leaders fawning over him and brushing him; it was well-known enough that “grooming Fauvel” came to mean “sucking up to someone powerful” more than just “being evil”, and when it was translated into English the grooming was translated as currying, which specifically is grooming a horse with a curry comb [wiktionary]. From this we got the Middle English expression “currying Fauvel”, which then mutated via folk etymology (in the “reinterpretation of unfamiliar words as more familiar ones” sense, not the “people are wrong about etymology” sense) into “currying favor”.
one of those false etymology posts but with the actual etymology of the word
I was today years old when I realized helicopter is helico- (as in helix) -pter (as in pterodactyl) 😂
sooo was anyone going to tell me that the -ter in daughter is the same suffix as the -ther in mother father and brother but under an exception to grimm’s law or like
OMG WAIT I FIGURED IT OUT
IT’S “LASER” BECAUSE IT’S LIGHT AMPLIFICATION BY STIMULATED EMISSION OF RADIATION
WHAT???
official linguistics post
you’re never going to believe this but the -ter in sister is an exception!
it’s from swésōr and they think that it shifted to -ter by analogy with all those other -ter kinship terms!
My newsletter for October 2022: Visiting Singapore and Linguist Halloween
This month, I went to Singapore! It’s the beginning of my multi-month trip that’ll also take me to Australia in November and New Zealand in December. I stayed with Suzy J Styles, gave a talk about linguistics communication at Nanyang Technical University, and met up with lots of lovely linguists who made sure that I tried many delicious Singaporean foods (thank you!). Also I got to hear people…
Episode 68: Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages
When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up
words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of
multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long
before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called
etymology. But either way, this whole spectrum is a kind of borrowing.
In
this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get
enthusiastic about borrowing and loanwords. There are lots of different
trajectories that words take when we move them around from language to
language, including words that are associated with particular domains,
like tea and books, words that shift meaning when they language hop,
like “gymnasium” and “babyfoot”, words that get translated piece by
piece, like “gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) and “fernseher” (television), and
words that end up duplicating the same meaning (or is it…?) in
multiple languages, like “naan bread” and “Pendle hill”. We also talk
about the tricky question of how closely to adapt or preserve a borrowed
word, depending on your goals and the circumstances.
The LingComm grants have been announced!
Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, and
congratulations to all our grantees. Go check out their projects as they
keep rolling out over the rest of this year for a little more fun
linguistics content in your life.
In this month’s bonus episode,
originally recorded live through the Lingthusiasm Discord, we get
enthusiastic about your sweary questions! We talk about why it’s so hard
to translate swears in a way that feels satisfying, how swears and
other taboo words participate in the Euphemism Cycle, a very ambitious
idea for cataloging swear words in various languages, and more.
You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content, our Discord server, and other perks.
Our Japanese class found it funny that in common terminology “food” isn’t very distinguished from specifically “rice” until it was pointed out to us that in English “meal” is “loose roughly ground grain”
Middle English mēte, from Old English mete “food, nourishment, sustenance” (paired with drink), “item of food; animal food, fodder,” also “a meal, repast,” from Proto-Germanic *mati (source also of Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, Old Norse matr, Old High German maz, Gothic mats “food,” Middle Dutch, Dutch metworst, German Mettwurst “type of sausage”), from PIE *mad-i-, from root *mad- “moist, wet,” also with reference to food qualities, (source also of Sanskrit medas- “fat” (n.), Old Irish mat “pig;” see mast (n.2)).
Narrower sense of “flesh of warm-blooded animals killed and used as food” is attested from c. 1300 (earlier this was flesh-meat, early 12c.). There is a similar sense evolution in French viande “meat,” originally “food.” In Middle English, vegetables still could be called grene-mete (15c.) and white meat was “a dairy food or product” (early 15c.). Figurative sense of “essential part” is from 1901.
When you look at a series of words that sorta sound like each other,
such as pesto, paste, and pasta, it’s easy to start wondering if they
might have originated with a common root word. Etymologists take these
hunches and painstakingly track them down through the historical record
to find out which ones are true and which ones aren’t – in this case,
that paste and pasta have a common ancestor, but pesto comes from
somewhere else.
In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch
and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about English etymology! We talk about
where the etymological parts of dictionaries come from, the gaps in our
knowledge based on the biases of historical sources, how you can become
the Etymology Friend (with help from Etymonline), and which kinds of
etymologies should immediately make you put your debunking hat on
(spoiler: anything containing an acronym or formatted like an image
meme. Just saying.). Now you too can have etymology x-ray vision! (Aka,
where to quickly look up etymologies on your phone!).
Thanks
for celebrating our 5 year anniversary with us! We loved seeing you
share all your favourite Lingthusiasm episodes and moments. We’re
looking forward to another year of sharing linguistic joy with you.
This month’s bonus episode is about linguistics olympiads!
These involve a series of fun linguistic puzzles, sort of like sudoku
for linguistics. Since linguistics isn’t commonly taught in high
schools, the puzzles can’t assume any prior linguistics knowledge, so
they’re either logic puzzles as applied to language or they teach you
basic linguistics concepts in the preamble to the question, making them
great for ling fans as well. Alas, we were not in high school recently
enough to participate in any olympiads ourselves, so we also talk about
how people can get involved if you’re not a high school student, from
helping to host a session at a local high school or university to just
doing puzzles for fun and interest (they’re available for free with
answer keys on the olympiad websites, plus there was a recent book that
came out compiling some of them). Plus: how Lauren has made a few
olympiad puzzles herself!
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This episode of Lingthusiasm is made avilable under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).
‘ard’ is a real suffix in the english language just like ‘ly’ or ‘ify’, it just isnt common enough for us to notice its usage. ‘ard’ means ‘too much’ or ‘too easily’
so ‘mustard’ is something that is ‘too pungent’, just as ‘wizard’ is someone who is too wise, ‘coward’ is someone too easily cowed, and ‘drunkard’ is someone too often drunk
this implies that ‘bastard’ is someone who is too ‘bast’ and this needs experimentation and research
Are you fucking serious omg
This is pretty much correct. According to the OED bastard is from Old French and the bast- part means “pack saddle” which was used as a bed by mule drivers, giving the phrase fils de bast, a child conceived on the pack saddle instead of the marriage bed. In English it becomes bastard, the -ard being a pejorative. It is the same one as wizard and coward and drunkard.
types of ard
must
bast
wiz
cow
my brain feels Expanded
further types of ard, since etymonline has a whole section about it (art is an accepted variant)
Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger
Sometimes a syllable is jam-packed with sounds, like the single-syllable word “strengths”. Other times, a syllable is as simple as a single vowel or consonant+vowel, like the two syllables in “a-ha!” It’s kind of like a burger: you might pack your burger with tons of toppings, or go as simple as a patty by itself on a plate, but certain combinations are more likely than others. For example, an open-face burger, with only the bottom half of the bun, is less weird than a burger with only the top half.
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about syllables. Why aren’t there any English words that begin with “ng”, even though Vietnamese is perfectly happy to have them? Why do Spanish speakers pronounce the English word “Sprite” more like “Esprite”? Why did English speakers re-analyze Greek helico-pter into heli-copter? Plus more about how different languages prefer different things in their syllable-burgers and what happens when these preferences collide.
Today is the final day for two things related to Because Internet,
Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics (which is out now and you can get it!). 1. Send us your questions about Because Internet, internet language, or the process of writing a book for a special bonus behind the scenes Q&A episode about the book! 2. Join our new “ling-phabet” tier on Patreon by August 15th in any timezone (you may get a few hours into August 16th if you’re lucky!) and get a signed Because Internet bookplate sticker with your name on it in the mail!
You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content and lets you help decide on Lingthusiasm topics.
Lingthusiasm
is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer
is Claire Gawne, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is
‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.
This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 33: Why spelling is hard — but also hard to change. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to
studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 33
show notes page.
[Music]
Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Gretchen McCulloch.
Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about why spelling is so hard and also hard to change. But first, Gretchen, it’s almost time for your book to be out in the world, and I
am very excited.
Gretchen: I am also very excited for people to finally get to read it. But you have already read my book about internet linguistics.
Lauren: I have. This is why I get to be excited, because I know people are in for a treat.
Gretchen: In fact, you are featured a little bit in my book about internet linguistics, which was very funny because as I was talking about everybody else in the book, I was referring to everybody by
their last names, and when I got to you, I was like, “I’m guess I’m calling her ‘Gawne’ for this book.”
Lauren: Oh, my gosh. Really?
Gretchen: Despite the fact that, of course, I normally call you “Lauren.”
Lauren: That is gonna be so amazing. I may have to listen to the audiobook just to laugh at that.
Gretchen: Just so you can laugh at how I don’t have a cot/caught distinction and so I can’t actually do the vowel that you do in your name.
Lauren: That’s okay. I’m just really excited. The book is great. People can pre-order it now. And its out on the 23rd of July?
Gretchen: That’s correct.
Lauren: You were explaining to me why pre-orders were so important. I’m learning a lot about books from you. It’s an interesting world.
Gretchen: Pre-orders are really important because, first of all, they help the publisher decide literally how many copies to print because they have a sense of how much people are interested in the book.
Also, because when they’re trying to count book sales for whether something ends up as a bestseller or is on some sort of list, all of the pre-order sales count towards that first week of sales.
So, if you’re likely to end up on a bestseller list, it’s gonna be the first week, and the pre-orders all count towards that. It’s huge. If you’re excited for any book, really, you should pre-order
it. And you should definitely pre-order mine!
Lauren: Excellent. There’ll be a link to that in the show notes.
Gretchen: It is called “Because Internet” and is available where good books are sold. But there’ll be a link to that.
Lauren: This month’s Patreon bonus episode is an interview with Alice Gaby, which is all about how we use directions in language and her work with an Australian language, Kuuk Thaayorre. It was from our
November liveshow in Melbourne.
Gretchen: Alice’s research is so interesting. It was really fun to do in the liveshow because we got to have a whole room of people in an auditorium point where they thought north was and see how good
people are at telling different directions, and whether linguistic or cultural factors affect how good you are at directions or what types of directions you pay attention to or you notice. I also
got to quiz her on some Canadianisms.
Lauren: That was pretty great. We returned the favour by quizzing you on some Australianisms that Alice chose.
Gretchen: Yes. That was very fun. You can listen to that and many other bonus episodes by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, which we’ll also link to in the show notes.
[Music]
Gretchen: Why is spelling so hard, Lauren? Why do we spend years and years learning how to spell and then we still mess it up?
Lauren: When you say “we,” I think you mean me. I am definitely the more prone to misspelling out of the two of us. Let’s just get that out of the way.
Gretchen: I misspell things, but then I also notice them before the post goes up. Whereas, you put a post up and then I message you being like, “Hey. I wanna reblog your post. Can you just fix this
typo?”
Lauren: I would like to just say that I have a medieval manuscript approach to spelling, which is gonna be really important, and we’ll explain why in this episode. But part of the reason that English
spelling is hard is that it is a long and storied history. Every word is like this great little time-capsule nugget of linguistic information.
Gretchen: I like to think of English spelling not so much as a phonetic approach to spelling – we don’t spell based on how something sounds – we spell based on where a word comes from. So, if a word comes
from Old English versus if a word comes from French, or from Latin, or from Greek, or from one of the many other languages that English has borrowed words from, English tends to keep each word’s
original spelling conventions or older spelling conventions, and then those come into conflict with each other. That’s what makes it really difficult.
