The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth Read Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Forsyth
meal by the 1570s. None of which explains why people occasionally talk turkey . Indeed, they demand to talk turkey. This all goes back to an old joke, that isn’t, I’m afraid, very funny.
The joke involves a turkey and a buzzard. Now, it may be possible to eat buzzard. I don’t know. But the bird’s absence from any menu that I’ve ever encountered makes me suspicious. I suspect the buzzard is a foul fowl, and that’s certainly the point of the story.
Once upon a time, a white man and a Red Indian went out hunting together. They killed a tasty turkey and a buzzard. So the white man said to his companion: ‘You take the buzzard and I’ll take the turkey, or, if you prefer, I can take the turkey and you can take the buzzard.’
To which the Red Indian replied: ‘You don’t talk turkey at all.’
This joke was immensely popular in nineteenth-century America. It was even quoted in Congress, though history doesn’t recall whether anybody laughed. But it was popular enough to spawn two phrases.
By 1919 talking turkey had been altered somewhat: people had started inserting the adjective cold . Talking cold turkey is like talking turkey only more so. You were getting beyond the brass tacks and down to the barest of bare essentials. Talking cold turkey was the bluntest, directest form of speech.
And a couple of years later, in 1921, people started to use the phrase cold turkey to describe the bluntest, most direct method of giving up drugs.
So going cold turkey has nothing whatsoever to do with the miserable leftovers so sorrowfully consumed in the week after Christmas. Cold turkey isn’t a food at all, even though it sounds like one. It’s a blunt way of talking, and a blunt way of giving up drugs.
However, when you give someone the cold shoulder , that is a food.
Insulting Foods
There are two sorts of guests: welcome and unwelcome. The host is not permitted to tell you which you are, though he may give you a clue.
If your host cooks you a nice hot dinner, you’re probably welcome. If he gives you yesterday’s leftovers – for example a cold shoulder of mutton – then he probably wishes you hadn’t come around.
It could have been worse, though – he could have made you eat humble pie . Humble pie is made using the umbles or innards of a deer. Here’s a recipe from Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Domesticum of 1736:
Boil the umbles of a deer until they are very tender, set them by till they are cold, and chop them as small as meat for minc’d pyes, and shred to them as much beef suet, six large apples and half a pound of currants, as much sugar; seasoning with salt, pepper, cloves and nutmegs, according to your palate; mix all well together, and when you put them into the paste, pour in half a pint of sack, the juice of one orange and two lemons, then close the pie, bake it, and serve it hot to table.
Of course, the umbles are the worst parts of the deer. After a hard day’s stag-hunting a rich man will dine on venison. Only his servants beneath the stairs would have to make do with umble (and therefore humble) pie.
Folk Etymology
The addition of the H to umble is an example of what’s known as folk etymology. Somebody who didn’t know what an umble was saw the words umble pie and got confused. Then they saw that umble pie was a humble dish, assumed that somebody had just missed off the H, and decided to put it back. Thus umble pie becomes humble pie. That’s folk etymology.
A duckling is a little duck and a gosling is a little goose and a darling is a little dear, and on the same principle a little fellow who stood at an important chap’s side used to be known as a sideling .
Then the origin of the word sideling was forgotten and in the seventeenth century people decided that it must be the participle of a verb, just as leaping and sleeping are participles of leap and sleep . There was only one problem with this theory: there didn’t seem to be a verb to fit the noun. So one was invented and
The joke involves a turkey and a buzzard. Now, it may be possible to eat buzzard. I don’t know. But the bird’s absence from any menu that I’ve ever encountered makes me suspicious. I suspect the buzzard is a foul fowl, and that’s certainly the point of the story.
Once upon a time, a white man and a Red Indian went out hunting together. They killed a tasty turkey and a buzzard. So the white man said to his companion: ‘You take the buzzard and I’ll take the turkey, or, if you prefer, I can take the turkey and you can take the buzzard.’
To which the Red Indian replied: ‘You don’t talk turkey at all.’
This joke was immensely popular in nineteenth-century America. It was even quoted in Congress, though history doesn’t recall whether anybody laughed. But it was popular enough to spawn two phrases.
By 1919 talking turkey had been altered somewhat: people had started inserting the adjective cold . Talking cold turkey is like talking turkey only more so. You were getting beyond the brass tacks and down to the barest of bare essentials. Talking cold turkey was the bluntest, directest form of speech.
And a couple of years later, in 1921, people started to use the phrase cold turkey to describe the bluntest, most direct method of giving up drugs.
So going cold turkey has nothing whatsoever to do with the miserable leftovers so sorrowfully consumed in the week after Christmas. Cold turkey isn’t a food at all, even though it sounds like one. It’s a blunt way of talking, and a blunt way of giving up drugs.
However, when you give someone the cold shoulder , that is a food.
Insulting Foods
There are two sorts of guests: welcome and unwelcome. The host is not permitted to tell you which you are, though he may give you a clue.
If your host cooks you a nice hot dinner, you’re probably welcome. If he gives you yesterday’s leftovers – for example a cold shoulder of mutton – then he probably wishes you hadn’t come around.
It could have been worse, though – he could have made you eat humble pie . Humble pie is made using the umbles or innards of a deer. Here’s a recipe from Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Domesticum of 1736:
Boil the umbles of a deer until they are very tender, set them by till they are cold, and chop them as small as meat for minc’d pyes, and shred to them as much beef suet, six large apples and half a pound of currants, as much sugar; seasoning with salt, pepper, cloves and nutmegs, according to your palate; mix all well together, and when you put them into the paste, pour in half a pint of sack, the juice of one orange and two lemons, then close the pie, bake it, and serve it hot to table.
Of course, the umbles are the worst parts of the deer. After a hard day’s stag-hunting a rich man will dine on venison. Only his servants beneath the stairs would have to make do with umble (and therefore humble) pie.
Folk Etymology
The addition of the H to umble is an example of what’s known as folk etymology. Somebody who didn’t know what an umble was saw the words umble pie and got confused. Then they saw that umble pie was a humble dish, assumed that somebody had just missed off the H, and decided to put it back. Thus umble pie becomes humble pie. That’s folk etymology.
A duckling is a little duck and a gosling is a little goose and a darling is a little dear, and on the same principle a little fellow who stood at an important chap’s side used to be known as a sideling .
Then the origin of the word sideling was forgotten and in the seventeenth century people decided that it must be the participle of a verb, just as leaping and sleeping are participles of leap and sleep . There was only one problem with this theory: there didn’t seem to be a verb to fit the noun. So one was invented and
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