Thread: Language! (words change meaning)

Originally Posted by artme

How about insipid and incipient?? ... inchoate

Heh heh ... insipid is cool ...insipid - definition of insipid by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
"not savoury"

Might I strongly recommend "The Etymylogicon" by Mark Forsyth; it's almost a book on the very topic of this post! It's a meandering tour of the labyrinthine and Byzantine connections in the English language, an amusing and erudite exposition of some of the etymological links between words. So he starts with a word, "book", and sees where he ends up...
Also check his blog www.inkyfool.com

No affiliation, btw!

I *just* recalled that when I was about ??12?? I got a book at xmas called "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words"

I loved that book! It disappeared sometime in the next 5 yrs or so ...

I did remember it in the past ... and looking on Amazon it was selling between $50 and $200 !!!!!!!

Paul

I happened to look up "Hue and Cry" ... and surprised to read ... Hue and cry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"In common law, a hue and cry is a process by which bystanders are summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who has been witnessed in the act of committing a crime.By the Statute of Winchester of 1285, 13 Edw. I cc. 1 and 4, it was provided that anyone, either a constable or a private citizen, who witnessed a crime shall make hue and cry, and that the hue and cry must be kept up against the fleeing criminal from town to town and from county to county, until the felon is apprehended and delivered to the sheriff. All able-bodied men, upon hearing the shouts, were obliged to assist in the pursuit of the criminal, which makes it comparable to the posse comitatus. It was moreover provided that "the whole hundred … shall be answerable" for any theft or robbery, in effect a form of collective punishment."

and it reminded me of a excellent 1hr ABC program ... it involved a QC ... talking about legal terms like "Cease and Desist". It raised a laugh when he started his answer (approximately) "Well, in the 11th century ..."

Legal doublet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What's the difference between "null" and "void" in legal language? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange


"The history begins, as with so many curiosities in the English language, with the Norman invasion in 1066. At that time, English was the language of the ordinary people, and the law. At first, William the Conqueror interfered little with use of English in official documents, primarily to bolster his claim to the throne, as it was before his reign strongly associated with the crown and kingly continuity. As time went on, however, and as more and more Normans gained positions of prominence in the English court, and were elevated to the nobility, French came to be the spoken language of the upper-class, and Latin, the imported written language of the learned, eventually came to completely replace Old English in legal documents. This continued for some 250 odd years.

By 1275, we find the first statutes written in French, and by 1310 French had overtaken Latin as the language of law. Well, not exactly overtaken; important Latin legal terms, terms of art, were being sprinkled in French language, where needed. We have inherited these terms up to the present day; this is where our civil law gets important concepts like mens rea, habeaus corpus, writs of mandamus, and a million other terms. Still, Law French was the language that lawyers communicated with each other in, and lawyers continued to develop their the profession with it, creating ever new terms of art when trying, pleading, and judging cases. Things continued in this way for a 100 more years.


Curiously, just as French was just reaching its supremacy as official written language of the Law, it was dying out as a spoken language among the nobility. Increasingly, they were speaking a bastardized pidgin of English and French called Anglo-Norman, and by 1400, Anglo-Norman had nearly died out even amongst the royal household in favor of English. Henry V broke things off completely with his Norman heritage after famously going to war with France in the Hundreds Years' War. English, with modifications, had now become the language of all the English people.


Well, mostly. Law French was still the obscure, technical language of the legal profession, and it was contributing many terms of art of its own, particularly in property law: this is where property law jargon like estoppel, estate, and esquire come from. However, even the lawyers eventually lost control of a tongue they didn't speak, and legalese became a complex argot of Law Latin and Law French terms swimming in a sea of ordinary English.


A conundrum. By 1362, we have evidence that the courts were becoming recognizant of this troublesome state of affairs, as a Statute of Pleading was enacted "condemning French as 'much unknown in said Realm'" and requiring that "all pleas be 'pleaded, shewed, defended, answered, and debated, and judged in the English tongue.'" Ironically enough, the Statute itself was written in Law French, and it was not till 200 years later, when the vocabulary of Law French had shrunk to about 1000 words, that English became the dominant language of the law.


Still, all those terms of art couldn't be simply abandoned. So lawyers of the day simply did the next best thing: they imported synonyms acknowledged as "English" to accompany those technical terms, to give the "synonyms" independent legal weight in documents, and eventually, the combination of the two became phrases with inertia of their own. Such as:


breaking and entering
fit and proper
will and testament
free and clear
acknowledge and confess
law and order
to have and to hold


(English terms are italicized.)
"But Billare!" "Isn't your answer supposed to be talking about null and void?" "And, if I'm not mistaken, doesn't null come from the Latin nullus, meaning 'not any, none,' and doesn't void come from the Latin vocivus, meaning 'unoccupied, vacant'"? "Where's the Old English term there?!"


Ah, yes. The punchline. Null and void became a phrase of their own because the two synonyms from Latin were imported at different times into "ordinary" English. I quote from David Melinkoff's The Language of Law:


Early in the reign of Elizabeth I, null – with a long life as a negative in law French and in Latin – became an English synonym for the law's use of void. Another hundred years, and null and void were a team, null taking the place of other explanatory nothingness (no value, no effect) that had often accompanied void. The combination stuck despite frowns in and out of the law.
So it follows the same rule. Null and void is a semantically redundant phrase because it was formed as a compromised term of art, and has continued in this way for a long, long time.


*: All acknowledgments and quotes go to this most excellent book, Legal Language, by a certain Peter Tiersma, where I found basically most of this research. Do read it if you're interested in more."

An excellent little treatise sire!!! Thank you very much!!!

Remember the court case over Terra Nullus?

I wonder why that term was chosen and not null and void, or indeed just void.

The name Nullarbor Plain sounds Aboriginal, but of course means "no tree".

Good post Paul . In fact, excellent! It's good to know the proper terms and conditions.

Regards
Paul

More ...

Hair of the Dog (that bit you) ... Hair of the dog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The expression originally referred to a method of treatment of a rabid dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the bite wound."

But gotta love the hungarians ... I've been saying this for years.

"The phrase also exists in Hungarian, where the literal translation to English is "(You may cure) the dog's bite with its fur", but has evolved into a short two-word phrase ("kutyaharapást szőrével") that is used frequently in other contexts when one is trying to express that the solution to a problem is more of the problem."

also ... "short two-word phrase" ?? ... had to edit that.

Originally Posted by pmcgee

also ... "short two-word phrase" ?? ... had to edit that.

more bulls^&$t ?????

The origin of some phrases is often claimed by different nationalities and with different explanations.

Take the term "Dark horse". I think we all know what it means but from whence did the term arise?

The first explanation I recall was from the writing of Tom Ronan, an Australian. He said the term arose
from a race where a horse named Dusky Pete was entered. The horse was unknown except for one
person who apparently said that a dark horse would win the race... and it did.

The Americans claim it came from running horses that had been trained at night to avoid scrutiny.
Hence the dark horse.

Benjamin Disraeli used the term in a novel he wrote. A dark horse flashed up and beat the two favourites.

Who is correct??


The term "Drongo'' is used in a disparaging way in Australia to describe an inept person. One explanation for it, again,
comes from horse racing. A Horse named Drongo was supposedly a red hot favourite in several races but ran
second each time. Anything second rate therefore became synonymous with being a Drongo. As Drongo began to
fall further in the placings as his career faded the term drongo took on a new and less flattering meaning.

I dunno ... sounds like a 'Furphy'.

Sometimes those dark horses can be fair cows.

Originally Posted by pmcgee

I dunno ... sounds like a 'Furphy'.

Now there's a term I have never quite understood. My understanding is that it originated from Furphy who made agricultural machinery and in particular water carts. However in useage it seems to mean either a dud or a red herring (ooops there's another one ).

Have I missed something or am I being particularly thick? Did the water carts have a poor reputation? Did they leak?

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Now there's a term I have never quite understood. My understanding is that it originated from Furphy who made agricultural machinery and in particular water carts. However in useage it seems to mean either a dud or a red herring (ooops there's another one ).

Have I missed something or am I being particularly thick? Did the water carts have a poor reputation? Did they leak?

Regards
Paul

Furphy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I knew that!!!

Now have alook at what is on the back of the cart.
Does anyone know what that strange script is and
what is says?

( I think I know the script. Not sure what it says. )