cultural shifts

Fun Facts About English #91 – Jaywalker

01/29/2021 by admin

Beginning in the Midwest in the early 19th-century, “jay” was common slang for an empty-headed chatterbox, like a bluejay.

By the later 19th century, using the word “jay” was akin to cursing and not to be taken lightly. A “jay” was a hick, a rube, or a downright dupe. A “jay town” was a fourth-rate or worthless place. In a display of contempt by an audience, “jay” could be hurled against a bad actor much like we say “hack” or “jackass” today.

As we moved into the 20th century, “jay” took on new meanings.

“A jay driver is a species of the human race who, when driving either a horse or an automobile, or riding a bicycle on the streets, does not observe the rules of the road. It is the custom of the jay driver to drive on the wrong side of the street.” Emporia Gazette, Kansas, 13 July 1911

In the first decades of the new century, motor carriages began crowding already busy city streets and resulted in a sharp increase in pedestrian deaths. Unsuccessful attempts were made to limit automobile speed to 25 mph and in some cases, ban cars altogether. Civic outrage and a concern for public safety gave rise to new laws prohibiting people from freely walking and playing in the street – as they had done for millennia. A pedestrian indifferent to the new rules became known as a “jay walker.”

The above image is from a 1924 New York parade with a jaywalking clown dressed in 19th-century clothing who is repeatedly bumped by a Model T Ford. The comedy was meant to impress on the audience that those who walked in the streets were country rubes.

Lest the laws become too restrictive for the growing automobile industry, pro-auto groups lobbied lawmakers to put the burden of responsibility on pedestrians. In concerted campaigns that included politicians, boy scouts, and even Santa Claus, municipalities worked to change people’s attitudes about who had the lawful right to be in the street. Safety organizations and police began formally using “jay walker” in signage and imposed fines for pedestrian infractions. Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s and became the norm by the 1930s.

If you enjoyed this post, check out the earliest known reference to baseball, how Hello became a telephone greeting, or common words that were originally trademarked!

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Fun Facts About English #66 – Folk Etymology & Gender Nouns

08/14/2020 by admin

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the word lord can be traced back to the Old English word hlāfweard meaning “loaf-ward” or “bread-keeper,” reflecting the Germanic tribal custom of a chieftain providing food for his followers. Likewise, lady is from the Old English word hlœfdīge and referred to the woman in charge of the household production of food, e.g., kneading of said bread.

As our culture moved into wholly agrarian-based urban societies, land holdings and titles came to denote wealth, authority, and nobility. As individuals rose in status, so did their titles, like Lord and Lady. Where wifman, meaning woman, is the word from which our lawful term wife is derived, so husband, meaning “tiller of the soil,” has come to refer to the legal male head of a household. Such language, revealing in its history, is constantly evolving.

Popular but Mistaken

There is a thing called “folk” or “popular” etymology where one overlays prejudices or preferences on language to justify contemporary ideas or concerns. For example, the “son” in person has no relationship to a male child. Likewise, the “his” in history, from the Greek word historia meaning “to seek knowledge,” has no etymological connection to a male-oriented view of past events, i.e., his story.* Old English hire or her, is the third person singular form of heo or she, with the absolute form being hers.

Another example of folk etymology is the misconception that the words womb and woman are related. Womb is from the Old English word wombe or wambe meaning “stomach” and, besides having no gender specificity, referred to either human or animal organs that sometimes included the intestines and the heart.

Gender Nouns

Next, let’s take a closer look at the nouns male, female, man, woman, and human.

Man or mann derives from Proto-Germanic and meant “person,” referring to both men and women. To be gender specific, wifman and werman were used for a female person and male person respectively. The “wer” in werman survives to this day in the word werewolf, meaning “man-wolf.”

Over time, wifman lost the ‘f’ and became first wimman, then wumman, and finally woman. After the Norman Conquest, the ‘wer’ disappeared from werman to become man, a gender-specific noun referring to males but still maintained the “mankind” inflection meaning “all humans.”

Surprisingly, the word world has its origins in a male-specific etymology. The Anglo-Saxon word werold means “age of man” derived from the compound wer (man) + ald (age). Its definition, on the other hand, is more closely related to a gender-neutral “human existence” or “affairs of life.”

Now, what about male and female? Both of these words came into the English language via Old French. Male is from the Latin masculus, meaning “male,” and was shortened to masle in Old French. Over time, the ‘s’ was dropped and the word became male. Female is derived from the Latin diminutive femina, became femelle in Old French, and finally female in English. In short, the “male” in female has no relationship to the word male meaning “dude.”

Finally, human comes from the Latin word humanus and the Latin root homo, meaning “human being.” It transformed into humaine in Old French and Middle English, and finally human and humane in Modern English. Once again, the word human has no etymological connection with the words male or man in a gender-specific sense.

You might also be interested in the peculiarity of the word widow, the explosion of acronyms in the past two centuries, or the fact that un-friend is actually quite old!

*The Herstory Archives is an archive of Lesbian history and literature founded in the 1970s. The use of “her” in the organization’s name, while clever, is not going to castrate the canons of history nor does it defile any linguistic integrities. Give the women their historical due and move on.

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If you’re not using task cards in class, you’re missing out on an excellent center or whole class activity that turns repetition into fun! Check out all the task cards available in Donald’s English Classroom!

Fun Facts About English #9 – The Oldest English Word

05/13/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 9 Kinney Brothers Publishing

The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon. Researchers have determined that town is the oldest word in the English language, originates from Old English, and has kept the same definition through the millennia. Evidence of the extent of the Anglo-Saxon settlements are found in the number of place names throughout England ending with -ton, meaning “enclosure or village” (e.g., Taunton, Burton, and Luton).

The convention of using -ton was carried across the Atlantic, with my own hometown of Burlington, Iowa in the U.S. being an example. Originating from ‘Bridlington,’ a place name in East Yorkshire, England, the town was formerly pronounced locally as ‘Burlington,’ and is recorded in the Domesday Book as Bretlinton ‘estate.

Map of Anglo Saxon Britain — Click to see larger. A large-scale map of Britain in the reign of King Æthelstan. Map drawn by Reginald Piggott for Simon Keynes.

It is estimated that about 85% of the 30,000 or so Anglo-Saxon words gradually died out under the cultural onslaught of the Vikings and the Normans who came after them. On the other hand, up to half of everyday modern English is typically made up of Old English words. Equally surprising, almost all of the hundred most commonly used words in modern English are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in learning about the kerfuffle with the I pronoun or the shocking origins of words named after people. If you’d like to learn more about the history of the English language, check out my post The History of English!

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