Reckoning of a Year in Words

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calendar

The images above show two of the 8 folded crepe paper pages from the 1910 woodblock print calendar published by Takejiro Hasegawa 1853–1938. There are  8 folded crepe paper pages with each month as a single page colour woodblock print. Calendar– ‘the way in which the natural divisions of time are arranged with respect to each other for the purpose of civil life’ (Chambers) from Latin calendarium, account book from Latin kalendae the ‘calend’, the first day of month when accounts were reckoned, from calare :to call, proclaim, summon.

From August to June, a school year and a reckoning of what we understand about words. I worry that one year of thinking orthographically is not enough. I worry that our year of hypothesising morphemes and investigating the roots to locate a word’s relatives, words connected in meaning and that share a common root and often times a common base, will be a distant memory left behind in middle school. I worry that students will be given lists and asked only to copy a definition and impale the word in a sentence then move on to the next word where each word’s story will lie mute and the relatives remain undiscovered.

Yet  student reflections on their end of year portfolios tell a different tale. Many wrote of the importance of etymology and the legacy this leaves in the language.  Reading their statements, I feel encouraged that this knowledge will not disappear. It may lie untended for a while, but an intriguing word may lure this year’s word nerds to the dictionary and once opened, they will wonder about the origins and perhaps analyze the morphemes.

Lachie, inspired by  Visualizing English Word Origins, wanted to show his mum what he now understood about the diachronic layers of English.

Scrumptious and posh:

‘I feel I learned a lot about words this year, and it helped me to more thoroughly understand the past. When we studied literature like The Odyssey or The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas I saw what effects words have, they can make you cry, laugh or smile. Words tell stories of adventures and journeys. Words can sound scrumptious and posh. Words have stories of their own. Words have taught me that there is a deeper meaning behind everything. We researched roots and bases and morphemes, each branching into something new…Through this year, through words, I have found out more about myself; what I like and don’t like, and how I fit in or don’t fit in. We have learned to think about difference, and how conforming and not conforming to regulations is a difference, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the worse. ‘ (Laurie)

Words like a puzzle piece in history

‘This whole Humanities year, words and their history have been the most prominent of forces and ideas in the class. Ms. Whiting, being a word addict, fanatic and enthusiast, has included words into completely unrelated topics, where she quickly and impressively broke down a word in front of us, or when she asked us to travel back in time and study them. At the beginning of the year, I thought that words were simply… words. A language that we use to express ourselves, nothing more. But deeper into the year, I realized that there was more. So much more. The history of words and the people that use them and the thoughts people have and the way people say it all mattered. Every word had a tale, a tale that stretched back through time itself. I myself took insight from the word <loss>. A simple- to- say word. Four letters. Not very hard. But the weight of the past and life of this one word was like a puzzle piece in history. Its ‘tail’ was long enough to stretch back to the Old English Period; which can be as old as the year 700.  Each word was connected to an enormous spider- web that kept the most beautiful and complex system of sounds- languages. We learned that words themselves have a story; a story that is made up of other, magnificent words. … Words have the ability to change someone’s mind, mess up their emotions, inspire them, puzzle them, make them believe.’ (Sean)

Breathing, hearing,writing and talking words

Tiril, a new English speaker, wrote: ‘Words, words, words and more words. I breathe words, I hear words, I write words and I talk words. There are so many words. Every word has a story; where it come from, when it was first used and what it first meant. All words has a base element, some also has suffix or prefix too. When you study one word, so many more are revealed and connected and you find more questions than answers, but knowing the family of the word helps you understand the individual word. During this year I have done a word study on Heffalump, floss and dream. In class we also studied different words, suffix and prefixes. We learned how to use web pages such as Etymology Online and the OED. The word I have studied the most lately is the word dream. I learned where the word dream come from, when dream was first used and what dream first meant and a lot more. Before I started this year I didn’t think about that word or that it has another meaning , or where all the different words came from or when they was first used. Throughout this year I have learned all of this and how to find it if I meet new words I want to know more about. Words can be nice and useful, but can also be used as a weapon, instead of bombs and guns. A historical example we saw this in was when Hitler used words to manipulate laws and people to his advantage and how he used words to become a dictator, the supreme leader of Germany. Word study is important and I will continue to use what I have learned about words in 7th Grade throughout my life’.(Tiril)

More interesting than I expected

‘At first when I had heard word study, I thought uh-oh. I never really got the concept of word study and the use of it in my life. However, as I learned more about it, I found it more interesting than I had expected it to be. Suddenly it opened my range of vocabulary, because there were so many words that came from the same base.  Throughout this year of 7th grade it lead me to an insight of what it truly meant to use words. I saw that words had the power to manipulate and dominate,to provoke  deep emotions.’ (Celes)

More than bricks

‘I’ve learnt that words are more than bricks that make up a sentence (if the sentence was a wall). Throughout the humanities journey, I have discovered that words have more meaning hidden in them which I would’ve never thought to discover. When I chose my word, <malevolence> it was because I thought that the word sounded interesting. Malevolence really is full of history, and if you know where to look, you’ll be able to uncover the amazing story. Through vowel suffixes, bound bases, affixes and all sorts I have found that each part of a word has a reason. From Mrs.Whiting I have also discovered new words that seem to have more magic to them than the words I previously used. Mrs.Whiting also says that words are weapons, and learning words are like fighting back. Which is true, and the use of words could’ve been a less impactful tactic instead of War.'(Megan)

Changed by words

‘Word Study has been an important part of our humanities year and has deepened my understanding of words and where they come from. Word study started out feeling slow and boring but as we got farther into the year and deeper into words, the more connections I saw and the more interesting it seemed. Word study has changed me and has given me a new curiosity that humanities has never given me. Before I would never give much thought to words past the definition, but now I see connections and I want to learn more about the word. So nowadays I have a much better understanding of the word and find them so much more interesting. Word Study has offered me a chance for a new insight into the world.'(Jose)

An insight on humanity
‘ At first I was skeptical about Word Study and its relevance, and found it to be quite boring and tumultuous. Eventually though, I appreciated just how much value and significance words and the study of words actually have in our lives. Words are perhaps the most powerful tools we have, they can move someone to tears, create atmospheres of joy, and even fear and bring about any emotion we are capable of feeling. Words can be moulded and merged with others to create anything the human mind can imagine. There is history weaved into word study, and this study can gift us not only the power of words, but an insight on humanity. I honestly cannot believe how much I have grown to enjoy words, word study and what it can carry.’ (Nanami)

Caught in a sea of words

‘Word study has taught me a lot this year. It has taught me about the morphemes of words: bases (free, bound), prefix, suffix. As I studied words, I learned how they are little treasures, their secrets are drawing me in. They have caught me “in a sea of words”. There is no escape now. It isn’t like I would like to anyways. It helps me understand words better, and now I can’t see words the same way. If I learn a new word, what I want to do is go onto www.etymonline.com and look up the root, figure out the morphemes, and get down to the overall meaning of the word. Wherever I go next in the world, whatever school I may go to, I will take this with me. Whenever I find a new word, I will figure out what it really means, and I will try to inspire others to learn about words this way.'(Sasha)

From the 1910 calendar published by Takejiro Hasegawa. Read more about Japanese crepe paper souvenir calendars at Letterology.

 

After our year together my hope is that these students will, like Dylan Thomas, have ‘tumbled for words’

I fell in love–that is the only expression I can think of–at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy. I tumbled for words at once. . . . There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great, and bearable.

(Dylan Thomas, “Notes on the Art of Poetry,” 1951)

Black Sheep, Embarrassing Cousins.

Tags

hop, hope, overween, venefice, venerable, venerate, venery, venison, venom, wean, ween, win, winsome, wish

 

Spalatin, aka Georg Burckhardt, friend of Martin Luther, secretary to Frederick III, was asked in 1510 to compile the Chronicle of Saxony and Thuringa. This was not finished but throughout  this work are 1000 images from the Lucas Cranach workshop, including this family tree. See more at the wonderful  BibliOdyssey and  the It’s About Time blogs. Presumably  one of the wives died in the family above with a daughter born to one wife and two sons to the other. The sons appear to deny any relationship with their half sister by turning their backs on her. It’s hard to tell who is the eldest.

When a family assembles, the immediate and the distant relatives, the cousins and second cousins once removed, there are bound to be some members we stare at  in wonder, incredulous at our shared DNA. Surely not, we hope, too eccentric, too wild, too unlike us! So too with words.

During the research, over a month ago, where students pursued one word through the mists of time, there were similar gasps of surprise. Through the centuries run complex bloodlines – often confusing but presenting us with some remarkable relatives. Tracing the ‘bloodline ‘back to its deep roots (PIE) inevitably one word relative astonishes.

It was up to the students to track down the stories, to ‘root’ out the relatives of each word. This was done in small bursts in the humanities classroom, not nearly as much as I would have liked, but mainly out of school as part of the homework. Before school, during lunch, in emails to me, or after school , students would share their discoveries, hypotheses and plans for the next stage. At the beginning of the year students would often ask, “Is that right?” Now discussions begin with, “This is my thinking so far and here’s why.”

Excited to share their investigations with their peers from another class, students  developed a series of slides to guide them. They made connections between their word and the texts we had read this year. We paired the class up with small groups and they presented and dealt with questions through three rounds.The sharing was lively and animated as they helped their peers to understand the terms root, base element – free bound, or some patterns in the orthography of the word – why a  <y> becomes an <i> when suffixes are added, why a letter doubles.  After the presentations, students made screen-recordings, flatter than the original live sharing,  but  capturing their research for their electronic portfolios. Below is an example of the research and the surprising relatives exposed as one student dug to the roots when investigating two words.

Hop and hope? Related?

Olivia was amazed to reveal a possible connection between hop and hope. Both have Old English roots . Hope, as a verb, is used 200 years before its nominal use. Attested from 800 with a sense of ‘looking mentally with expectation’, it shifted slightly to take on the sense of ‘to desire with expectation, to look forward to.’ And how does that connect to hop? It’s somewhat of a leap, but Klein suggests the idea of ‘jumping to safety ‘ connected to the notion of ‘a place of refuge’ and from there it’s just a ‘hop’ to  ‘hope’.  And as Ms Steven’s class of intrepid fifth grade orthographers noted, the final non syllabic <e> not only lengthens the medial vowel <o> from /ɒ/ to /əʊ/, but also prevents doubling of the <p> when a vowel suffix is added.

‘When you wish upon a star’

Olivia went further to find that a  surprising relative of <wish > is none other than Venus. Wish of Old English wyscan: to cherish, desire , evolved from Proto Germanic*wunsk which in turn grew out from PIE root*wen-(1) to strive after, wish, desire and this led to Venus. Venus appeared in Late Old English and was from Latin, the Roman name for the goddess of love and sexual desire from the same PIE root that produced wish.

Venerable and venerate are obvious relatives of Venus, sharing the bound base element <vene>  from Latin venus ~ veneris but there are other surprising relatives – venom entering English in the 13th century from Latin venēnum a drug, medical potion but also a charm, a seduction with an underlying sense of a love potion. Then venison and venery from Latin venari ~ venatus the infinitive and past participle of to hunt, to pursue.  From the mid 15th century venery had acquired an additional sense where the hunt had become metaphoric and implied pursuit of a different kind – that of sexual pleasure. In assembling the matrix and rummaging through the OED, we discovered the compound word: venefice :’the practice of employing poison or magical potions; the exercise of sorcery by such means’, attested in 1380. This led to a small cluster of words such as venefical, venefic.  All ultimately from the same PIE root , *wen-(1) that spawned wish!

Is <-ison> a suffix as in <vene+ison> ? The OED suggests it is a ‘suffix of ns., repr. Old French -aison, -eison, -eson, -ison:—Latin -ātiōn-em (at a later date adopted in the learned form–ation, which is thus a doublet of -ison), -etiōnem, -itiōnem. Examples include comparison, fermison, garrison, jettison, orison, venison, warnison.’

However, we thought <venison> should be analyzed as <vene+ise+on> and recorded it as such on the matrix below where it will remain until we util we find evidence suggesting otherwise. When the OED states <-ison> is ‘thus a doublet of <-ation>’ we were doubtful . While <-ate > regularly precedes the suffix <-ion> ,<-ation> is not a single morpheme, rather it is built from the morphemes <ate+ion>. We have hypothesized this to be the case for the so called suffix <-ison> and instead suggest <-ise+ion>.

 

 

 

While you marvel at the words formed around the base element <vene>, there is still more to astound. From the same PIE root  *wen-(1), come the Germanic relatives: winsome , win and ween . Ween attested from 888, with the senses of expectation and hope, opinion, belief and probability, now has faded from regular use, except in the compound  overween and overweening.  But perhaps the most surprising of all is ‘the runic name for the Old English runic letter  ᚹ (= w) and of the manuscript form of this (Ƿ ƿ) in Old and early Middle English'(OED), so called because ‘of it being the first letter of that word which literally means delight or pleasure.’ (Online Etymology Dictionary).

This ancient root *wen-(1)  has given us the Latinate bound base <vene> and the free base elements from the Germanic branch of the family: the homophones <win> and <wynn> , <ween> and <wean>, and of course where we began with <wish>. We noted the echoes of charm, desire and a sense of striving and pursuit resonating through all these family members.

Listen to Olivia’s presentation below.

 

 

And with the discussion of venison it seems logical to consider the hunt and  an image from Gaston Phoebus’s book of the hunt. Diseases of dogs and their conditions. (Bel France, Paris, XV th century. Paris, BnF Department of Manuscripts, French folio 40v 616.)

Venery , the hunt or chase, was attested in 1330. The images above are from the Livre de Chasse by Gaston Phoebus. Gaston III, Count of Foix (1331–1391), was known as Phoebus (Latin, from Greek Phoibos: “bright, shining, radiant) and so called either due to his good looks or golden locks ( see 64 of these wonderful illustrations here).

Phoebus, the handsome venerer wrote a hunting  advice manual between  (1387–89) and dedicated it to fellow hunting enthusiast Phillip the Bold , Duke of Normandy, father to the wonderfully named John the Fearless. His hunting manual was made up of four books: On Gentle and Wild Beasts, On the Nature and Care of Dogs, On Instructions for Hunting with Dogs, and On Hunting with Traps, Snares, and Crossbow.  Phoebus obviously took hunting seriously -he owned sixteen hundred sporting dogs and two hundred horses.  However, the excitement in the end may have been too much for him as in 1391 Phoebus had pursued his final bear. He collapsed and died while washing his hands after a bear hunt.

‘Word study at the beginning of the year was quite boring for me; torturous even. But now that I look back at it, I don’t regret anything. I learned about a multitude of things related to words. I learned about how to use my sources to help me find the root of a word, to find its origin, to break it up into morphemes, and to get deeper understanding of the word. Now I could tell you the denotation of exclusion for example, I could tell you all about hope, and how it connects to wish, and how wish connects to Venus… It’s a never ending cycle of possibilities, and you learn so much from the experience of looking deeper into a word and its history. We haven’t only looked into the morphemes of words; but we’ve also thought about how words and their meanings connected to the topics we were studying. This year, I went into depth with the word “Hope”, and this experience has taught me to look at words differently.’ (from Olivia’s year long reflections on her portfolio)

Scroll to the bottom of the page on the V&A site here to experience the sounds of a medieval hunting song  known as a caccia ( Italian for chase) Hounds At Court and Dogs in the Forest.To further pursue terms of venery read here and marvel at the poetic terms often referred to as company terms or collective nouns,such as a murmuration of starlings, an unkindness of ravens, a murder of crows, a singular of boars, a tiding of magpies. If entranced by these and you wish to pursue these further, then read an earlier post  here.