This entry continues the theme of doublets – two
words coming into English from the same Latin root, but with one of
them radically changed in form and sometimes meaning by its passage
through Old French and Norman French before nestling in the bosom of
Middle English, and the other coming more directly from Latin, while
preserving most of the original form and meaning. Basically, we're
talking two, and occasionally three, for the price of one. It just
goes to show how generous the Normans were with their vocabulary.
So, let's start with loyal and legal, for they
are, indeed, essentially the same thing. Both these words come from
Latin lex, “law”, and clearly, legal, arriving in the first half
of the 15th C as a learned borrowing from Latin legalis
via Middle French, carries the original meaning with it. Strangely
enough, loyal, “faithful”, arrived almost a hundred years later
directly from Middle French, having been rendered loial/leial in Old
French from the original Latin form. However, Middle English had
earlier borrowed leal, “faithful” from Old French and rendered it
lel, and this form was supplanted by the later borrowing of loyal.
The change of meaning in loyal was to do with the idea of carrying
out legal requirements faithfully.
Moving on
to pagans and peasants, these words share the same origins, at least
linguistically, if not materially. In Roman times, a district in the
country was delineated by fixed markers, which is why it was known as
a pagus, literally a “fixed area”. From pagus came pagensis,
“inhabitant of a country district”. In Vulgar Latin, pagensis
came to refer to the territory that the district covered, becoming
païs in Old French as
well as in Spanish and Portuguese, and producing the modern word for
“country” in all three languages. Old French also produced
païsant,
“country-dweller”, which came to us via Anglo-French paisant as
peasant in the early 15th C. While peasant was busily
divesting itself of its similarity to its distant ancestor, Late
Latin paganus, “villager”, remained the same until it came
directly into English, also in the early 15th C, but with
the meaning of “heathen”.
So, why were some country-dwellers simply rustic
types while others became non-believers? There are two possible
reasons. When Christianity was adopted by the Roman empire, people
living in country areas were less likely to take on the new
religion than city dwellers, holding on to their old ways and gods, and
therefore being seen as pagans. An alternative explanation is that
country-dwellers were not seen as Soldiers of Christ, as the early
Christians termed themselves, and were more likely to be termed
non-believers. So a non-believer chewing a stalk of wheat while
sitting on a farm gate could truly be called a pagan peasant.
Just as we have loyal and legal, we also have
royal and regal. The Latin rex, “king”, produced regalis,
“kingly”, which became roial, “royal, splendid”, in Old
French. This was borrowed in the 13th C as royal, with the
meaning of “fit for a king”. A century later, regal was borrowed
from Latin via Old French. It's interesting that when the dust
settled, we ended up with three words meaning pretty much the same
thing – kingly (the original Old English root word), royal and
regal, though royal has come to denote the nature of the monarch,
while kingly and regal refer rather to appearance.
One thing that might happen to people if they
crossed the monarch in the old days was imprisonment, which brings us
to the next group – jail, cage and cave. Yes, I know they don't
look very similar, but we can still see the links in the meanings.
All three words came into Middle English in the 13th C.
The Latin root was cavus, “hollow, hole”, which produced Old
French cave, “cave, vault, cellar”, coming to us with more or
less the same meaning. The other two words were fed through the
French machine much more thoroughly. The Latin form cavea, “hollow
area, animal enclosure, coop”, became cage in Old French, which it
remained as it was handed over to Middle English with the meaning of
“prison, retreat”. The form cavea also produced a diminutive form
caveola in Late Latin, also with the meaning of “enclosure, coop”.
This became gaviola in Vulgar Latin and then jaiole in Old French.
The alternative form gaiole was used in Old North French, and both
forms came into Middle English via Anglo-French, giving us both jail
and gaol. So, one could say that the Birdman of Alcatraz had cages in
his jail or jails in his cage. And if a caveman transgressed, was he
kept in a cave or in a special cave-jail?
The last entries in this post might well get you a
long time in jail if you're not careful – poison and potion. One of
the Latin words for “drink” was potare, which gives us potable.
However, in medieval times, people seemed to be playing around with
all manner of mysterious and magical drinks. Potion came into Middle
English directly from Latin potio, "drink, drinking",via Old French, replacing an earlier
borrowing, with the meaning of “medicinal drink, magic drink,
poisonous draught”. Nowadays, we think of it as more of a magic
drink liable to turn you into a frog in a fairy story. While potion
was largely unchanged by its passage through French from Latin potio,
poison most certainly was not. It came into Middle English slightly
earlier than potion from the Old French poison/puison, with the
meaning of “deadly potion”. Clearly, it wouldn't have done to
visit a medieval hostelry and ask someone “what's your poison?”
You'd never know what you'd get.
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