To Mince or 'Mint' Words: Vocabulary Coined by Authors, Poets and Thinkers

In a first year English class, my quasi feminist-Marxist professor told a rather quaint and adorable story about two nuns who attended a Shakespeare festival. In turns out, scholars had discovered this duo hadn't heard of Shakespeare let alone attended a single one of his plays. After sitting through several hours of performances, the nuns were then told to give their impression of the bard and his works. Being religious, they hemmed and hawed about the violence, the sex and the ribald humor but one of the ladies said something telling, if not humorous. 

"He's not very original, is he?"

With a raised eyebrow the scholar leading the project further questioned the nun. Shrugging, she simply stated that he borrowed a lot of cliches. "You know," she said clapping her hands, "all's well that end's well, and to be or not to be. The show must go on. All those phrases."

I suppose for someone who's never heard of William Shakespeare, the idea that he was the originator of such phrases would seem perhaps outlandish if not remarkable as they have permeated our lives, our lexicon and our lay speech. The other day I found myself saying "there's something rotten in Denmark,"let alone "there's method in my madness" and "there's the rub" - all from Hamlet. Or on oft occasions, that I've murmured "neither here nor there", "mum's the word" and "for goodness sake" (Othello, Henry IV and Henry VIII).

Yet it is not only the phrases but the 'monumental' words the poet has minted that we should be thankful. The two nuns and the 'countless' numbers of English speakers don't realize we all quote Shakespeare every single, 'excellent' day of our lives. When we hurry, when we are fretful and lonely, when we are obscene or majestic, critical or frugal, when we hint at something or tell a barefaced lie, when we are submerged in responsibilities, we are heavily borrowing from a bard who may well have been borrowing from the Elizabethan London of the late 1500s, a time of innovation in language and culture.

Shakespeare's originality has been questioned as much as his identity yet the plainspoken beauty of the plays and the enriched vocabulary of our English tongue cannot helped but be noticed. He is said to have invented 1700 words (I highly recommend the website Shakespeare-online.com to further explore the list.)

So, in their college years, when students are puking after a night of trying to be fashionable, they may struggle with their papers in the bleak hours of the morning, deconstructing As You Like It or comparing Troilus and Cressida to Chaucer's version, nonetheless, they really should be thanking the poet from Avon.  

But during Shakespeare's time, before and after, words still came into being as a result of poets and authors. Sir Thomas More, famous for his book, Utopia, coined 'absurdity' (which might explain his own tale of a perfect society), that the work of fiction itself exaggerates, rather than explains how human beings could live in exact harmony, one might say, acceptance of such a possibility is quite difficult. 

Ben Johnson, a contemporary of Shakespeare is not a defunct poet, nor a clumsy one, but when we are wet, we can say we are damp due to him. 

Then there are the 19th century authors many of us should really thank. Where would advertising slogans and marketers be without Samuel Coleridge, the opium intoxicated author of 'Kubla Khan' who gave us 'intensify'? If we didn't have Jeremy Bentham, how would we describe flights other than domestic, having provided airlines with the word 'international' (let alone committees, businesses and organizations that cross borders). Then there's Thomas Carlyle who without him, Green Peace and a host of other earth-friendly companies and activists wouldn't know that they were fighting for the 'environment'.

In the Pickwick Papers, Dickens described our first encounter with a 'butterfingers'. Meanwhile George Eliot, in a letter first used 'chintzy': back then chintz was a calico print from India said to be basic and cheap, hence anything we now refer to as pure crap or rudimentary in design (maybe one day Ikea will replace 'chintzy'). 

In the twentieth century, we saw a few selectively cynical words enter our lexicon. Norman Mailer's 'factoid' is a great example of how entertainment co-ops information. The ornery author, most famous for his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead, defines his manufactured term as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." When we learn about the latest Justin Bieber antic or reflect back on Paris Hilton's shenanigans and Britney Spear's bald head, what ever tidbits we glean and somehow cannot forget, they have no real relevance on our lives or world history. Like junk food, they sit unsettled in our mind's intestinal unconscious, half-digested and difficult to move. 

The word 'meme' too reflects on our self-indulgent and mind numbingly oblivious culture. Richard Dawkins coined it in the 1970s to describe ideas, trends, behaviors and styles that spread from person to person, almost plague-like before dying. This past summer we had the ever-charitably-profitable and annoying ALS-Ice Bucket Challenge that turned everyone into viral fools of self-back slapping. The author of The Selfish Gene was most likely shaking his head as hordes of people stood in front of digital cameras for their fifteen seconds of Facebook fame. 

In the world of technology, 'cyberspace' is another word which may have come from several authors, yet it was William Gibson who made it famous. Then's there 'Microcomputer' from Isaac Asimov, another sci-fi guru, author of I-Robot. Fondly enough without Karel Čapek Asimov wouldn't have had a title for his famous novel. In 1920 the Czech author published his most famous play, R.U.R. - Rossums' Universal Robots. 'Robot' is derived from the Russian работать (rabotat' - to work), a reference in some ways to the Soviet slave labour of the early 20th century. 

Yet, without Dr.Seus (Theodore Geisl) we would have no idea how to describe the very people who love and follow fantasy and science fiction. In his book, If I Ran the Zoo, we find the first appearance of 'nerd' in our language. 

There are a host of other words and this blog could continue on but it is safe to say, let alone even conclude that poetry and innovation have contributed largely to our expanding vocabulary. That from the Grand Willy himself to a self-titled doctor of children's fiction, language is heavily reliant upon and grateful for those artists and thinkers who bend and play with words. To quote Shakespeare, it appears English is quite dauntless in its ability to keep building and expanding.

 

Going Dutch: The Low Countries and their Curious Influence on the English Language

In the late 1600s, the Dutch participated in the 'Glorious Revolution', a quasi invasion-slash-change of the constitution in England. Without tripping and stubbing our toes on various political and historical facts let us say that it was initially fairly bloodless: William III of Orange Nassau overthrew King James II and with his wife, Mary II, took the reins of the mighty British Empire. Perhaps one might call the events of 1688 a bit of a hostile takeover or someone simply getting kicked out of the royal sandbox. Jimmy, you're out, Willy, your time to play. 

Unfortunately, the sun successively set on the seductive and lavish Dutch Golden Age of Culture. William III funded several exhausting wars, those against the Jacobites in Scotland, another in Ireland and of course, one had to get France somehow involved and riled up as well. And, as a result, within two decades, back in the king's home country of the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic was financially out of pocket despite being in a place of military security. Instead of money for art, funds were invariably funneled towards arms and this is why we don't have a succession of Dutch masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and Steen in the 18th century. 

Yet even before William III was even conceived, the Dutch had already invaded English Culture. In the 17th century, the language of the rising empire was already inundated with Middle Dutch words and this was due to previous invasions.

During the Norman conquest, 1/3 of William the Conqueror's army was from Flanders. And it didn't stop there. Between the 11th and up to the 17th century, a majority of Flemish refugees, many of them weavers and others skilled in textiles peacefully crossed the channel to make their home in England, Scotland and Wales. 

So this is why we have 'boss' from Middle Dutch baas. Of course times were always tough in the Medieval period and before we had 'Dutch courage', we had büsen which became our pejorative term for alcohol, hence 'booze'. (The word slurp, from slorpen, to sip, should also be mentioned as well as 'brandy', derived from brandewijn or 'burnt wine' and 'gin', from genever.)

From tubbe came 'tub', from bicken (to slash, attack), 'bicker' and bundel, obviously 'bundle' whereas Duffel is actually a town in Belgium and the original source for the cloth of the eponymous bags. My two favourite ones are boele (lover, brother) which eventually became 'bully' (not a lover nor brother) and blinken (to glitter) which became our 'blink'. It is quite lovely to think that when you are gazing at the eyes of your better half, when she quickly closes and opens her lids, that one is seeing her face 'glitter'.

Due to both England and The Netherlands maritime position, nautical terms, too, found their way into our language. 'Deck' from dec (covering), 'dock' (docke), 'freight' (vrecht or 'load'), 'skipper' (schipper or 'shipper'), 'sloop' (sloep), and so forth. To such a list one could also add 'yacht' (jaght or jaghtship, jagen, the Dutch and German word for hunt), 'buoy' (boei, 'to shackle') and 'cruise' (kruisen, to cross).

'Aloof' is bearing mention as lof is of a 'windward direction' and 'avast' is actually 'hold fast' (hou'vast). 'Aardvark', interestingly enough means earth (aard) pig (vark). Who knew?

We also get a few military terms from the Low Countries. 'Beleaguer' (16th cent. belegeren,'besiege') and 'bulwark' (bulwerk) and when you're on leave in the army, as an enlisted man you're on 'furlough' (verlof or 'to be off'). Most recently, the American 'bazooka' is Dutch for 'trumpet', bazuin which one could also connect to bassoon of Italian (bassone), French (basson) origin meaning 'deep'. So when firing a rocket or chewing the gum, we have the Dutch to thank for the word. 

The arts of Holland too influenced our English tongue. There is the Dutch painting term landskip derived from landscap (region) which, without really having to hazard a guess we know to be 'landscape'. Schets become our 'sketch' and ezel, Dutch for donkey became 'easel'. So when you visit the Rembrandhuis in Amsterdam, the structure holding the canvas in the artist's studio was once referred to as a domestic animal.

Bill Bryson, noted traveler author once wrote that he found the Dutch language to be 'a peculiar version of English.' It really isn't far from the truth when we consider all the words we've gained from the Low Countries. Even today, if you visit the northern climes of the Netherlands, the Frisians are said to speak a language similar to our early English. Maybe the reason we remember William the Conqueror and see William III's bloodless invasion as a portion of minor history is because the Dutch had already infiltrated the English language. The latter William was just taking over the reigns from his ancestors, no more, no less, the Dutch having already made their home in the English vocabulary to the point the so-called British of the late 17th century were already eating coleslaw (kolsla, cabbage salad), cookies (koekje, diminutive of koek, cake) and frolicking (vrolijk, to be joyful) when the news of his take-over had reached them.

All this knowledge. One can't help now but feel like a bit of a 'geek' (gek, fool).