The Story of English in 100 Words (5 page)

The defunct usage had
loaf of bread
replacing
dead
. You can find it in Auden and Isherwood’s play
The Dog beneath the Skin
(III.iii.123):

Oh how I cried when Alice died
The day we were to have wed!
We never had our Roasted Duck
And now she’s a Loaf of Bread.

Out

changing grammar (9th century)

An easy way of making new vocabulary is to take a word and change it into another word by using it in a different way in a sentence. We take a verb and turn it into a noun. Or turn an adjective into a verb. Any part of speech can have its grammar shifted in this way. The process is technically described as
conversion
or
functional shift
.

English-speakers have been doing this with words
since Anglo-Saxon times. Take a little word like
out
. It could be a verb: to
out
was to ‘expel’ or ‘dismiss’. Or an adverb, as in to
draw out
a sword. Or an exclamation:
Out!
meant ‘Alas!’, now heard only in some regional dialects. It could be a preposition, as in
out the door
– a usage disallowed in standard English today, though common regionally. An adjective use appears in
the out edge
, where today we’d say
the outer edge
. And from the 17th century it’s been used as a noun, as in
the ins and outs
(‘the complexities’) and
looking for an out
(‘a means of avoiding’), as well as in such games as baseball (
two outs
).

New uses continue to emerge. The adjective got a fresh lease of life in the 1960s, when people talked about the
out crowd
(‘unfashionable set’). A new verb use followed: to
out
oneself or someone else was to make public an undeclared sexual identity. From there it was a short step to any kind of exposure of private information. Since the 1990s, people can be
outed
as the originator of an idea, a member of an organisation or the parent of a child.

Out
is one of thousands of words which have changed their grammar. Such verbs as
laugh, look, push
and
lift
have all become nouns. Adjectives have become verbs (
to calm, to empty
) and nouns (
a nasty, a given
). Nouns have become verbs (
to host, to contact
) and adjectives (
garden chair, railway station
).

Shakespeare was the conversion expert. ‘I eared her language.’ ‘He words me.’ Some of his conversions seem really daring. Even the name of a person
can become a verb. ‘Petruchio is Kated.’ But all he was doing was tapping into a natural everyday usage that is still with us. How many parents haven’t said something like this?

Child (at bedtime): But I want to watch Mickey
Mouse.
Parent: I’ll Mickey Mouse you if you don’t get those
pyjamas on right now!

Even though changes like this are ancient and frequent, people do sometimes dislike conversions. The verb
spend
is known from the 12th century, and developed a new lease of life in the 20th, when businessmen started talking about
advertising spends
and the like. Letters began to appear in the press objecting to this ‘horrible new’ word.

In fact the usage wasn’t new at all. John Bunyan used
spend
as a noun in the 17th century. And the same pedigree is found in noun-to-verb shifts, which are also sometimes criticised.
Author
has been especially disliked:
She’s authored a new book
. The first recorded use of
author
as a verb is 1596, but for some reason it continues to attract criticism.

Today, nouns can become verbs in next to no time. Google was launched in September 1998 (
see
§77
). People were
googling
by the end of the year.

Street

a Latin loan (9th century)

The Romans spoke Latin. So, later, did the missionaries that arrived in Britain. As a result, quite a few words of Latin origin came into English in its early years.
Street
, from Latin
strata
, was one of the first. We find it in the earliest Old English manuscripts, written as
stræt
– the
æ
letter representing a long vowel sound a bit like the
a
in modern English
dare
.

When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain, they found that the Romans had already built a network of long, straight, paved roads to supplement the many paths which dated from prehistoric times. They used the Germanic word
weg
(‘way’) to describe these ancient tracks, which had emerged over time through repeated usage, as in
hrycgweg
(‘ridgeway’). They used the Latin word to describe the Roman innovations –
streets
.

The names of the four major Roman highways reflect this difference.
Watling Street
(from London to near Shrewsbury) and
Ermine Street
(from London to the Humber) were Roman roads.
Icknield Way
(from Gloucestershire to south Yorkshire) was prehistoric. What we now call the
Fosse Way
– a Roman road running between Leicester and Axminster – seems to go against this distinction, until we realise that it was originally known as
Fosse Street
. The name
Fosse Way
dates only from the 15th century.

Over 500 words came into English from Latin
during the earliest period of Old English. We can never be sure exactly when they arrived. Some would have been picked up by the Celtic-speaking Britons during the Roman occupation and become familiar to the first Germanic settlers. Some would have been brought over from the continent of Europe in the Anglo-Saxon boats. And the Latin-speaking monks would certainly have added to the number.

The new words expressed a wide range of notions. There were words for plants and animals, food and drink, household objects, coins, clothing, settlements and building materials, as well as to do with military, legal, medical and commercial matters.
Candle
and
kettle
,
cup
and
kitchen
,
cat
and
dragon
, are all originally Latin words. So are
butter
,
cheese
,
sack
,
wall
,
mile
and
wine
.

Words from Latin continued to come into English throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, but they changed their character. The teaching of the Church had to be communicated to the people, so new vocabulary was needed to express the new concepts, personnel and organisational procedures. Words such as
altar
,
creed
,
deacon
,
school
and
philosopher
arrived. So did
grammar
.

Meanwhile,
street
was developing its own meanings and uses. We find several old idioms, such as
by sty and by street
or
by street and stile
. If something happened ‘by sty and by street’, it was happening ‘everywhere’. Another medieval idiom was
to wend one’s street
, meaning ‘to go one’s own way’. And if you
took the street
, it meant you were setting out on a journey. These all died out in the 1500s.

2. Terry Pratchett (left), and a character from his Discworld saga, at one of the streets in Wincanton, Somerset, named after a location in the series. Why Wincanton? It had twinned with the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork in 2002.

But new uses were arriving. In the 16th century
the street
came to be used for the money-market area of London. In the 18th century we find it referring to a locale for prostitution (
on the street
) as well as a description of the average person (
the man on the street
). In the 19th century,
on the street
developed the meaning of ‘homeless’. And the word continued to grow.
Streetwise
arrived in the 1940s.
To be street
– in tune with urban subculture – in the 1970s. It was followed by
street credibility
, soon shortened to
street cred
. In the 1990s
street
became a term for a type of skateboarding.

So what happened to the original meaning of
street
? For a long time it was used as part of a description of the highway, as in
Broad Street
and
Mill Street
. Even today British English keeps the definite article in front of some of these names: we say
I was shopping in the High Street
, not …
in High Street
. Eventually other criteria were used, such as the name of an important person (
Wellington Street
) or occupation (
Brewer Street
). American English went in for numerals and letters:
M Street
,
32nd Street
. Today, virtually any word in the language can be used along with
street
. In 2009 a new road in Wincanton, Somerset, was named after a location in a Terry Pratchett
Disc-world
novel:
Peach Pie Street
.

Mead

a window into history (9th century)

Today we think of mead as a rather exotic alcoholic drink, made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water. In early history it was the alcoholic beverage of choice throughout ancient Europe, Asia and Africa. Some think it was the first fermented drink. It makes frequent appearances in the Germanic folk-tales of the first millennium and repeatedly appears in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, such as the epic poem
Beowulf
.

Mead was more than just a drink. It was a symbol of power. If you had the time and luxury to sit around drinking mead, then all must have been well in your land. And conversely: if you didn’t have that opportunity, things must have been going badly. At the very beginning of
Beowulf
we are told that the king, Scyld Scefing, ‘from bands of enemies, from many tribes, took away mead-benches’. That settles it. They would have been victories indeed!

So it’s not surprising to find that there was a large vocabulary of
mead
-words in Old English. Through this single word we obtain a considerable insight into Anglo-Saxon culture and society. A settlement might actually be called a
medu-burh
– a place renowned for its mead-drinkers. Any warrior living there would make nightly visits to the
medu-heall
(‘mead-hall’) or
medu-seld
(‘mead-house’) – the equivalent of the modern city hall – where his leader would be holding
court and feasting. How would he get there? By walking along a
medu-stig
(‘path to the mead-hall’) through the
medu-wang
(‘land surrounding the mead-hall’). All roads, it seemed, led to mead.