varlets and valets

Last night I watched the first episode of the period drama 'Downton Abbey'. Well, actually I watched until the first advertisement irritated me into leaving the room, but I've recorded it and I'll watch the rest tomorrow.

I was surprised to find that the pronunciation of the word valet includes the final T. In the modern usage of the word, valet parking, we say the word as if it were a French ending.

Hearing the way they said it in the show, I wondered if the original word might be related to the word varlet, so I looked it up. And found the Online Etymology Dictionary does say the words are related.

"personal man-servant," 1560s, from Fr. valet, from O.Fr. valet, variant of vaslet "man's servant," originally "squire, young man," from Gallo-Romance *vassellittus "young nobleman, squire, page," dim. of M.L. vassallus, from vassus "servant" (see vassal). Modern sense is usually short for valet de chambre; the general sense of "male household servant of the meaner sort" going with the variant form varlet. First recorded use of valet parking is from 1960.

Podictionary has an interesting post about the word, also.

The Macquarie Dictionary gives both pronunciations, and defines the word as:

noun 1. a male servant who is his employer's personal attendant, caring for the employer's clothing, etc.; manservant.
2. someone who performs similar services for patrons of a hotel, etc.
3. any of various contrivances, as a rack or stand, for holding coats, hats, etc.
–verb (valeted, valeting)
–verb (t) 4. to work as a valet for (someone).
–verb (i) 5. to work as a valet. [French, variant of Middle French vaslet. See VARLET, VASSAL]
–valetless, adjective

It refers to the related word, varlet:

noun Archaic 1. an attendant.
2. a page attached to a knight.
3. a rascal. [Middle English, from Old French, variant of va(s)let VALET. See VASSAL]

lillydale, lilly dale and lilydale

I visited Lillydale Lake recently. It's odd that this lake is smack in the middle of a township called Lilydale.



Apparently there are a few theories as to why the township was originally spelled with the doubled letters. Here's an explanation from OnlyMelbourne:

The discovery of gold in the upper Goulburn River and Woods Point areas in the late 1850s caused the formation of a miners' access track. The place where the Woods Point Road crossed the Olinda Creek was chosen for a town survey. The origin of the name is uncertain. One version is that the Government surveyor, John Hardy, suggested that the town be named Lillydale after hearing his chainman singing a popular song "Lilly Dale". The name was also inspired by the surveyor observing lilies growing in pools of the creek. The other version is that a district surveyor's wife was name Lilly. Council clerks and the local schoolmaster shortened the spelling to Lilydale.

Given that the town was named in the 1850s, the song theory seems possible, as the tune was written in 1852 and was sung in America in the 1850s. Many Americans worked on the Australian goldfields.

sticktoitiveness

Yesterday I received an email about a word that I love - sitzfleisch. The email came from "A Word A Day", and defines this word as

noun:
1. The ability to sit through or tolerate something boring.
2. The ability to endure or persist in a task.

If I were talking about that second concept I would have thought of the old-fashioned sticktoitiveness - which probably isn't too old, actually.

And Word A Day also mentions the other synonym, chair glue, which I had never heard before:

Sitzfleisch is a fancy term for what's commonly known as chair glue: the ability to sit still and get through the task at hand. It's often the difference between, for example, an aspiring writer and a writer. Sometimes the word is used in the sense of the ability to sit out a problem -- ignore it long enough in the hope it will go away.

I love the latter meaning - it's great when procrastinating long enough means some problem has just solved itself.

But it's the first of the two definitions that is important to us bloggers. Keep on writing. Maybe someone will read it, lol.

lost consonants

As I waited for the train today, I wandered down to the end of the platform and saw this sign:



I didn't feel very exciting, but my hand itched to reach into my handbag, pull out a black texta and add a letter 'c' to that first word. Luckily I didn't have a texta with me.

Which got me thinking about a great little book I had at home called 'Lost Consonants'. It has pictures of such gems as 'The collected woks of William Shakespeare', or 'administering electric sock treatment'.

And I've come across a site where the creator of these art works, Graham Rawle, answers questions (hilariously) about his work .

And he has a site.

And a blog!

I treasure my copy of his book, but now even more so, as I see that the one I have is out of print.

Googleganger is the word of the year

Every now and then a new word is so perfect that you wonder why it wasn't invented sooner. For years I've been surreptitiously searching the internet for my own name, sometimes to see whether anyone visits my totally boring home page (they don't), and sometimes to see who has the same name as mine.

And now I can come out of the closet with this activity, because once an activity has a name, of course it is legitimate. (Well, mostly.)

I've been looking for my googleganger.

The Macquarie Dictionary has named this as the word of the year. It's a noun meaning 'a person with the same name as oneself, whose online references are mixed with one's own among search results for one's name'. I guess only those of us with an online presence can have a googleganger.

I wonder whether there is already a new verb, to googlegang? I made a quick search and I can't see it yet.

my BeBook Neo eReader

I was browsing the site of a writer, The Raven's Eye, and noticed she has self-published one of her short stories. It was only about $2 to buy a copy, so I thought I'd be part of The Long Tail and buy it.

Of course, this led to a discussion in our household about how many copies the writer would have to sell in order to 'make a living'. In my opinion, if an author self-publishes online, as long as it's not too expensive a process, any sales are a bonus, because they not only bring in a trickle - or hopefully, a flood - of money, but they act as publicity for the writer's other work.

In this case, the story was a great read. I'd categorise it as urban fantasy, which I like, and it had a protagonist who I'd like to know more about. (Yes, I do know I could have written 'whom' in that last sentence, but I'm over that word and don't intend to write it any more.)

I bought it at Smashwords, which I hadn't previously heard about.

The other benefit of buying the story was that it made me get my BeBook Neo eReader out again. Since the initial excitement of buying it, I haven't used it much. Now that I've discovered buying short stories, I think it could get as much use as my iPod. Hmmm... and that doesn't come out of the drawer much, either. Must get on over to the iTunes store and buy some music.

I have mixed feelings about my BeBook. It's a great screen, easy on the eyes, but I don't find it easy to navigate.

Kate Burridge in Daylesford

Language change is interesting, so I considered myself lucky to be in Daylesford recently for the Words in Winter festival and able to attend a talk on this topic by Professor Kate Burridge, linguist and radio commentator.

She started by showing us the rate of change is not constant.

For centuries the norm was rapid change in spoken English. For instance, between the times of Chaucer (fourteenth century) and of Jonathan Swift (early eighteenth century) there was such a massive change that Swift's readers would have had difficulty reading Chaucer.

She read the first lines of the Prologue from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales - in the accent of the time, I might add!

Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;
When Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That sleepen al the night with open ye -
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages -
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

In contrast, when she read the opening to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, we had no trouble understanding the text.

My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, and eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years.

Out of interest, after typing this quote, I spell-checked it, and Word thinks it is acceptable modern grammar.

The rise of written English as the pre-eminent form is the reason behind this slowing of the rate of change. When most business and study and social interaction occurred through spoken English, people didn't mind language changing, as long as they could understand each other. But we, with almost universal literacy, are strongly influenced by the way a word is written, visualising it as we say it, and this makes us resist change.

It was a great talk and has given me lots to think about.