Etymology - Part 2

Hello once again, I'm Christopher Hanlon. I'm C.C. Wharram, cordial salutations, as we say on the Latinate side of the family. (Dr. Hanlon). And we're here with part two of our special miniseries for The Close Reading Cooperative concerning etymologies. (Dr. Wharram). Yes and etymologies, as we mentioned last week, can help us to see the connotations of words. Connotations are sort of shades of meaning or shades of emotional associations that words have, and we're going to try to demonstrate this by giving you a couple of words--pairings of words--that mean basically the same thing. One word coming from the Latinate or the French side of the English language and the other word coming from the Germanic side. So you will be our guinea pig... (Dr. Hanlon). Okay. (Dr. Wharram). ...if I may say. Take these two words. Which one do you think is Latinate and which one do you think is Germanic? Here are the two words. (Dr. Hanlon). This is going back again to Latinate being the word that is associated with the Norman conquerors and the Saxon word being associated with the conquered. (Dr. Wharram). Yes, the stinky people who lived on the island before the good Normans came. Friendly versus amicable. (Dr. Hanlon). I'm going to guess that amicable is the Norman word and friendly is the Saxon word. (Dr. Wharram). That is correct and well, let's just keep going and this time I'm going to ask you which one is Germanic. Is it gathering or assembly? (Dr. Hanlon). Is gathering the Germanic word? (Dr. Wharram). Right. Even without looking up these words sometimes we can sort of hear the difference between the Germanic and the Latinate sort of sound, but looking it up will verify this sort of information. How about the difference in connotation? So what's the difference between the words and how the word's sound? Surreptitious and sneaky? (Dr. Hanlon). Sneaky, I'm going to guess, is the Germanic word because that sounds like something a kid might say. (Dr. Wharram). Sure, well. (Dr. Hanlon). Surreptitious sounds like something that you need a college degree to say. (Dr. Wharram). Yeah, that's true, a word that you might need to look up in the dictionary. (Dr. Hanlon). Right, right, I guess that's my connotation--surreptitious sounds...I don't know...less base, more interesting. (Dr. Wharram). Yeah, that's true. I think that's fair enough. How about deep versus profound? (Dr. Hanlon). Is deep the Germanic word? (Dr. Wharram). Absolutely. (Dr. Hanlon). We haven't practiced these. And the connotation--I guess profound sounds just lofty and... (Dr. Wharram). More profound somehow. (Dr. Hanlon). ...yeah, more profound in a way. (Dr. Wharram). Yeah, I mean it's quite interesting the way it does that. (Dr. Hanlon). Yeah. (Dr. Wharram). Belly versus abdomen. (Dr. Hanlon). Belly, for sure, is going to be the Germanic. (Dr. Wharram). Absolutely. And it's more physical, it's more visceral, right? A belly is almost more, you know, to a certain extent, simpler. Abdomen sounds more medicinal, sounds more like something official. (Dr. Hanlon). Yeah, if my doctor says to me well "at the opening moments of the operation, we're going to cut into your belly" I'm going to feel less certain, than if he says we're going to cut into your abdomen. (Dr. Wharram). That's true and it seems a bit more visceral. I almost gagged when you said, "I'm going to cut into your belly". (Dr. Hanlon). I'm sorry. (Dr. Wharram). It's fine. How about this one? A very timely example--porcine influenza versus swine flu. (Dr. Hanlon). Well, as we discussed last time, the Norman conquerors--when they ordered their pork--would say pork instead of swine, so I'm going to say that porcine influenza is a Latinate phrase. (Dr. Wharram). Right and, in fact, it is the correct Latinate term. Influenza porcina is the word that is used by the medical profession but it doesn't sound quite as scary as swine flu. (Dr. Hanlon). Right, yeah, swine flu I'd have to say scares me but porcine influenza sounds kind of nice, I might take that with little chutney on the side or something. (Dr. Wharram). And it's the same sort of thing with avian flu versus bird flu. Avian flu sounds slightly less threatening whereas bird flu sounds, you know, like something that you just want to avoid. I have another example now, okay, we've finished with our pairings. I have an example from Shakespeare that sort of shows how this works a little bit in literature. [reads passage]. Okay, now, the situation here is "Macbeth". This is from "Macbeth" and Macbeth is trying to decide whether he's going to go all in, to use a poker metaphor, with regard to ***. Is he going to continue to enact revenge and *** across the Scottish plains or hills, or whatever they have in Scotland, or is he going to actually stop and renege and sort of come back from his murderous ways? Well, the line that you see here, where he's trying to decide what he's going to do with the blood on his hands---well, first of all listen to those words and tell me which words are Germanic and which words are Latinate. I'm going to read it again a little more slowly and you're going to tell me which words sound, to you, as though they're Latinate or Germanic. [reads passage]. (Dr. Hanlon). Well, I mean, two words jump out at me and the first word that jumps out at me is "incarnadine" because, I'll confess to you, I don't know what that means, and so that makes me sure that it's Latinate. The other word that jumps out to me is "blood", which I think is Germanic. (Dr. Wharram). "Blut," indeed, yes. Yeah, exactly. Well those are two very key words, in fact, those last two lines, "the multitudinous seas incarnadine"--well, first of all, what Macbeth is trying to decide is he going to wash his blood away with the ocean waters or is he going to make the ocean waters red with his blood, therefore be pouring more blood out into the ocean so we've got two possibilities. He's going to go with the latter, he's going to spill more blood and therefore, make an ocean of blood of all his murders. That's what he's going to do. Is he going to make "the multitudinous seas incarnadine"? Now the word incarnadine is connected to, say, the word carnation, which is a rather friendly word, a nice word, a pinkish-reddish flower generally. It just comes from the root "carna", from Latin meaning flesh or meat. (Dr. Hanlon). Carnivore. (Dr. Wharram). We seem to be fetishising meat in this podcast. And it means to turn red, to turn pink, to make something turn red. So, to make the seas red, which is what he says in the last line, he's saying the same thing twice. "My hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine", I want to make the seas red, which is what he says in the last line. (Dr. Hanlon). The whole line, I'm going to guess, is very Latinate because is multitudinous a Latinate word? (Dr. Wharram). Absolutely. Multitudinous is Latin. Polysyllabic words such as that usually tend to be Latinate in root in etymology. (Dr. Hanlon). Whereas "making the green one red", these are Saxon words, Germanic words. (Dr. Wharram). Right. So again, what does that tell us? What does that tell us? (Dr. Hanlon). Well, it makes this passage a lot more interesting to me because in a way it sounds like the competition between these two levels of English happening here. On the one hand, Latinate words describing the very same thing that the Germanic words are, in a way, plays out what this passage is about, right? Macbeth is saying can I wash this blood off my hands or will it have the opposite effect, right. (Dr. Wharram). That's very true. Yes, that's a wonderful reading and that is only really made possible through seeing this. It is also that "multitudinous seas incarnadine" is so abstract and so far away from the bodily image of making the green seas red with blood that it moves from being something that's intellectual and thoughtful into being something that's actually visceral, bodily. You can see the blood running and that would be played out on the stage by a good actor--as opposed to me reading it here--would be played out in such a way where you would see that on the stage. It goes from being a thought to an actual bodily action. And that's good enough for today. I think we've done plenty with etymology don't you, Yeoman Chris? (Dr. Hanlon). I do and I hope that our students will start using the OED if they aren't already. It's really easy, especially in this day and age and you can find out a lot of really interesting things about the words that make up the literary text we read. (Dr. Wharram). Thanks again, see you sometime soon. (Dr. Hanlon). See you again next time with The Close Reading Cooperative. [no dialogue].