Mind your language
Mind your language
Wednesday, 11th April 2007
I’ve been reading with unexpected pleasure The First English Dictionary (Bodleian, £12.99), an edition of a list of 2,500 ‘hard usual English words’ compiled by Robert Cawdrey and published in 1604.
He intended his book for ‘Ladies, Gentlewomen or any other unskilful persons’. The result is uneven. It would have been kinder of him not to give the meaning of carminate as ‘to card wool’, for even in his day it meant ‘to cause to break wind’ (the etymological reason being that medicine combed out wind as you’d comb wool). Aldous Huxley makes a joke in Crome Yellow of a poet who writes a line ‘And passion carminative as wine’, unaware of the true meaning, but that wasn’t Cawdrey’s fault.
Anyway, if those unskilful persons had not have heard that cider was a ‘drink made of apples’, surely they’d have learnt in church that cherubin is an ‘order of angels’, or heard that a cowslip was a ‘hearbe’.
More articles from: Dot Wordsworth | this section
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
Popular Blogger Posts
sponsored links
GASCONY
GASCONY, SW France, near Condom-en-Armagnac 13th Century stone house, 21st Century luxury for 12 in 5 en-suites. 50 acres +
BIG SAND STEEL BAND
IF YOU ARE PLANNING A CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION and looking for some light entertainment, you can now hire London's busiest steel
BOSC LEBAT, Tarn et Garonne.
BOSC LEBAT, SW France. Only 45 minutes from Toulouse Airport with daily flights from most provincial airports avoiding the horrors
Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine
Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2009 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved
Be the first to comment on this article!
Back to top