Pirate Billie (you'll see the relevance later) and I are delighted to bring you John Dierdorf as a guest. I've know John for a long time through our mutual admiration of Dorothy Dunnett, but he's also a reader of historical romance who's been entertaining my chat list for years with his interest in the meanings and derivation of words, especially in a historical context. If you think that sound dry, boy are you wrong.
So, heeeeeeeeeeeers John! In his own words. *G*
The Words, They are a-Changing
The Regency was only 200 years ago, and we tend to think that the English language of 1800 was more or less like ours — certainly nothing like the changes from Shakespeare's time, let alone Chaucer's. A surprising number of our words didn't exist in 1800, however; I have a whole list of them on my web page. Some are very innocent-looking: "switch", for example. It is railroad slang from the 1830's and had no
meaning except a slender wooden branch before then. Several color words are from 1850 or later — magenta, tangerine, ecru, beige. The first use of "sex" to mean "sexual relations" — have sex, great sex, and so on — was in the 1920's. (Not surprisingly, the first recorded user of this sense was D.H. Lawrence.) Intransigent is from 1880. Flamboyant, 1870. There were no orphanages until about 1850; before that they were orphan asylums or foundling homes.
Amusingly, some common words and phrases in Regency Romances have evidently never existed in English. Georgette Heyer was not above making up a plausibly archaic expression now and then, and some of her coinages are now part of what Jo calls "Prinnyworld". For example, "town bronze", "barque of frailty", "bit of muslin", and "first stare" [of fashion] were unknown before Heyer's books. "Delope" in a Georgian or Regency also is due to Heyer; it was recorded once in about 1830 and then not until her novels in the 1950's. "Widgeon" has the opposite history. The last recorded instance of calling a silly person a widgeon was in 1741; the word was completely unknown in Georgian and Regency speech. Heyer used it frequently, though.
(Jo: A widgeon is actually a bird, though whether it's stupid or not as birds go, I don't know. I borrowed this image from this page. Another bird there is a coot, which could be a male widgeon, perhaps?)
Even more insidiously, quite a few words have changed meaning, so that a phrase could be perfectly correct in its historical context but make a modern reader get the wrong idea. Here are a few examples of sentences from a hypothetical 19th-century novel which would cause most present-day readers to jump.
• Lord Redstart was so fastidious he would only drink wine which had been defecated by his butler.
(It meant to purify or remove sediment.)
• The governess reported to Lady Redstart that her four-year-old daughter had a spectacular orgasm that morning.
(Until the 20th century it meant "fit of passion" with no sexual connotation. In modern terms the little girl threw a tantrum.)
• Everyone knows that Prime Minister Disraeli and Cardinal Newman are perverts.
(A pervert was a religious apostate — a convert seen from the rear.)
• Sir Walter Scott wrote stirring romances about the Albanians.
(No, Loretta, you were not the first. :) Well into the 1800's, an Albanian meant either a resident of Scotland (Albion, Latin Alba) or of the Adriatic country. A romance was an adventure novel until about 1920.)
• Lady Redstart has extremely enormous eyes.
(It meant "unusual" — she had mismatched eyes, one emerald green and one brown.)
• In the parlor, Miss Andrews performed a song which consisted mainly of expletives.
(An expletive is a filler word — tra, la, la and so on. She was singing "Deck the Halls".)
• The vicar's sermon was on one of the most improper passages of the Bible.
(Improper meant metaphorical; the text was the 23rd Psalm. Pilgrim's Progress is an extremely improper novel.)
• The governess informed the countess that she had very measly children.
(You got it — they had the measles.)
• Lord Redstart threatened the highwayman with his dick.
(You have a very dirty mind; it meant a riding whip until about 1900.)
• Lady Redstart's head protruded from an embroidered velvet toilet while her maid dressed her hair.
(A toilet was a small decorative cloth; it's more recognizable if spelled "towelette".)
• The noted sportsman Sir S------ was killed by an enraged bugle. He had been distracted by several muskets flying overhead.
(A bugle was a wild ox, while a musket was a small hawk.)
• The countess was horrified to see a midget sitting in the parlor and ordered a footman to kill it.
(Until the late 19th century, it was a small fly -- a midge-ette.)
• Viscount C----- is no longer admitted to polite society for having demoralized a girl he met at Almack's. It is even rumored he is an amphibian.
(In Regency times, demoralize didn't mean lower the morale, it meant lower the morals; to debauch or corrupt. Amphibious is straight Greek for "double life", and the implication was that he was bisexual.)
• Miss Andrews looked delicate, but she could tackle a horse.
(It meant to saddle; c.f. "tack".)
Over time, I have built up a book-length web page on English word origins. Click here to visit. You are welcome to check it out if only to find out how "porcelain" comes from a Latin obscenity connected to pigs, how pencil is the same word as penicillin, and how Guinevere came to share a syllable with a
penguin.
'll finish up this little essay with the following quote, which I leave as an exercise for the reader to translate into modern English. It looks like the start of a Monty Python routine, but I promise it is a perfectly serious sentence:
"The terrific pirate brandished a naked brown sable he had withdrawn from his vagina, while the rest of his bloodthirsty tangerines advertised their pernicious trombones."
Jo: Thank you, John. That's wonderful.
Now, have a go at that paragraph, folks. Those of you from my list can't play, because you know the translation, but please do participate in all other ways.
Have you come across words in historicals and wondered if they were appropriate for the time and place? Or simply wondered about the origins of a odd one. Here's your chance to find out. As a reader, how important is it for writers to get the words right, or
do you prefer language that's more comfortable for you? Would you, for example, rather have
characters talk about having sex, even though it's an anachronism, or
have them mention carnal intimacy, or use terms like swiving or
tupping?
I'm offering a book as prize to the most interesting or entertaining comment to John's blog. This will be a completely subjective decision made by John and me late tomorrow -- Thursday-- night. The prize will be an Advance Reading copy of the April reissue of two of my traditional regency romances -- The Fortune Hunter and Deirdre and Don Juan. I'm sure they're jam-packed with anachronisms and such. I know so much more now. Enough to terrify a writer, really.
You can read excerpts on my web page. For links, Read my newsletter here.
Jo