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Etymology gleanings for December 2020 and January 2021

There were no gleanings in December, not because the soil was frozen hard but because of the break in the world’s activities during the holiday season. Except for the most recent post (idioms from India), my winter posts were devoted to the names of baby animals. Such names often defy etymologists’ efforts, because they are so simple: kid, cub, bunny, and so forth. They seem to be (and probably are) “rootless”: just arbitrary syllables (some say cub, some say cob, while others prefer cat or bun). Most surfaced in print late and refer to several creatures. They resemble or really are baby words. Perhaps some of them were indeed coined only three or four hundred years ago (language creativity never stops), but they could equally well be three or four thousand years old. That is why I wrote that impulses behind word formation never change. This statement surprised one of our readers. However, if we assume that most “natural” words are, at least to some degree, sound-symbolic and/or sound-imitative (onomatopoeic), such monosyllabic complexes as kob, kab, keb, kub, kid, kat, and their likes must have arisen again and again in the course of language history, even if every time they were tied to different objects.

Another reader said that everything in creation and in language begins with sounds. Who will disagree? But both God and the Devil are in the details. I often refer to the works to the Swiss etymologist Wilhelm Oehl, whose works are full of what is called thought-provoking statements, but a bird’s-eye view is good only for the origin of huge groups of words, dealt with in one fell swoop. Nostratic linguistics, a branch of etymology developed by knowledgeable and talented scholars, has discovered such obvious ties among the words of seemingly unconnected language groups that the idea of their common origin suggests itself. But many details, those great spoilers, remain unexplained. My tireless Romanian colleague Ion Carstoiu has collected numerous lists of words showing that the same idea underlies the names of certain objects all over the world (the sun, for example), but every time I look at the recorded history of the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic words I happen to know, I find a host of unanswered questions. Our regular correspondence goes many years back.

Here are two examples inspired by the comments of our readers. English calf resembles the Arabic (I should add: Common Semitic) word for “dog.” As mentioned several weeks ago, this is a well-known fact. The reconstructed proto-root kwalb- ~ kwelb- will easily produce both the Semitic words and English calf and whelp. Those interested in this connection and in many others of the same type will find pages and pages of interesting examples in, for example, Albert Cuny’s book Invitation à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes et des langues chamito-sémitiques, 1946 (the dog–whelp–calf connection is on p. 110/4; providentially, I once indexed this book for my purposes). If this root existed, did it mean “something round”? Perhaps, though we may be dealing with a migratory word, rather than a common root. The Semitic-Indo-European connection has been explored in many pre- and post-1946 books.

A quarrel of etymological siblings. (Images by L: Miguel Ángel Díaz Magister, R: Daniel Lincoln.)

Another reader wondered whether globe belongs here. Quite possibly so. Globe is a Romance word, related to Latin glēba (the source of English glebe), from the earlier glaeba. The root is believed to have meant “to roll up into a ball; to stick together.” English clump (from German) and cleave “to stick fast” seem to belong here too. The more words we include, the vaguer the contours of the picture become.

A bunny of unknown origin. (Image by Erik-Jan Leusink.)

This conclusion is borne out by trying to discover the origin of English bun(ny), which aroused the curiosity of one of our constant readers. My favorite statement about this word will be found in Henry Cecil Wyld’s The Universal Dictionary of the English Language: “Suggested etymologies appear improbable and to be mere desperate shots.” People of Wyld’s, Walter W. Skeat’s, and James A. H. Murray’s caliber could afford such statements, but hardly anyone else. Bunny is of course bun with a diminutive suffix. The entire bun-/bin– group is an etymological nightmare. Bun “a sweet bread” turned up in English texts in the fourteenth century. Then comes our animal name. At first, that is, in the sixteenth century, it meant “squirrel” (as it still sometimes does in American English), but now it mainly refers to the rabbit. Origin unknown. The same word as bun “bread”? When one deals with monosyllabic complexes, there is a suspicion that we have found chance coincidences. Bunch, along with hunch (as in hunchback) and dialectal clunch, is obscure. Bunt “to push” and bunt “part of a sail” fare no better. Bung is from Dutch, but the Dutch word has doubtful antecedents. Icelandic bunga means “swelling” and is a borrowing from Low German, but it is related to several words beginning with bing– and having the same meaning. And what about binge? There is dialectal binge “to soak a wooden vessel.” It is anybody’s guess whether binge (“heavy drinking”), which emerged from slang, is related to this binge.

The prototypical bun? (Image by Florian Klauer.)

Why did Dickens call Oliver Twist’s tyrant Bumble? He may have associated this embodiment of pomposity with the idea of being inflated. But what word suggested this association to him? Or did he think of bumblebee, a pernicious buzzer? (The word bumblebee developed from humblebee!) Sound-imitative? Incidentally, English bun also means “a dry stalk,” a cognate, a twin, or a borrowing of Irish bun “stock, root.” These are wanderings in an etymological desert, unless we give up and say that the sound complex bun (with the variants bum, bin, and a few others like them) made speakers think of rotundity, swelling, or a dull sound (thud) and produced similar words in the Germanic, Celtic, and Romance languages. Thus may the names of rabbits, sweet bread, and other objects have come into being. Such a conclusion will perhaps satisfy our reader who asked why so many sn– and sk– words tend to refer to similar concepts. See also the post for May 1, 2019 and the post on snout—sniff—sneeze. Returning to the beginning of today’s essay, let me repeat: this is what I meant by the eternal impulses of word formation and why I referred to Wilhelm Oehl with his idea of elementary, or primitive, creation. But in any case, the possibility of multiple borrowing by English from French or Celtic is always open.

To some of the letters I replied privately. Greek koutabi “cub” is, apparently, a post-Classical noun and a coinage not related to cub. But one question I cannot answer. English plum is an etymological doublet of prune, because Latin prūn-um is the source of this word in all the Germanic languages. The change of final n to m is usually referred to assimilation: initial p is labial, and now final m is also labial (moderately convincing; the same holds for the suggested influence of the Greek form proûmno). Surprisingly, not a single historical grammar or etymological dictionary explains the much more visible change, namely of pr– to pl-. Dutch has pruim (a similar form occurs in some German dialects)! But German (Pflaume) and all the Scandinavian languages have pl– (Old Icelandic plōma, and so forth). The same variation (r ~ l) has been occasionally recorded elsewhere. Thus, the German for “church” is Kirche, but in some southern dialects, the form is Kilche. Naturally, an analogy does not explain anything. The statement that r and l often substitute for each other will not account for the history of the word plum as related to prune either. Perhaps some of our readers will offer an explanation!

Feature image via Pixabay

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Joseph Riepel and a very long hello

Joseph Riepel’s celebrated music theory treatise, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, unfolds in a lively and witty manner. Most of its chapters are framed in the guise of lessons, presented as dialogues between a teacher and student. The teacher is a bit of a goofball who peppers the lessons with numerous sarcastic asides, often at the expense of mathematically oriented music theorists whose approaches he finds too dry and inartistic. The student is no mere pushover, and on numerous occasions challenges the opinions of the teacher. Through such means, Riepel suggests that the art of music is best learned not via scientific formulas, but through examining and questioning various compositional possibilities.

The opening of the treatise’s second chapter (first published in 1755) is emblematic of Riepel’s writing style. At the start of this lesson, the student declares an eagerness to forgo flowery salutations so to start the session without wasting time. As he puts it, “Greetings, Gutenmorgensagen (‘expressions-of-good-morning’), and Seitderzeitherimmermitleibundseelwohlaufgewesen­zusey­nanwünschen(‘wishesfromtimeimmemorial­forhealthofbodyandsoul’ [!]) are indeed all well and good—but mostly as empty courtesies; from now on let’s start by getting right down to business.” Ironically, while insisting that he desires to avoid wasting time with verbose preliminaries, the student inadvertently wastes time with a verbose preliminary!

The teacher wryly comments that the ornate, run-on word invoked by the student (“Seitderzeit…&c.”) is customary for the writing style of mathematical treatises—that is, the very style toward which the teacher emphatically turns his nose. In introducing this absurdly long word at the outset of the chapter, Riepel thereby also hints at something else to be avoided: namely, long streams of thought that are strung together without being properly clarified through punctuation. But as was seen in the student’s introductory remarks, avoiding such run-on thoughts is easier said than done. In music, as in language, arranging one’s thoughts in a focused manner requires training and skill.

The chapter’s ensuing discussions examine at length how musical works can be effectively organized with the aid of tonal articulations. To this end, the teacher and student explore how a proper ordering of such articulations can help structure compositions of various lengths, from short minuets to expansive symphony movements. They also discuss a number of expressive devices, such as the judicious use of contrasting themes, boisterous passages, and cantabile melodies that can help spice up a composition. The sample works that accompany Riepel’s treatise suggest that these types of expressive passages could be expected to appear almost anywhere within the middle of a movement.

The fluid formal placement of such expressive passages is well reflected in the music of the time—that is, the music of the so-called Galant era, which extended until around 1780. In contrast, toward the last two decades of the eighteenth century, the specific placement of thematic materials according to their character began to play a central role in the formal organizations of compositions. This new attitude toward musical form was recognized in a forward looking, though now largely forgotten treatise penned by Franz Christoph Neubauer around 1783. Instead of discussing form in relation to a series of tonal articulations, as did Riepel, Neubauer seemed to privilege the character of passages as a primary factor in shaping a movement.

Neubauer’s descriptions mirror what is now generally understood as the prototypical layout for sonata-form movements. The types of formal strategies he discussed were to become standard in many post-1780 works, by composers such as Wolfgang Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Eventually, these strategies would serve as the basis for discussions of sonata-form structure put forth by many subsequent generations of music commentators. Even works from the Galant era ultimately would be analyzed in the light of these more progressive formal concepts—albeit with decidedly mixed results. This is witnessed most notably in discussions of the music of Joseph Haydn, who is arguably the most famous Galant composer and whose treatment of form is frequently cited as being quirky.

To be sure, Haydn’s music is often quirky—but not necessarily for reasons that are often mentioned. If one views his music in reference to other pieces composed around the same era, however, and more in line with formal descriptions offered by Riepel and other theorists from around the same time, many of the supposedly odd features of Haydn’s formal treatment may actually be understood to be rather conventional. A proper understanding of what is stylistically normal in his music in turn can help better highlight those features in works by Haydn that are truly daring and innovative.

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A Q&A with composer Becky McGlade

In this occasional series, we ask Oxford composers questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges. We asked Becky McGlade to tell us a bit about preparing to begin writing a new pieces, how she spends her days, and which musical influences have inspired her.

How do you prepare yourself to begin a new piece?

Once I’ve chosen a text, I warm up my voice and sing a bit of an aria or something—usually by Bach!—which seems to help to get the creative juices flowing! Then I begin to explore ideas at the piano. Usually lots of snippets of melodies will emerge and I try to jot them down quickly before I forget them. Occasionally an entire melody will spring to mind—it’s nice when that happens but it doesn’t often!

Sometimes I try out various chords first, maybe just two or three, to create an idea of the mood of the piece. At this point I’m often totally unsure of which ideas to go for so I’ll go away and do something different for a while and come back later. Generally, when I return to the piano, one or two ideas will have “stuck” and I’ll go with those. I think one thing I’ve got better at over the years is making a decision to go with an idea. I used to procrastinate and hated dispensing with anything just in case it was “inspired”! Interestingly, it’s often the first idea that came to mind that I end up pursuing.

What does a typical day in your life look like?

I don’t really have a “typical” day—they’re nicely varied. I do some piano and cello teaching and quite a lot of cello playing so there are often things I’m practising for, or rehearsals to attend. Some things are routine however. My faith is important to me and I always begin the day with a devotional time. That’s nearly always followed by scrambled eggs on toast while grappling with the cryptic crossword! (I’m slightly addicted to puzzles and usually have several on the go!)

I’ll often go for a short run after that before going to the piano and spending time on whatever piece I’m working on. I’m definitely a “mornings” person and find inspiration flows much better in the early hours. Evenings are often busy, but on a free evening I love to cosy up with my husband and watch a film or an episode of the old 1980s “All creatures great and small”—probably my favourite series!

What do you do when you’re not composing?

I’m so blessed to live in a beautiful part of Cornwall and I love to relax by cycling or walking. On a day off, my husband and I often set off with a big picnic and flask and see where our legs or wheels take us! We’ve walked all 620 or so miles of the South West Coast Path over the last few years and are thinking of starting it again.

Do you treat your work as a 9-5 job, or compose when you feel inspired?

Because of other commitments, I don’t treat composing as a 9-5 job. However, I do try to spend some time every day working on music and certainly don’t wait to “feel” inspired. Often, I feel very uninspired when I sit at the piano, but as I force myself to get stuck into it, inspiration will usually begin to flow. If it doesn’t, I’ll get stuck into a pile of ironing or a piece of cheese on toast instead and come back later!

What or who has influenced you most in your life as a composer?

I was fortunate enough to rehearse daily with the Truro cathedral choristers from the age of 8 to 13 in the days before girl choristers. I can’t recall why I was allowed, but I think I always arrived early at school so the headmaster thought it would be a good idea! This fostered in me a love for choral music and for singing, which has continued throughout my life. The music I’ve sung in choirs has probably been the most influential to me as a composer, along with music I’ve played as a cellist or pianist, or just listened to time and again! Bach, Handel, Howells, Stanford, Parry, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, MacMillan, Dove, etc…the list is endless!

What would be your desert island playlist?

Rachmaninoff, Symphony No.2; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5; The Beatles, “Revolver”, to remind me of car journeys with my dad, everyone singing along; Genesis, “Trick of the Tail”, to remind me of car journeys with my husband, both of us singing along!

Featured image: St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall by Tim Hill

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Why we can be cautiously optimistic for the future of the retail industry

Before COVID-19 struck with such vengeance, the retail industry globally was already in a state of accelerated and highly disruptive change, enabled by the transformative impacts of technology in general and digital connectivity in particular. This was changing how shoppers around the world wanted to shop as well as the possibilities for retailers to engage with shoppers in previously unimaginable ways—most notably by the internet, of course.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant lockdowns are changing the retail industry globally at a pace which could not have been imagined before the pandemic struck. Nowhere is this more evident than in the sharp acceleration in shoppers’ enthusiasm to do even more of their shopping online. One of the defining features of the pandemic in its early stages was the extreme difficulty that shoppers in many countries faced in booking scarce delivery slots to buy their groceries online in an environment where visiting physical stores was either not possible or not considered to be safe by many. At one point, the UK’s Ocado online food shopping business had a waiting list of 1 million potential customers. Many of the world’s leading grocery retailers responded at very impressive speed in adding far more capacity into their online shopping operations and, in the process, addressing shoppers’ concerns for safe and available supplies of basic items.

Across retailing as a whole, the flight to online as a preferred shopping channel has taken place at extraordinary speed. It took well over 10 years for online sales in the UK to grow to around 20% of total retail sales, and just a few months for them to increase by a further 50% to account for a third of all retail sales. Other countries have experienced similar transformations.

It seems highly unlikely that shoppers will revert to their pre-pandemic behaviours even, it must be hoped, after mass vaccination allows for a return to the personal freedoms that were previously taken for granted. While it is certainly possible to imagine shoppers wanting to return to some stores for some of their purchases, the concerns for personal safety as well as convenience that drove the accelerated migration to online shopping seem certain to be maintained. Neither is this confined to basic needs categories of retailing. In new car buying, 60% of German shoppers said that they would be more likely to buy a car online even after physical dealerships were allowed to reopen, for example.

The consequences for retail businesses are profound indeed. Around the world, some very large and long-established retail enterprises have collapsed into bankruptcy or else are trying to restructure within some form of bankruptcy protection. Fashion retailers and department stores are being especially severely impacted. Of course, many of these retail enterprises had, in the phrase du jour, “underlying health issues” before the pandemic struck. Health issues in the form of some combination of insupportably high levels of debt, inability to change at the pace that their customers were changing, and perhaps also a failure of leadership and imagination to see that the old, hierarchical, and inflexible business models were simply not fit for purpose in a world where customers and technology are transforming at such speed.

“amidst the turmoil and dislocation, there are substantial opportunities for reinvention”

The knock-on effects of the present disruption in the retail industry globally are significant and will be felt for a long time to come. Many frontline shop workers will lose their jobs as the stores that they used to work in are no longer needed. Property owners playing host to large estates of retail stores are being financially impacted as retailers exit their stores and cannot afford to pay the rents on the ones which are left, and some major property groups have collapsed already. The vibrancy as well as the commercial viability of traditional town centres will be challenged by the exit of large swathes of retail stores. When town and shopping centres lose their department store “anchor” tenants, the small independent retailers which add colour and vitality often fail also as overall attractiveness declines and foot traffic dwindles. And no longer are urban planners and property owners able to assume that other retailers will be queuing up to fill the space vacated by those which are closing stores.

But amidst the turmoil and dislocation, there are substantial opportunities for reinvention also. Individual stores will need to be far more interesting and engaging if shoppers are to be persuaded to return to them. Expect to see more, not less, effort being put into improving the physical environment of those retail stores which remain. More available space also means more opportunities to grow and flourish for new independent retailers which have always been the lifeblood of innovation in the retail industry. Retailers can and are creating new ways to engage with shoppers which meet their needs for safety as well as convenience through their online operations, sometimes integrated into their physical stores, sometimes not. Those tasked with creating urban environments that are attractive to people to visit and live in have opportunities also, provided they have the creativity to think expansively about what an urban centre could be rather than purely what it historically has been, as well as a planning environment that enables changes to be made in the use of space.

While it is invidious to produce league tables of the mayhem that the pandemic has wrought on different sectors of economic activity, there can be no doubt that the retail sector has been more structurally and more immediately impacted than many others. The challenges that the industry faces are profound indeed and the pain is already much in evidence. Yet there are persuasive reasons to be hopeful that we are in the early stages of seeing this most people-centric of sectors transforming in ways which are far better aligned to the new needs of shoppers and to the environments in which they find themselves.

Featured image by @rupixen

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Is the “distant sociality” and digital intimacy of pandemic life here to stay?

Pandemic life has underscored how digital technology can foster intimate connections. As citizens of a world that suddenly feels both more alienated and radically—dangerously—connected, the term “social distancing” has been added to many of our vocabularies. Yet a corollary of this dire necessity is new energy and renewed focus on a mode of interaction that, with greater or lesser uptake between individuals, has been growing in prominence for at least three decades: “distant sociality.” By this I don’t mean driveway conversations with neighbours or six-meter-apart walks with in-laws in parks—though we’ve been doing a lot of those too—but the kind of sociality at a distance that digital culture enables. From “locktails” over Zoom, to hosting professional conferences in Online Towns, to using videogame spaces such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Twitch streams for new functions, such as holding cancelled weddings, celebrating birthday parties, and even US 2020 election campaigning, the pandemic has pitched many of us into an intensity of digital intimacy previously more familiar to folks like gamers, fanfiction writers, and tweens.

Digital intimacy is not new. Almost from the beginning of networked computing, programmers used it for social functions. The first email was sent in 1972. Pre-internet spaces, such as the ARPANET and Minitel, and later early-internet ones, such as Usenet, BBSs (Bulletin Board System/Services), and IRC (Internet Relay Chat), opened up channels where people could begin to share lives, documents, ideas, passions, and pursuits at a distance. And the creation of more persistent text-based online spaces such as MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons/Domains) and their progeny in the early 70s/80s, combined with the rise of the World Wide Web in the 90s and the ability to browse, search, and share increasingly complex media—images, sounds, video, live-video, streaming media, 3D multiplayer gaming, and VR experiences—made digital worlds and online intimate connections vibrant and lively locales of culture. They have been the objects of study and the stakes of lawsuits, such as J. K. Rowling’s public feud with the website Harry Potter Lexicon over copyright infringement. Some of these online spaces, such as Facebook and YouTube, have garnered such societal prominence that we can consider them platforms, and have accrued an almost infrastructural importance. Others might be ephemeral, such as the evaporative one-to-one conduits on Snapchat, where many—and not just teens and tweens—maintain and nourish their social connections or even send sexy selfies to each other. Other others might be notorious, such as Parler and Gab, fora of choice for alt-right and white supremacist discourse-sharing. Some are so niche they may only be known to select communities, e.g., devotees of particular videogames, or may arise in highly local or personal settings, e.g., church group listservs, Fam Jamz text chains, or my dear aunt’s funeral livestreamed from Australia—an event I would never have been able to attend otherwise.

“Distant sociality is a lifeline, and often the lifeblood of our pandemic social worlds.”

But regardless of their provenance, it is undeniable that, due to social distancing, we are leaning on the intimacies afforded by digital spaces now more than ever. Distant sociality is a lifeline, and often the lifeblood of our pandemic social worlds. For example, one could look at how it has transformed academic life. While I’ve previously discussed how Facebook networks among academics can support us in our careers, these days social media connections with colleagues and the occasional chat on the margins of ubiquitous Zoom meetings are vital links to professional community. While ever-present email and messaging apps continue familiar roles, it is these sustained connections and conversations, with the ability to share humour and news, see pets and faces, that make the pandemic seem surmountable.

Our regular spaces of informal interaction are also transformed. With hallway chats and conference coffee breaks on hiatus, we are doubling down on our digital interconnections. Novel experimentation is welcomed. At the recent online conference for the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), the organizers spun a wealth of new media savvy into various forms of digital engagement. In addition to roundtables over Zoom, there were pre-recorded talks over YouTube, with discussion fora. There were livestreamed social events, such as a well-attended pub quiz series and exuberant Zoom karaoke. The centrepiece was the AoIR Social Town: a virtual village using Gather Town software that looked like a cross between a Japanese RPG and a Zoom meeting. Within this town were digital versions of the Irish pubs we would have haunted if the conference had been in Dublin as planned, that you could navigate as tiny customizable sprites to attend launches, visit a virtual bookfair (with reps from publishing houses in attendance), or have one-on-one and group chats, which would pop up as tiny video-feed windows when you approached others or sat at a virtual table.

With other forms of sociality stripped away or eroded, digital intimacies have been taking centre stage, and as a result, new people are finding them—who knew my dad in Long Term Care and unvisitable could learn to use FaceTime at 86 years old?—and those already proficient are often leading the way or deepening their engagements. One thing is certain: even post-pandemic, if such a thing is conceivable, distant sociality is not going anywhere.

 Featured image by Charles Deluvio

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The Black Death: how did the world’s deadliest pandemic change society?

Conspiracy theories abound that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory, although history provides a number of examples of global pandemics caused by a pathogen crossing over from mammals to humans. The best example is the Black Death of 1346-53, which killed around one half of the population of the known world and caused global economic output to fall by perhaps 40%. The sudden change in the behaviour of this disease was linked directly to a sustained period of extreme weather and major climatic change, to heightened levels of global trade, and to over-population and impoverishment. Sound familiar?

The first outbreak of the Black Death was—still is—the worst pandemic and catastrophe inflicted upon humanity in recorded history. We can only imagine the terror, suffering, pain, and incomprehension it caused. Even worse, it recurred frequently over the next three centuries before finally disappearing from Britain in the 1660s and France in the 1720s. As the COVID-19 pandemic flares in 2021, we might wonder about the long-term socio-economic effects of epidemic disease. It may be a surprise to learn, then, that the age of the Black Death proved to be a major watershed in human history, by triggering a range of institutional and social changes that opened up the route to liberal and commercial modernity.

While all of the known world had to cope with a heavy pandemic burden between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, coping mechanisms and levels of social and economic resilience varied greatly. On the one hand, Ireland regressed to how it had been in the 1150s and the decay of the Nile irrigation system caused the wealth and economy of Mamluk Egypt to collapse. On the other hand, some regions of northwest Europe shed their “feudal” structures and became recognisably “modern.” England was a feudal society and economic laggard when the Black Death first arrived, but by the 1660s it was one of the most advanced economies in the world.

Thus, in the long run, similar demographic experiences resulted in dramatically different social and economic outcomes. Pandemics are catastrophes for some and opportunities for others. What explains the difference? Inevitably, the answer to that question is very complex and highly contested.

Responses to the initial outbreaks of disease in England were decisive, although by c.1400 there was still little to suggest that its long-term trajectory would be exceptional. Indeed, the 1350s and 1360s had been very uncertain and volatile, due to an unprecedented combination of major plague epidemics in 1361 and 1369, repeated epizootics among animals, and extreme weather conditions. Crucially, though, these two decades also witnessed dramatic changes.

The government introduced radical and novel legislation in 1351 to regulate the markets for labour and foodstuffs, the first occasion when the state had intervened at a moment of national crisis to protect the welfare of the populace. Its initial policies were neither equitable, successful, nor popular, but they established the state as a standing authority in areas of social policy and laid the foundations for the systemic relief of the poor, which by the seventeenth century helped to eradicate famine from England.

The old, creaking system of serfdom rapidly decayed under the sudden shock of worker and tenant shortages, to be displaced by more contractual arrangements in the land and labour markets. This happened quicky, well before the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, indicating that commercial forces were already more powerful than the residual coercive powers of lordship under feudalism. Consequently, factor markets became more commercialised, and the result was a rapid reduction in wealth inequality and a rise in GDP per head.

Chronic labour shortages also encouraged women to seek employment, which in turn may have resulted in a delay in the average age at marriage, increased fertility control, and the birth of the western nuclear family. By the 1360s greater disposable income among the lower orders of society was already fuelling a mini consumer revolution, exemplified by the increased consumption of better food and clothing. It was associated with a shift to employment in manufacturing and services. In the 1380s the percentage of the English workforce in industrial employment was far higher than in much of eastern Europe in the 1680s.

Over the next two centuries these initial changes were consolidated, refined, and reinforced to varying degrees, so that England was well placed to adapt when, after 1500, the population eventually began to recover again. Its particular institutional and legal structure had mediated the impact of epidemic disease in ways that changed social relations, opened up factor markets, and discouraged the reimposition of serfdom.

The Black Death did not determine the course of history, but it did shift the existing paradigm radically and create the opportunity for parts of northwest Europe to industrialise eventually. Historians are now paying much more attention to the role of nature—whether tiny pathogens or vast climate systems—in explaining the trajectory of human development. Understanding the Black Death also underlines the inter-disciplinary nature of history, and, in the face of COVID-19, the subject’s continuing fascination and importance.

Featured image: Dr. Schnabel of Rome, a Plague Doctor in 1656 Paul Fuerst Copper engraving, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons .

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Language contact and idioms: out of India

My explanatory and etymological dictionary of English idioms is now in the publisher’s computer, and, most probably, I won’t discuss the material contained there until I find out whether the book has been accepted, but before that happens, I would like to touch on the subject mentioned in the title.

Though hundreds of proverbs are international, I included very few of them in the dictionary, because they seldom have “an etymology,” and describing their sources (Ovid, Cervantes, universal wisdom?) has never been my goal. Idioms are also sometimes borrowed, but much more rarely than proverbs and words. However, the overlap between English and French in this area is considerable. Familiar quotations from Classical Greek and Latin, to say nothing of the Bible, are taken for granted. A few idioms seem to have come from India, which is not surprising, considering how long British servicemen lived in that country. The Indian connection has rarely been discussed; yet it deserves a brief mention.

Henry Yule’s book Hobson-Jobson, an immortal monument to Indian British, reads like a novel; it contains both words and phrases. Many of them are “exotic” and may therefore be disregarded here. In principle, words reflecting the realities of a foreign land and tied to those realities present minimal interest abroad. Such Russian nouns as samovar, babushka (pronounced in English with a wrong stress and meaning what it does not mean in Russian), tsar, pogrom, or sputnik cannot be separated from their Russian context (that is, users never forget the word’s country of origin). Some words from India belong to the same sphere. Many people know the meaning of guru and pundit (even if they never use either), and even more have heard of yoga. Such words belong with samovar. They are messengers from abroad and retain their guest status.

Sir Henry Yule (by Theodore Blake Wirgman)

A borrowing is assimilated only when it loses its exotic tinge. Pogrom is of course from Russian, and no one will doubt it, but millions of people who have recently read and heard about thugs and looting will be surprised to hear that both thug and loot are words from India. As usual, several degrees of foreignness can be discerned: bungalow (which, from a historical point of view, means “belonging to Bengal”) is rather obviously Indian, while verandah is, I suspect, perfectly domesticated. And gazebo? This is a different story (refresh your Latin and think of placebo and especially of lavabo; in connection with the second of them remember that shampoo is also from India). As usual, the etymology of some words of the type mentioned above is controversial. For example, punch (the beverage) may be from India, but there are a few difficulties.

Perhaps the most interesting item in my collection of Indian and supposedly Indian phrases is that’s the cheese “that is the real thing,” known in print since 1840 and allegedly popularized by comedian David Rees. Its Anglo-Indian origin was suggested as early as 1864 and is now recognized by many authorities (though the OED says “probably”). Other explanations testify to the richness of people’s imagination and the power of folk etymology. An anecdote has often been repeated about a dimwitted boy who ate a piece of soap and thought it was cheese. Also, cheese in this phrase has been traced to a low courtesy made by whirling the gown or petticoats around until they are inflated like a balloon or resemble a large cheese. A witty Englishman has been conjured up, who instead of saying c’est une autre chose “that’s a different thing,” said that’s the cheese. The idea that cheese here is related to choose has nothing to recommend it either. For more details about this idiom and Rees see my blog for 24 December 2014.

I wonder whether anyone can today recognize the phrase brass knockers. My two citations for it go back to 1878. The phrase is apparently not in the OED. It means “the next day remains of a dinner party.” Both correspondents to Notes and Queries (such correspondents have been my faithful informants for decades) suggested that the phrase originated in Anglo-Indian from Hindustani basi “cold” and khana “food, dinner.” If this explanation (which on the face of it seems a bit strained) is correct, brass knockers is a typical example of Hobson-Jobson.

The only authentic brass knockers. (Images by dennisflarsen.)

Another seldom realized angle to a seemingly borrowed idiom exists. In the context of the present blog post, a good example is the inconspicuously looking phrase of sorts, “of a certain kind.” The OED has a record of it going as far back as 1597. The phrase, which Shakespeare used at least twice, need not always have had the depreciatory sense “of an inferior type,” because it often occurred in inventories. But here is the point. For some reason, this nearly meaningless idiom enjoyed great popularity in Anglo-Indian and possibly became familiar thanks to Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who liked to use it. Kipling’s ties to India need no proof (even those who know nothing about his life and political views will remember his Jungle Book), but—and this is not the first time I am mentioning this fact—today, few people realize how famous he was. Whether Kim or Captain Courageous, everybody who could read did read and remember his works. Before him, only Dickens enjoyed such popularity.

In the 1880s, the phrase indicated that the noun to which of sorts is appended was not understood too literally: it might be due to a lack of precise information on the part of the speaker or writer and was  frequently tacked on as “conversational garnish” of no very definite meaning, that is, of sorts was “a parasite,” like our modern you know, a marker of insecurity or even self-effacement (“I am saying it, but I don’t want to press the point: it is up to you to decide”). And also in the 1880s, of sorts was the latest slang at Cambridge! The phrase is “pure British,” but without its wide use in India, it may not have returned “home” with such success.

Cinderella is unabashed. (Image via Wikimedia Commons.)

And a final note on the differences between British and Anglo-Indian usage, as regards idioms and their popularity. To pull one’s leg “to trick, deceive” seems to be widely known. The phrase is late (no pre-1821 citations in the OED) and has an obvious slangy flavor. In my opinion, the existing explanations of its etymology (search for them on the Internet) don’t have a leg to stand on. Did this phrase ever have opprobrious connotations? Since the overtly sexual word leg (hear, hear!) was unpronounceable in the Victorian epoch and the euphemism limb was substituted for it, the idea of its origin among “the lower orders” or the “swells” who imitated them does not look too far-fetched. But even in 1913, few people in England knew it (it is sometimes called a Scotticism, but no evidence for this statement seems to have been presented). Yet as early as the 1870, the shocking idiom was widely used in India. Does it follow that some of the inhibitions prevalent in England did not spread to the colonies? And did the prince who married Cinderella pull too many legs before he found the bride who satisfied him?

On this immodest note, as stated earlier, my discussion of idioms will grind to a temporary halt, unless I receive questions and comments from our readers.

Featured image by Harikrishnan Mangayi

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Open Access – Episode 58 – The Oxford Comment [podcast]

Should academic research be available to everyone? How should such a flow of information be regulated? Why would the accessibility of information ever be controversial?

Our topic today is Open Access (OA), the movement defined in the early 2000s to ensure the free access to, and reuse of, academic research on the Internet. In 2004, Oxford University Press became the first publisher to transition a mature journal to OA, and OUP has been a leading publisher of OA journals ever since.

On this episode of The Oxford Comment, Rhiannon Meaden, a Senior Publisher for Journals at OUP, and Danny Altmann, editor-in-chief of Oxford Open Immunology, cover the basics of Open Access, OUP’s drive to disseminate academic research as widely as possible, and how easily-accessible research has impacted various academic fields around the world. This last fact is especially important as the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oxford Academic (OUP) · Open Access – Episode 58 – The Oxford Comment

 

Featured image by NASA ( CC0 via Unsplash).

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Safety first? Considering protest reasoning 10 years on from the Arab Spring

Ten years ago, masses marched to Midan Tahrir in Cairo, triggering a protest movement that resulted in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. “People are fed up of Mubarak and of his dictatorship and of his torture chambers and of his failed economic policies,” an Egyptian blogger told al-Jazeera at the time: “If Mubarak is not overthrown tomorrow then it will be the day after. If it’s not the day after it’s going to be next week.”

Ten years later, Mubarak is gone, but the country remains under the tight grip of a military leader, who recently extended his rule until 2030. Since April 2017, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has upheld a state of emergency which provides his security forces, known to terrorize political opponents and ordinary citizens, with unchecked power. In 2019, Human Rights Watch reported that 2,000 independent organizations have been shut down, including the Nadeem Centre for victims of torture and violence. In December 2020, the EU warned that the human rights situation in Egypt had deteriorated sharply over the last year, citing the arbitrary detainment of 4,000 citizens, imprisonment of 60,000 people on political grounds, the systematic enforced disappearance of political opponents, grave violations to the right to  life, and more.

In this climate, could we expect new mass protests to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Arab Spring? Based on interviews with participants and non-participants in the 2011 Egyptian and Moroccan uprisings, new research investigates the cognitive processes underlying the protests. The findings show that individuals joined the uprisings based on hot, positive emotions, which translated into protest decision with great speed. In contrast, decisions to stay at home were based on slow and cool reasoning processes focused on individual safety.

Safety considerations were so strong that they encouraged large numbers of people to abstain from the Arab Spring even if individuals approved of the protests and rejected the ruling regime. In the words of a non-participant: “When people are killed, we must be careful. There are more important things than protest: safety and stability.” On the other hand, positive emotions of courage to face the government, hope that protest would succeed, solidarity with other protestors, and national pride were major contributors to the Arab Spring. These emotions were themselves triggered by the successful mass uprisings in Tunisia, unprecedented numbers of protest at home, and fellow citizens sacrificing their lives to face violent state authorities.

The current situation does not display these emotional triggers, but countless grounds for safety concerns. Nevertheless, hot cognition and emotion-based reasoning happen fast, and researchers have observed that mass protests take off very suddenly, so that they “will unavoidably continue to catch the world by surprise.” When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, nobody would have anticipated the subsequent Arab Spring. Similar triggers will occur in the Arab world, with the potential of translating into new uprisings. In the words of a Moroccan participant of the Arab Spring: “I am convinced that totalitarianism will disappear. For me it is not a question if that will happen, but how that will happen.”

Featured image: Tahrir Square, by Jonathan Rashad (CC BY 2.0)

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Technology in the elementary music classroom after the pandemic

The pandemic will leave a lasting impression on music education for years to come. Even when the ending of the pandemic is finally in sight, music education will reel from the effects. When it comes to elementary music education, we thrived on incorporating ensemble performances using instruments from ukuleles to xylophones. We adored allowing our students to improvise using movements, chants, poetry, and instruments. We integrated cultural dances with social-emotional learning skills. When the pandemic hit, most of this was not possible anymore and we had to “reinvent the wheel” and teach in ways that we never thought possible.

One aspect that became a necessity was teaching with technology. Whether one was teaching remote, in-person with numerous restrictions, or hybrid, technology became a tool that was necessary for an elementary music educator to teach and communicate with their students. I witnessed teachers become proficient in an area that they never thought they could. Educators learned numerous learning management systems (LMS) such as MusicFirst, Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas, and Seesaw, so that they could make music with their students when they could no longer meet with them in-person. They mastered video communication tools like Zoom, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams so that they could work with their students in a more personable way. When they could no longer have their students perform together, they learned how to create a platform like Noteflight Learn, Soundtrap, Bandlab, or Flat.io, where the students could record and collaborate so that they could still perform in a way that created a virtual ensemble.

I witnessed elementary music educators use video editing apps and screen recording tools like Loom, Screencastify, Screencast-O-Matic, Flipgrid, and more, to create rhythm, percussion, and melodic play-along videos, as well as “follow the bouncy ball” videos, so students could continue to read, perform, and make music from their devices. I saw music educators find alternative ways for young students to create music by using Chrome Music Lab and Groove Pizza when they could no longer create music in traditional ways. When music educators were asked to assess their students, even if they were limited to meeting with them in-person or remotely, I saw educators use interactive platforms like Nearpod and Peardeck to gauge their students’ learning and progress. Finally, when students were not allowed to share instruments and educators could not use their acoustic instruments, I saw teachers find virtual instrument websites and code virtual instruments with Scratch so that their students could turn their 1:1 device into a musical instrument.

When this pandemic ends, many elementary music educators will embrace their traditional learning styles of playing acoustic instruments, performing folk and cultural dances together, playing in ensembles together, singing together, and so much more because we have been lacking that human connection to music. This should happen and it must. However, this does not mean that technology should be completely taken out of the elementary music classroom. Though we do not have to use technology every day after the pandemic ends, since the tool is more familiar with teachers and students, there are ways to use technology that can level up and benefit music-making with elementary students.

Continue to use the LMS that was set up. Those systems can be a great way to communicate with your students and your students’ caregivers about what they are learning in music class. Also, they become wonderful digital music portfolios that can follow the students as they grow throughout their school years. Finally, they can flip your music classroom so students can access it when they are at home.Utilize interactive tools such as Nearpod, Peardeck,  Google Forms , etc., to check in with students as exit tickets, pre- and post-tests, and assessment tools to gauge their progress and achievements.Make use of screen recording tools and video editing apps to create more digital resources for your students. You can create more rhythm, percussion, and melodic play-along videos that follow your curriculum and approach, as opposed to finding ones that are pre-made but do not coordinate with your teaching method. You can also place those videos on your students’ LMS so that they can access them from home and record themselves performing them.Have students use screen recording tools to record their reflections and music creations that they create with Chrome Music Lab or Groove Pizza. Students can use the screen recording tools to reflect on how they created a song and then share it with you. This gives you more insight into their thinking and their music-making process.If the budget allows, use the music collaboration platforms such as Noteflight Learn, Soundtrap, Bandlab, Flat.io, so that students can collaborate with various classes and grade levels. Level up their music creation skills by having students in different grade levels collaborate to compose a song.

Those are just some of the ways that technology can continue to enhance the elementary music classroom after the pandemic ends. Technology can be a useful and wonderful tool when used in a way that can enhance music-making in ways that traditional methods might not have been able to in the past.

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