Why Draconian Means Strict

Hello,

Despite writing about the history of words for 15 years, I still fall into the trap of assuming roots for words based purely on similarity of spelling. An example is this week’s word – draconian. I was convinced it was related to dragons. There is a tiny link, but no, we don’t get it from dragons.

This is Bashful the Dragon. He’s very gentle, hardly ever starts fires, and love pearls.

Draconian is used to describe rules, or laws, which are particularly harsh and we have the ancient Greeks to thank for this one. The Draconian Code was a set of laws created by Draco, an Athenian of the 7th century B.C. and they were noted for their severity. In a time when punishment didn’t exactly include community service or reduced sentences for good behaviour, they stood out. Nearly every violation of Draco’s code was a capital crime. Demades, the orator, said at the time that Draco’s code was written in blood.

It is possible that Draco wasn’t a real person and we have few biographical details, but he was the first person to provide Athens with written laws instead of the blood feuds in use prior to his efforts. Perhaps his draconian laws were kinder than what they replaced. One story recounts his tragic death. The tradition was to throw hats or cloaks onto the stage in approval. Apparently he was so approved that he suffocated beneath all the garments in a theatre in Aegina.

Regular readers of the blog will spot that draconian is hence an eponymous adjective, another one for edition two of “How To Get Your Name in the Dictionary” (my book about words borrowed from people’s names and placenames).

Draconian, despite coming from ancient times, wasn’t adopted into English until the 1700. Although they did have draconic from the 1600s with the same meaning. Draco is the Latinised form for the Greek name Drakon. Drakon’s name translated literally as sharp-sighted and this is where we get that small link to the dragons.

Dragon, originally spelled dragoun, arrived in English in the mid 1200s from Old French dragon and Latin draconem (huge serpent, dragon) from Greek drakon (serpent, giant seafish). Draco who composed those laws was basically called Dragon, a pretty scary name to have, unless it was a reference to his acute vision.

The source of drakon in Greek was drak (to see clearly) and ultimately a Proto Indo European root derk (to see) which provides related words in Sanskrit, Old Irish (adcondarc – I have seen), Gothic, Old High German, and Albanian.

This would seem to imply that dragons had particularly good eyesight. The young of dragons were called dragonets (c. 1300) and there was a female form – dragoness (1630s). Sometimes they were called drakes from the same roots. Despite our more recent concept of a dragon being airborn and breathing fire the word itself is closely linked to sea monsters. I hope never to find out the truth of the matter via practical experience!

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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