WHAT’S IN A WORD?

by James Lincoln Warren

Etymology is the study or description of how words evolve. Its own etymology starts with the Greek etymon, meaning the literal sense, or “true” meaning of a word as opposed to its figurative applications. There has been some discussion of the word gothic here lately, so let me use it to illustrate what is meant. The etymon of gothic is “of, pertaining to, or concerned with the Goths or their language”, where the Goths were the a late-classical-period Germanic tribe. All the other meanings, including “of, or pertaining to, or concerned with vampiric teen-agers and their fetishes”, proceed from that original sense.

The second half of etymology, the “-logy” part, is derived from the ever-popular logos, in its original form meaning simply “word”. “Logos” is the root of logia, which described a person who spoke in a specific manner. This was then applied to mean someone who spoke with authority on a particular subject, i.e., an expert. By extension, it came to mean expertise on a specific topic, and then generalized to mean the corpus of study on a specific topic, and finally generalized to become the name of the topic itself.

So in a sense, etymology means, “words on words”.

In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.

— John 1:1

But let’s not get too deep. I’m here to discuss crime.

Some words that describe criminal or deviant behavior have very interesting histories. I’ve mentioned the Goths—the Fall of Rome also gave us the word vandalism after another Germanic tribe on the rampage, the Vandals. Similarly, in the early 18th century a Mohock (“Mohawk”) was a member of youthful aristocratic gangs who amused themselves by going out late at night and beating up people at random.

Thug, corrupted from the Hindi word thag, originally meant a swindler. It was borrowed by the British to mean any kind of criminal, but was especially used to describe a cult of professional killers, the Phansigars1, who robbed and murdered innocent travelers by strangulation: the infamous Thugee. When the word was brought back to England, it was used to describe any criminal who violently waylaid his victims. Now, of course, it means a person who indulges in violence for its own sake, a ruffian.

Assassin also originated with a cult, during the Crusades, although its exact origin is unclear. The OED says it was corrupted from the Arabic hashshashin, a hashish-eater. One thing is certain—they were a branch of the Nizari sect of Shia Islam, with a strong mystic tradition and an emphasis on social justice, which they enforced by knocking off their enemies. Other theories are that their name came from a word meaning “followers of Hassan”, from the name of their founder, the Persian Hassan i-Sabbah; another says it comes from Asasiyun, meaning a person faithful to the Asas (foundation) of the faith. This last theory suggests that they applied the name to themselves, but most scholars believe that hashshashin was a nickname applied by their enemies. There is no evidence that they actually used hashish—in fact, it’s extremely unlikely given their strict religious principles—but the idea is that their enemies thought that they behaved as if they were stoned to the gills, not in rational control of themselves. They actually called themselves al-Da’wa al-Jadda, the “New Call” (to conversion to Shia Islam), to distinguish themselves from the “Old Call” or Fatimid dynasty of the Caliphate.2 They were finally eradicated in the 13th century by the Mongols.

In the 16th century, a mug was an earthen bowl, later refined to mean a drinking vessel with a cylindrical shape—nobody knows exactly where it came from, although there are cognates in other European languages. In the 18th century, these mugs were frequently made in the form of squatting figures: “Toby jugs”. Soon these were refined to represent only the head. From this, the word came to mean “face”, and actors started to use it as a verb that meant applying make-up. (This is also where we get the term mugging to mean making funny faces.) Broadening its use a bit, it came to mean applying hands to the face for any reason, and thus became a synonym for striking someone in the countenance. Then just attacking somebody. Then attacking somebody for the purpose of robbery. And thus was born the mugger and getting mugged.

To bezzle was to plunder, lay waste to, ravage, destroy. In the 15th century, it was used to mean to over-indulge, especially in the sense of wasting food and drinking too much—in other words, being greedy. Concurrently, to embezzle was to make away with one’s spoils, especially in secret. By the early 17th century, embezzle finally came to specifically refer to using one’s position of trust to divert money to one’s own use. This one is interesting to me because it reverses the general pattern of evolving from the specific to the general by actually going the other way, from the general to the specific.

Bugger is an indecent term for “sodomite”. It comes from the French word bougre, a derogatory term describing an adherent to the Albigensian heresy practiced by the 12th century Cathars, with whom I treated last week. Ultimately the word derives from “Bulgare”, French for “Bulgarian”, since that’s where the heresy originated. Because the Cathars were heretics, they were accused of unclean sexual conduct. You may recall that “… the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly,” (Genesis 13:13), so such an attribution was only to be expected.

A burglar is a person who breaks into a house at night with the intention of committing a felony. Since that usually means stealing something, nowadays to burgle something usually means simply to steal it, but its legal meaning is still very specific. The “burg-” in burglar comes from “burgh”, as in “town”, actually a synonym for “fortress”. The crime itself was first called burgh-breche, where “breche” is just an archaic form of “breach”, i.e., to force an opening—in other words, forcing an entry into a castle. A person guilty of this crime was a burgator, a weird combination of Middle English and Latin. We know that by the 14th century, the verb burgulare had made its appearance by means of back-formation, where “-lare” is a common Latin verb ending, so maybe that’s where we get the “l” in burglary —but that’s far from certain, because “murdritores & robbatores & burglatores” are mentioned as early as 1268.

But speaking of thieving, I have probably stolen enough of your precious time.

1. Pronounced with a hard “p”, i.e., “P-hansigar”. [↩]
2. The Fatimids (“children of Fatima”) were Shi’ites who ruled from Cairo, which they founded, and the enemies of the Abbasid dynasty, Sunnis who ruled from Baghdad, but with whom the Assassins themselves had political differences. [↩]