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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

The ‘it’ in ‘lording it over’

Q: I’ve always felt that you need “it” in a sentence like “He lorded it over them.” But I sometimes see the usage without it. Is this permissible, or are people just not getting the idiomatic use of “it”?

A: The verb “lord” is used in three different ways when it means to act in a superior or domineering manner: (1) “He lorded over them,” (2) “He lorded it over them,” and (3) “He lorded himself over them.”

search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks usage in digitized books, indicates that the first two are about equally popular, while the third appears much less often..

The verb is intransitive in #1 and transitive in #2 and #3. A transitive verb is one with a direct object. In #2 the object is “it,” while in #3 the object is a reflexive pronoun.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the use of “it” here as “a vague or indefinite object of a transitive verb,” and adds that the transitive use has “the same meaning as the intransitive use.”

When “lord” first appeared as a verb in the 14th century, it meant “to have the status of a lord; to govern, rule; to have a presiding authority or influence,” a sense that’s now obsolete, according to the OED.

The dictionary’s first citation is from Confessio Amantis (“The Lover’s Confession,” circa 1390), a long Middle English poem by John Gower: “On [One] lordeth, and an other serveth.”

In the 16th century, “lord” came to mean “to act in the supposed manner of a lord; to behave in an arrogant, disdainful, or dissipated manner; to rule tyrannically; to dominate.” The verb was used at the time both with and without “it” (but not with “over,” which didn’t appear in the usage until a century later).

The first OED example for “lord” used without “it” is from a sermon by Hugh Latimer, a Church of England reformer who was burned at the stake outside Balliol College, Oxford, and is one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism:

“For they [the Apostles] preached and lorded not. And nowe they lorde and preache not” (“A Nota­ble Sermō of Ye Re­uerende Father Maister Hughe Latemer, Whi­che He Preached in Ye Shrouds at Pau­les Churche in Londō, on the .XVIII. Daye of January. 1548”).

The dictionary’s earliest example for the verb “lord” used with “it” is from a book about Christian martyrs: “Suche Byshoppes as minister not, but lorde it” (Acts and Monuments, 1563, by the English historian John Foxe).

In the 17th century, versions with “over” began appearing, and the OED says it’s usually present today. Here are the first examples, both with and without “it”:

  • “Lording it over the Consciences of the people” (A Treatise of the Confession of Sinne, 1657, by the English theologian Thomas Aylesbury).
  • “Had Judah that day join’d, or one whole Tribe, / They had by this possess’d the Towers of Gath / And lorded over them whom now they serve.” (We’ve expanded this citation from Milton’s poem Samson Agonistes, 1671. Gath was a major Philistine city.)

The earliest OED citation for the verb “lord” used with a reflexive pronoun is from a religious tract responding to the writings of George Fox and other Quakers of the 17th century. Here’s an expanded version:

“G F. hath remembred the Affliction of Joseph, and doth not Lord himself over the Light of God in others; this is false, and R. R. might have applyed it at home” (from Something in Answer to a Book Printed in 1678, Called, The Hidden Things Brought to Light, 1679, by Robert Rich, a Quaker who often challenged other Quakers).

Finally, here are the most recent OED citations for “lord over,” “lord it over,” and “lord oneself over”:

  • “The Manchus, from their own separate world, lorded over and indeed lived off the Han” (Manchus & Han, 2000, by Edward J. M. Rhoads). We’ve expanded the citation.
  • “Lording it over them was one of the pleasures of my father’s old age” (The Times Literary Supplement, London, March 11, 2005).
  • “It smacked of colonialism, patriarchy, bad white men lording themselves over voiceless minions” (The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2011).

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Christmas English English language Etymology Expression Grammar Language Linguistics Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

Gentlemen, God rest you merry!

Q: Which is the more traditional version of this Christmas carol: “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” or “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”? I see it both ways, but the one with “you” looks better to me.

A: You’re right—“you” makes more sense than “ye” in this case, as we’ll explain later. In fact, the original pronoun in that early 18th-century carol was “you.”

But that isn’t the only misunderstanding associated with the song. There’s that wayward comma too. Here’s the story.

Beginning in the Middle Ages, English speakers used “rest you” or “rest thee” with a positive adjective (“merry,” “well,” “tranquil,” “happy,” “content”) to mean “remain in that condition.” (The verb “rest” is used in a somewhat similar sense today in the expressions “rest assured” and “rest easy.”)

In the earliest and most common of such expressions, the adjective was “merry,” according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. And at the time, “merry” had a meaning (happy, content, pleased) that’s now obsolete.

So in medieval English, the friendly salutation “rest you (or thee) merry” meant remain happy, content, or pleased. The OED explains it more broadly as “an expression of good wishes” that meant “peace and happiness to you.”

The form “rest you merry” was used in addressing two or more people, while “rest thee merry” was used for just one. This is because our modern word “you,” the second-person pronoun, originally had four principal forms: the subjects were “ye” (plural) and “thou” (singular); the objects were “you” (plural) and “thee” (singular). The expression we’re discussing required an object pronoun.

The OED’s earliest example of the expression, in 13th-century Middle English, shows a single person being addressed: “Rest þe [thee] murie, sire Daris” (the letter þ, a thorn, represented a “th” sound). From Floris and Blanchefleur (circa 1250), a popular romantic tale that dates from the 1100s in Old French.

As early as the mid-1200s, according to OED citations, “you” began to replace the other second-person pronouns. By the early 1500s, “you” was serving all four purposes in ordinary usage: objective and nominative, singular and plural.

As a result, the usual form of the old expression became “rest you merry” even when only one person was addressed. And it was often preceded by “God” as a polite salutation, with the meaning “may God grant you peace and happiness,” the OED says. The dictionary cites several early examples of the formula:

  • “o louynge [loving] frende god rest you mery.” From an instructional book, Floures for Latine Spekynge Gathered Oute of Terence (1534)by Nicholas Udall. (The English is presented as a translation of the Latin greeting Amice salue.)
  • “God rest you mery bothe and God be your guide.” From Like Wil to Like (1568), a morality play by Ulpian Fulwell.
  • “God rest you merry sir.” From Shakespeare’s As You Like It (c. 1600).

Soon after Shakespeare’s time, we find the formulaic “rest you merry” addressed to “gentlemen.” In plays of the 17th century in particular, it’s often spoken by a character in greeting or parting from friends.

The popular playwright John Fletcher, for example, used “rest you merry gentlemen” in at least two of his comedies: Wit Without Money (c. 1614) and Monsieur Thomas (c. 1610-16).

It also appears in several other comedies of the period, including works by the pseudonymous “J. D., Gent” (The Knave in Graine, 1640), Abraham Cowley (Cutter of Coleman-Street, 1658), Thomas Southland (Love a la Mode, 1663), and William Mountfort (Greenwich-Park, 1691).

In most of the 17th-century examples we’ve found, there’s no comma in “God rest you merry gentlemen.” When a comma does appear, it comes after “merry,” not before: “Rest you merry, gentlemen.”  This is because “rest you merry” is addressed to the “gentlemen.”

In his comedy Changes: or, Love in a Maze (1632), James Shirley has “Gentlemen, rest you merry,” a use that more clearly illustrates the sense of the expression and removes any ambiguity.

This brings us to the Christmas song “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”— the title as given in The Oxford Book of Carols and other authoritative collections. The oldest existing printed version of the song was published around 1700, though the lyrics were probably known orally before that.

As the OED says, “rest you merry” is no longer used as an English expression; it survives only in the carol. But the syntax of the title, the dictionary adds, “is frequently misinterpreted, merry being understood as an adjective qualifying gentlemen.” So the comma is often misplaced after “you,” as if those addressed were “merry gentlemen.”

In fact, the carol originally had no title. The words first appeared, as far as we can tell, in a single-page broadsheet entitled Four Choice Carols for Christmas Holidays with only a generic designation—“Carol  I. On Christmas-Day.” The broadsheet had no music, either; the words were sung to a variety of tunes.

The sheet was probably published in 1700 or 1701, according to the database Early English Books Online. Some commentators have said the lyrics existed earlier, but we haven’t found any documents to show this. The other three songs on the sheet are designated “Carol II. On St. Stephen’s-Day,” “Carol III. On St. John’s-Day,” and “Carol IV. On Innocent’s-Day.”  Here’s a facsimile of the front side, with “Carol I” at left.

“God rest you merry Gentlemen” (without a comma) is the first line of “Carol I,” and it later became used as the title. It appeared as the title in some printings of the carol by the late 1700s.

But well into the 19th century the song was sometimes referred to simply as “Old Christmas Carol” (in Sam Weller, a play by William Thomas Moncreiff, London, 1837) or “A Christmas Carol” (in The Baltimore County Union, a weekly newspaper in Towsontown, MD, Dec. 23, 1865).

For the most part, music publishers over the years have printed the title with “you” (not “ye”) and with the comma after “merry,” a form that accurately represents the original meaning. But in books, newspapers, and other writing the title has also appeared with “ye,” a misplaced comma, or both.

Why the misplaced comma? Apparently the old senses of “rest” and “merry” were forgotten, and the title was reinterpreted in ordinary usage. It was understood to mean that a group of “merry gentlemen” were encouraged to relax and be jolly.

The OED’s earliest example of the misconception dates from the early 19th century, where Samuel Jackson Pratt refers to “God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen” as “a time-embrowned ditty” (Gleanings in England, 2nd ed., 1803).

And why the shift from “you” to “ye”?  Our guess is that it represents an attempt to make the carol sound older or more “traditional.” (Not coincidentally, “ye” began appearing in place of “you” in 18th- and 19th-century reprints of those old comedies we mentioned above, as if to make them more antique.)

We’ve found scores of “ye” versions of the carol dating from the 1840s onwards in ordinary British and American usage.

A search of Google’s Ngram viewer shows that “you” versions were predominant in books and journals until the mid-20th century. But in the 1960s, “ye” versions began to rise, and by the ’80s they had surpassed the “you” versions. (Placement of the comma isn’t searchable on Ngram.)

Today, both the “ye” and the misplaced comma are ubiquitous in common usage, despite the way the title is printed by most music publishers and academic presses.

Perhaps the music of the carol bears some of the blame for the wayward comma. While the song has had several different musical settings, it’s now sung to music, most likely imported from Europe, that some scholars believe was first published in Britain in 1796. And the tune doesn’t allow for a pause before “gentlemen,” so the ear doesn’t sense a comma there.

As the music scholar Edward Wickham writes, “The comprehension of whole sentences of text, when sung, relies in part on the perception of how those sentences are segmented and organised.”

“The music to the Christmas carol ‘God rest you merry, Gentlemen,’ ” Wickham says, “makes no provision for the comma and thus is routinely misunderstood as ‘God rest you, merry Gentlemen.’ ” (“Tales from Babel: Musical Adventures in the Science of Hearing,” a chapter in Experimental Affinities in Music, 2015, edited by Paulo de Assis.)

One final observation. All this reminds us of an entirely different “ye” misunderstanding—the mistaken use of “ye” as an article. This misconception shows up in signage of the “Ye Olde Gift Shoppe” variety, an attempt at quaintness that we wrote about in 2009 and again in 2016.

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

When ‘pomp’ met ‘circumstance’

Q: An article about the ceremonies following Queen Elizabeth’s death referred to the “pomp and circumstance” involved. “Pomp” I get, but what’s with “circumstance”? It doesn’t have the usual meaning (fact, condition, event).

A: An archaic meaning of “circumstance” refers to a ceremony or public display at an important event, a usage that survives in the phrase “pomp and circumstance.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines that sense of “circumstance” as “the ‘ado’ made about anything; formality, ceremony, about any important event or action.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation, which we’ve expanded, is from the “The Knight’s Tale,” the first of The Canterbury Tales (1386) of Chaucer: “His sacrifice he dide and that anon fful pitously with alle circumstance.”

The OED says the expression “pomp and circumstance” echoes Othello’s farewell to “Pride, pompe, and circumstance of glorious warre” (from Shakespeare’s Othello, written in the early 1600s and first published in 1623).

The dictionary’s earliest example for the exact wording “pomp and circumstance” is from The Bashful Lover, a play by Philip Massinger written sometime before 1640: “The Minion of his Prince and Court, set off / With all the pomp and circumstance of greatness.”

The dictionary adds that “the prevalence of the particular form pomp and circumstance is probably due to the popular military marches composed (from 1901) by Edward Elgar with this subtitle.”

As for the earlier etymology, the noun “circumstance” ultimately comes from the Classical Latin circumstantia (standing around, surrounding condition). The Latin term is the present participle of circumstare (to stand around), which combines circum (around) and stare (to stand).

When the word showed up in Middle English, it was used in the plural to mean the surroundings or conditions in which an action takes place. The earliest Oxford example is from Ancrene Riwle, an anonymous guide for monastic women, written sometime before 1200:

“Abute sunne liggeð six þinges. þet hit hulieð. o latin circumstances. on englis totagges muȝe beon icleoped. Persone. stude. time. Manere. tale. cause” (“About sin there lie six things that conceal it: person, place, time, manner, telling, cause—in Latin circumstances, in English, they may be called trappings that obscure”).

Many other senses have appeared over the years, including “circumstances” that make an act more or less criminal (1580), an incident or “circumstance” in a narrative (1592), living in easy or reduced “circumstances” (before 1704), and something that’s a mere “circumstance” (1838).

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Phrase origin Usage Word origin Writing

On ‘thrice’ and ‘trice’

Q: Are “thrice” and “trice” related? If so, “in a trice” might be construed as “in triple time.”

A: No, they’re not related. “Thrice” is an old way of saying three times, while the phrase “in a trice” means in a moment or very quickly.

Although both usages are found in standard dictionaries, “thrice” is often labeled “old-fashioned,” “dated,” “mainly archaic,” and so on.

 When “thrice” appeared in Middle English (spelled “þriȝes,” “þriȝess,” etc.), it was an adverb meaning “three times (in succession); on three successive occasions,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The runic letter “þ” (a thorn) at the beginning sounded like “th,” and the runic “ȝ” (a yogh) in the middle sounded like “y.”

The OED says “þriȝes” is ultimately derived from þri or thrie, Old English for three, and its prehistoric ancestors, the Proto-Germanic þrijiz and the Proto-Indo-European treies.

The dictionary’s earliest “thrice” example, which we’ve expanded, is from the Ormulum (circa 1175), a collection of homilies written by an Augustinian monk identified as Orm in one part of the manuscript and Ormin in another:

“& ure Laferrd Jesu Crist / Badd hise bedess þriȝess” (“and as the Lord Jesus Christ bade, they prayed thrice”).

As for the “trice” of “in a trice,” it apparently began life in the late 14th century as a verb meaning “to pull; to pluck, snatch, draw with a sudden action.” The OED says Middle English adopted the verb from the Middle Dutch trîsen (to hoist).

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the verb is from “The Monk’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (circa 1386): “By god, out of his sete I wol hym trice” (By God, out of his throne I will snatch him [Nero]”).

In the 15th century, “trice” came to mean a pull or a tug in the expression “at a trice,” meaning “at a single pluck or pull; hence, in an instant; instantly, forthwith; without delay.” Oxford says “trice” here is apparently a noun formed from the verb.

Although “at a trice” is now obsolete, the usual version of the expression, “in a trice,” evolved from it in the 17th century. The first OED citation is from a book about Queen Elizabeth I:

“True it is, he [Sir Walter Raleigh] had gotten the Queenes eare in a trice” (Fragmenta Regalia, or, Observations on the Late Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favorits, 1641, by Sir Robert Naunton).

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Pronunciation Spelling Usage Word origin Writing

The subtleties of the silent ‘b’

Q: The terminal combination “-bt” is an odd one, with its silent “b,” and curiously (ignoring variations) the only two English words in which it occurs begin with “d.” Care to explicate?

A: The consonant cluster “bt” doesn’t appear only in words beginning with “d,” and it isn’t always at the end. It’s found in “doubt,” “debt,” “subtle,” and their various forms (“doubtful,” “indebted,” “subtlety,” and so on).

The “b” is now silent in these words, though it was neither seen nor heard when “doubt,” “debt,” and “subtle” first appeared in Middle English, the language used from around 1150 to 1450.

Writers began adding the “b” in the early Modern English of the late 15th and 16th centuries to make the terms look more like their Classical Latin ancestors: dubitare, debitum, and subtilis. (The “b” was pronounced in Latin, but silent in the English borrowings.)

As the classicist J. D. Sadler explains, “There are many words borrowed from Latin through French where we have gone back to the Latin root to replace a letter lost in transit. Most involve the initial consonant in the groups bt, ct,  lt, and pt.”

In his article “Popular Etymology” (The Classical Journal, February-March 1971), Sadler gives “debt,” “doubt,” and “subtle” as examples, along with “arctic,” “perfect,” “subject,” “verdict,” “victuals,” “assault,” “fault,” “somersault,” and “receipt.”

In some of these words, he notes, the initial letter of the consonant cluster is mute while in others “we have recovered the sound.” He adds that “perhaps words of this sort [those Latinized retroactively] should be termed examples of scholarly etymology, rather than of popular etymology.”

(We wrote in 2018 about another consonant cluster with a silent “b”—the “mb” in words like “bomb,” “tomb,” “lamb,” “dumb,” “comb,” “climb,” and “plumb.”)

When “doubt” first appeared in early Middle English, it was a verb (duten) meaning “to dread, fear, or be afraid of,” a usage that’s now obsolete, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s first citation is from Ancrene Riwle, an anonymous guide for monastic women, written sometime before 1200. The verb here appears as duteð (duteth): “Þe deouel of helle duteð ham swiðe” (“the devil of hell dreads them [prayers] greatly”).

The earliest OED example showing the verb in its uncertain sense is from a homily written around 1325:

“Of his birth douted thai noht” (“Of his birth doubted they nought”). English Metrical Homilies From Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (1862), edited by John Small.

As for the noun “doubt,” Oxford says that when it appeared in the early 13th century it referred to “the (subjective) state of uncertainty with regard to the truth or reality of anything” or “undecidedness of belief or opinion.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from The Legend of St. Katherine of Alexandria, an anonymous work written sometime before 1225: “Ne beo þu na þing o dute / Of al þet tu ibeden hauest” (“Do not be thou the least in doubt of all that thou hast prayed for”).

When the noun “debt” showed up in the late 14th century as the plural dettis, the OED says, it meant “that which is owed or due; anything (as money, goods, or service) which one person is under obligation to pay or render to another.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from a treatise by the theologian John Wycliffe: “Ȝif a trewe man teche þis pore man to paie his dettis” (“If a true man teach this poor man to pay his debts”). From The Grete Sentence of Curs Expounded (circa 1380).

As for “subtle,” it first appeared as an adjective describing someone “characterized by wisdom or perceptiveness; discriminating, discerning; shrewd,” according to the dictionary.

The first OED citation (with “subtle” spelled “sotil”) is from a Middle English poem about the childhood of Jesus. Here’s an expanded version of the citation:

“For leowi wuste þat Jesum / Sotil was and wis of redes” (“For loving was Jesus, subtle and wise of counsel”). From “Childhood Jesus” (c. 1300), published in 1875 as “Kindheit Jesu” in Altenglische Legenden (Old English Legendary), edited by Carl Horstmann.

And here are the earliest OED examples for “doubt,” “debt,” and “subtle” in their usual senses and spelled with a “b”:

  • “Diuerse of his houshold seruauntes, whome either he [Richard III] suspected or doubted, were by great crueltie put to shamefull death.” The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke (1548), by Edward Hall. We’ve expanded the citation.
  • “To declare his debtes, what he oweth.” The Booke of the Common Prayer (1549), the original Anglican prayer book, published in the reign of King Edward VI.
  • “The subtle difference of lying and telling of a lye.” From an undated letter by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, in answer to a May 21, 1547, letter by Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

Finally, we should note that the “b” spelling of the noun “doubt” appeared somewhat earlier in its obsolete sense of fear:

“For doubte to be blamed he spored his horse” (“For fear of being blamed, he spurred his horse”). The Foure Sonnes of Aymon (1490), William Caxton’s translation of Les Quatre Fils Aymon, an anonymous French romance dating from the late 12th century.

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