Month: January 2025

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Linguistics Usage Word origin Writing

You can’t call me Al

Q: With the recent fall of Bashar al-Assad, the ousted Syrian leader’s name has been in the news a lot. Sometimes it’s rendered as “Assad” and sometimes as “al-Assad.” Is the “al-” a form of nobiliary particle? Are there rules that govern its use? And how is it alphabetized?

A: The “al-” in English renderings of Arab names is not a nobiliary particle, a preposition that originated as a mark of noble rank, like the French “de” in Simone de Beauvoir or the German “von” in Wernher von Braun.

This “al-” is an English transliteration of the Arabic definite article ٱلْـ, though it’s sometimes used to indicate distinction. Bashar al-Assad, for example, means “Bashar the Lion,” à la Richard I’s sobriquet, “Cœur de Lion” or “the Lionheart.”

The article is usually written as “Al” (capital “A,” sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not) in English versions of the Arabic names of universities, newspapers, mosques, etc., as in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram (The Pyramids).

And the “Al” (capital A, no hyphen) in English forms of some Arab names represents the Arabic term آل (“family” or “clan”). It’s often used much like a nobiliary particle to indicate a member of a noble or distinguished family. Prince Turki bin Mohammed Al Saud, for example, is a member of the Saudi royal family.

The rules that govern the use of “al-” in English versions of Arab names differ in the style guides followed by various publishers. Some, for example, recommend dropping the “al-” on second reference, while others favor keeping it.

As for indexing such names, here’s the advice in The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.), 15:83:

“Arabic surnames prefixed by al or el (the) are alphabetized under the element following the particle; the article is treated like de in many French names.”

The Chicago Manual gives as examples “Hakim, Tawfiq al-”  and “Jamal, Muhammad Hamid al-” but adds this advisory:

“Context and readership may suggest cross-references. For example, in an index to a work likely to have readers unfamiliar with Arabic names, a cross-reference may be useful (e.g., ‘al-Farabi. See Farabi, al-’).”

Finally, we should mention the “al” (no hyphen) in some English words derived, often in a roundabout way, from Arabic, such as “alchemy,” “alcohol,” “alcove,” “algebra,” and “almanac.”

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the “al” here is “found from the Middle English period [about 1100 to 1500] onwards in borrowings ultimately from Arabic, originally and chiefly via French and Latin.” Here are a few of these words:

  • alchemy: al plus kīmiyāʼ (“the art of transmuting base metals”). In early use, the OED notes, “the terms chemistry and alchemy are often indistinguishable.”
  • alcohol: al plus kuḥl (“kohl,” the eye makeup). The intoxicant sense came later.
  • alcove: al plus qubba (“the dome, pavilion, cupola, or vault”).
  • algebra: al plus jabra (“the restoration”). In algebra, symbols represent numbers.
  • almanac: al plus manāḵ (“the calendar”).

[Note: We published a post on July 16, 2010, on nobiliary particles.]

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English English language Etymology Expression Language Usage Word origin Writing

Are you feeling irregular?

Q: I was surprised when autocorrect changed “intermittent” to “intermit.” I checked and, lo and behold, there is a word “intermit.” Does it not strike you as odd that the base-form is less known than its “built-up” version?

A: We don’t use, or recommend using, the autocorrect function in a word processor. Our spell-checkers flag possible misspellings but don’t automatically “fix” them. Word processors have dictionaries, but not common sense—at least not yet!

As for the words you’re asking about, the adjective “intermittent” (irregular or occurring at intervals) is indeed more common than the verb “intermit” (to suspend or stop). In fact, the verb barely registered when we compared the terms on Google’s Ngram Viewer.

However, “intermittent” isn’t derived from “intermit,” though both ultimately come from different forms of the Latin verb intermittere (to interrupt, leave a gap, suspend, or stop), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Latin verb combines inter (between) and mittere (to send, let go, put).

When “intermit” first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, it meant to interrupt someone or something, a sense the OED describes as obsolete.

The modern sense of the verb—“to leave off, give over, discontinue (an action, practice, etc.) for a time; to suspend”—showed up in the late 16th century.

It means “leave off” in the dictionary’s earliest citation for the modern usage: “Occasions of intermitting the writing of letters” (from A Panoplie of Epistles, 1576, by Abraham Fleming, an author, editor, and Anglican clergyman).

As we’ve said, “intermit” isn’t seen much nowadays. English speakers are more likely to use other verbs with similar senses, such as “cease,” “quit,” “stop,” “discontinue,” “interrupt,” or “suspend.”

When the adjective “intermittent” appeared in the early 17th century, Oxford says, it described a medical condition such as a pulse, fever, or cramp “coming at intervals; operating by fits and starts.”

The earliest OED citation is from an English translation of Plutarch’s Ἠθικά (Ethica, Ethics), commonly known by its Latin title Moralia (The Morals), a collection of essays and speeches originally published in Greek around the end of the first century:

“Beating within the arteries here and there disorderly, and now and then like intermittent pulses” (from The Philosophie, Commonly Called, The Morals, 1603, translated by Philemon Holland).

The adjective later took on several other technical senses involving irregular movement, but we’ll skip to its use in everyday English to mean occurring at irregular intervals. The earliest OED citation for this “general use” is expanded here:

“Northfleet a disunited Village of 3 Furlongs, with an intermittent Market on Tuesdays, from Easter till Whitsuntide only” (Britannia, or, An illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales, 1675, by the Scottish geographer John Ogilby).

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

This is highway robbery!

Q: If someone is charging a price we consider unwarranted, we say that’s “highway robbery.” Is highway robbery worse than ordinary robbery? And why do we say “highway robbery” when we are not on a highway, but standing in a supermarket shocked by the price of strawberries?

A: Today “robbery” (the taking of something by force) is worse than “highway robbery” (charging an exorbitant price for something).

If you feel the price of something is “highway robbery,” you usually don’t have to buy it, but you can’t just brush off an armed robber.

However, the expression “highway robbery” was more intimidating when it first appeared in the early 17th century, a time when armed “highwaymen” on horseback preyed upon travelers. Here’s the colorful history of the phrase.

The oldest of these terms, “highway” first appeared as heiweg in the Kentish dialect of early Old English, and meant a public road regarded as being under royal protection, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from a land charter in Latin and Old English, dated around 859, for the sale of property by Ethelmod, an ealdorman or alderman, to a man named Plegred:

“Ab oriente cyniges heiweg. A meritie stret to Scufelingforde” (“From the east, the king’s highway, a street south to Scufelingforde”). From Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, Part 2 (2013), edited by Susan E. Kelly and Nicholas P. Brooks.

The noun “robbery” appeared in Old English writing in the 12th century. The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded here, describes how those who turn away from God are punished:

“Vuele he us briseð. gif he binimeð us ure agte. oðer þurh fur. oðer þurh þiefes. oðer þurh roberie. oðer þurh unrihte dom” (“Wrathfully he crushes us, if he takes away our property, either through fire, either through thieves, either through robbery, either through unjust judgment”).

The first OED example of the phrase “highway robbery” appeared in the early 17th century: “Skulking surprises and vnder-hand stealthes, more neerely resembling high-way robberies, then lawfull battell” (The History of Great Britaine Under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611, by John Speed).

The noun “highwayman” soon showed up in Compters Common-wealth (1617), a play by William Fennor about the inmates of a compter, or debtor’s prison:

“It is this that makes Newmarket heath, and Royston-dounes about Christmas time so full of high-way men that poore Countrie people cannot passe quietly to their Cottages.”

In the late 18th century, English speakers began using “highway robbery” figuratively to mean “blatant and unfair overcharging or swindling; the charging of an exorbitantly high price,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from All the World’s a Stage (1777), a farce by the Irish playwright Isaac Jackman: “What, five shillings for a boiled fowl! … This is high-way robbery, without the credit of being robbed.”

The figurative use of a literal expression is common in English, as when you “rock the boat,” “shake a leg,” come to a “dead end,” “put your best foot forward,” or have “a laundry list” of things to do.

Finally, here’s an illustration of a literal highway robbery, done by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827). The tinted etching (Vicissitudes of the Road in 1787: The Highwayman, Lord Barrymore Stopped) was reproduced in a London weekly, The Graphic, Dec. 6, 1890:

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