Thus the pilferer's favourite series returns. It isn't long to go until I get the final result for my most recent course with the Open University, U211 Exploring the English Language, and here I present to you the assignments which I wrote during the course of it, and which will hopefully contribute to my passing it all with flying colours.
I'm not sure that an introduction will be necessary for all seven of them, but this first perhaps deserves a brief one. It took a very interesting form, in that each of us had to select a word which we considered to be either a 'dialect word', a word with a specific new sense which we recently noticed in the media, or one which has become extinct or highly archaic, research our chosen word, and then post our findings about it into our tutor forum. We would then be able to read each other's research, and, as a part of our assignment, chose one person's to which would write a response. Collaborative learning, I think it can be called, and a very enlightening process it was for me.
Here is the assignment, as best presented as I can manage.
Units 1-4
Part 1
a) An English dialect spoken word from your own area or other personal experience.
I remember as children at Primary School we would frequently find reason to cast aspersions on each other – particularly with regard to our generosity – and if we considered a person to be lacking in that department, we would describe them as 'snide'. If one were to go back to the days of my youth at St. Peter's Primary School in Hazel Grove, and listen to what we had to say, such utterances as these may be heard:
“Come on, don' be snide! Le' us borrer yer ruler!”
or
“Nah, a wouldn' bother askin' 'im fer a sweet: e's well snide!”
The eighth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary from 1993 (around the time I would have been hearing or using such phrases) gives us this definition:
snide /snɑɪd/ adj. & n. −adj. 1 snearing; slyly derogatory; insinuating. 2 counterfeit; bogus. 3 US mean; underhand. —n. a snide person or remark. ❏❏ snidely adv. snideness n. [19th-c. colloq.: orig. unkn.]
The third adjectival sense in this definition is the one we used; but we had our own variations as well. The bound morpheme -y would frequently be appended to make 'snidey', and in our later, more daring, years we would add -arse and -arsed (to the original 'snide'). So, now, as well as being snide or snidey, an individual could be a more pungent 'snide-arse' (noun) or its adjectival derivative. Of course, we wouldn't have used these latter forms when speaking to a teacher, but the -y form would be used in preference over the original in these situations, thus:
“He's being snidey, Miss. He won't let me borrow his ruler.”
So if somebody was presently 'being snidey', that form would be used; otherwise, the original 'snide' would be favourite.
These were the only words, with only these meanings, that were in our dialect at that age and in that place. It wasn't until I moved on to High School in Macclesfield that any of the other senses of the dictionary's definition began to exist for me, viz. the 'counterfeit; bogus' sense. I remember a friend describing something – not a person – as snide, and, although it was the first time I'd heard the word used with respect to an inanimate object, I knew that he couldn't be using the same meaning to which I had been accustomed, but that he meant he considered the thing to be of 'poor quality'. On another occasion somebody might have said:
“That's a bit of a snide excuse. I'd think of something better if I were you.”
Meaning the same: 'poor quality'. This is slightly difference from the dictionary's definition – e.g. something could be completely genuine, not counterfeit, and could be considered snide if of particularly poor quality; or, conversely, something could be counterfeit (like an invented excuse) but be of sufficiently good quality so as not to be considered snide – so perhaps a further sense needs to be added to the dictionary. I feel that in encountering this new sense of the word I was discovering a new dialect, with possibly many more opportunities to expand my vocabulary. Joan Swann (2007, p.11) describes dialects as being 'varieties that differ... in terms of grammar and vocabulary', and if the word 'vocabulary' doesn't encompass this, I would like to add 'semantics' to that list. For I definitely feel that these two senses of the word 'snide' belong to two distinct dialects. But, if it is considered that they don't, there is no denying that since leaving school my usage of the word has severely declined to the point where it was almost forgotten. It belongs to my youth, to the dialect of school children.
(610 words)
References
Allen, R. E. (ed) (1993) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (seventh reprint of the eighth edition), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Swann, J. (2007) 'English voices' in D. Graddol, D. Leither, J. Swann, M. Rhys and J. Gillen (eds) Changing English, London, Routledge/The Open University, pp. 5-28.
Part 2: response to Susan's posting on 'emmet'
Your investigation into the word 'emmet' is very interesting, Susan. I had never heard of the word before – as I hadn't with many of the words investigated for this assignment - so I was firstly interested to learn of its existence; and then to follow your investigation from its 'disparaging' beginnings, through the light-hearted usage of the word, and then finishing with the possibility that both meanings are applicable, I found very intriguing. I was left feeling not quite sure whether I understood it as a harmless, light-hearted word, or whether it was something more sinister. Of course, I completely agree with you that 'there are no boundaries to the flexibility of meaning with the understanding of words and phrases and that understanding is between writer and reader', but if I am to use (or read) the word, I would like to have a reasonably clear idea as to any positive or negative connotations I understand it to carry; and so I went and did a little investigating to try and perhaps clarify the situation.
After consulting my Concise Oxford Dictionary and discovering no more information than your OED offered you, I looked to Google and immediately found Michael Quinion's website, World Wide Words, on which he had written a short article about the words 'emmet' and 'grockle'. Quinion concurs with your investigation in his short paragraph about the word, but he doesn't go into much detail, instead swiftly moving on to relate it to the word 'grockle', which is to be found on the other side of the River Tamar from Cornwall in Devon. He, like you and I, finds it peculiar that the word 'emmet' is isolated to Cornwall, with 'grockle' being found in Devon and 'other tourist areas', but Wikipedia's entry for 'emmet' may provide something of an explanation. There it is written that 'many Cornish people consider Cornwall to be separate from England', so if this is the case, and if this sentiment has been held throughout history, and been noted by non-Cornwall residents – particularly residents of Devon – perhaps the people of Devon and elsewhere were simply unwilling to borrow the word from such ungracious neighbours. Alternatively, the word may have been in the vocabulary of both Cornwall and Devon, but after discovering this sentiment of the Cornish the people of Devon abandoned the word to spite their neighbours. Also in this article there is a rather pungent analogy drawn up between the way in which 'both tourists and ants are often red in colour and appear to mill around': this is a distinctly sinister analogy, I feel, and is far removed from the realms of light-hearted banter.
Further investigation led me to dictionary.net's definition of 'emmet'. There they note the reference to 'an ant', but the second entry 'Emmet hunter, the wryneck' I thought needed some further investigation. So I Googled 'wryneck' and found that Wikipedia has an article about it. A wryneck is a woodpecker from the Genus Jynx. In the article, it is explained how they got their name wryneck: '...from their ability to turn their heads almost 180 degrees. When disturbed at the nest, they use this snake-like head twisting and hissing as a threat display. This odd behaviour led to their use in witchcraft, hence to put a “jinx” on someone.' Could these 'non-emmets' from Cornwall possibly be described as emmet hunters, and could these signs in car windows be analogous with the wryneck's jinxing of their pray? If this is so, the word 'emmet' has, for me, more sinister connotations than it has light-hearted ones.
(601 words)
References
Allen, R. E. (ed) (1993) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (seventh reprint of the eighth edition), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
'Definition of Emmet from dictionary.net' http://www.dictionary.net/emmet (Accessed 30 October 2007).
'Emmet (Cornish) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia' The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmet_%28Cornish%29 (Accessed 30 October 2007).
'Wryneck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia' The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wryneck (Accessed 30 October 2007).
'World Wide Words: Emmet and grockle' Michael Quinion http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-emm1.htm (Accessed 29 October 2007).
Susan's original posting on 'emmet'
Whilst living in Cornwall many years ago my attention was drawn to car stickers proclaiming, ‘non emmet.’ Through local enquiries I found that the term emmet refered disparagingly to tourists who flock into the county in an ant-like manner. The car stickers were stating that the driver was not a tourist. We have lived in different parts of the country and I have not heard the word emmet used anywhere apart from Cornwall.
The Oxford English Dictionary refers to emmet as a synonym of ant and that it is mainly used in dialect form in Cornwall. Emmet is derived from aemete an Old English word, first used c850. The Oxford English Dictionary explains that ae in stressed initial syllables were often shortened during the transition to Middle English and represented according to dialects by a or e, resulting in amete and emete. Amete became ‘ant’ and emete became ‘emmet.’
Gillen and Rhys (2007) asks the reader to consider the flexibility of language in the area of semantics and suggests that ‘there are no boundaries’ to the flexibility of meaning with the understanding of words and phrases and that understanding is between writer and reader. They note that the meanings of words may alter as shown in the semantic broadening of the word emmet. Leith (OU p.61) comments on examples of the change from 'Old English' to 'Modern English.' Another change shown by Leithand Graddol (2007 p.87) is the modern polysemic change in the word emmet showing how words can mean more than one thing. Leith shows these changes in Fig.3.4 (2007 p.88) between the years 1300 and 1700.
Although the use of the word emmet now appears to be confined to Cornwall, it is found in the 1609 Douay Bible. Proverbs Chapter 6 verse 6, says, ‘Go to the emmote a sluggard.’ and is translated in the New King James Bible (1982), ‘Go to the ant you sluggard. The Douay Bible was originally translated from Latin for English Catholics indicating that the word has been in wider use.
The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the word emmet as a reference to tourist in 1975. In her book Mill on the Floss (1917), George Elliot (1917) describes two characters, Dodson and Tullivers as emmet-like, showing that describing people as emmets came into earlier use in works of fiction.
Contact with Garry Tregidga, Assistant Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies cast further light on the use of emmet. He notes that sometimes it is used to refer to people who have settled permanently in Cornwall from other areas in Britain. It can also be used in a light-hearted way and that some people take pride in being referred to as emmets. Dialect can be an indication of identity of people or an area. It may also foster, as David Crystal (2004) states an ‘inward-looking, group solidarity’ and ‘outward-looking, group resistance.’ This is seen in the light-hearted way the Cornish people wish to state that they are ‘non-emmet.’
Emmet has been used to describe an ant and as description of people as early as 1917. Over time the meaning of words change or mean more than one thing. The ant-like image of the tourist may be amusing but may also convey the feelings of Cornish residents towards visitors. Why this word may be isolated to Cornish use has not been discovered by this author.
(567 words)
References
Crystal D The Stories of English.2004. Penguin Books. London. p 368
Elliot, George (1917) Book IV The Valley of Humiliation Ch1. A Variation of Protestation Unknown to Bossuet. Rogets Thesaurus, OU Library. (Accessed 12th October 2007)
Gillen J, Rhys M (2007) ‘Resourse and Reference Materials1, U211: Exploring the English Language, The Open University, London p.17.
Leith D (2007) Changing English ’The Origins of English’ in D.Graddol, D. Leith, J. Swann, M.Rhys and J. Gillen. (eds) Changing English, London, Routeledge/ The Open University, p 61.
Leith D and Graddol D (2007) Modernity and English as a National Language, in Changing English London, Routeledge The Open University, p. 87 and 88.
New King James Bible (1996) Thomas Nelson Inc, Tennesse. Proverbs, Chapter6, verse 6. Oxford English Dictionary online at http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl (Accessed 10th October 2007)
Proverbs (Oxford English Dictionary O.U. website seen 25th September 2007)
Tregidga G Institute of Cornish Studies. Exeter University. England
