The lesson of being very sure of your words

Brian G Turner

Brian G Turner

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With my fantasy WIP, I try to avoid using modern words which might imply modern meanings.

I therefore use the Online Etymology Dictionary a lot to check word origins.

Anyway, in a section to rewrite, one of the characters uses the word twat, so I thought I'd double-check the origin.

And found the entry quite funny. :)

http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=twat&searchmode=none

twat (n.) female pudendum, 1650s, of unknown origin. A general term of abuse since 1920s.

The T-word occupies a special niche in literary history, however, thanks to a horrible mistake by Robert Browning, who included it in 'Pippa Passes' (1841) without knowing its true meaning. 'The owls and bats,/Cowls and twats,/Monks and nuns,/In a cloister's moods.' Poor Robert! He had been misled into thinking the word meant 'hat' by its appearance in 'Vanity of Vanities,' a poem of 1660, containing the treacherous lines: 'They'd talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat,/They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat.' (There is a lesson here about not using words unless one is very sure of their meaning.) [Hugh Rawson, "Wicked Words," 1989]
Click to expand...

So remember that lesson. :)
 
I used the OED all the while when writing my fantasy and some of the dry humour or asides like that one cracked me up!

What I find interesting is that some words you'd think would be medieval are in fact relatively modern and vice versa -- for instance jab** as both verb and noun is apparently from 1825 and later, albeit probably deriving from a very similar-soundng jobben, but potentiality, which to me sounds very American c1950 was actually in use from 1620 (though likely not in exactly the same contexts of personal development). Great fun!


** with apologies to those who've heard that one before as I blogged about it ages ago
 
At LonCon I met some fellow pedants running a stand for the Historical Thesaurus of English (www.glasgow.ac.uk/thesaurus), who along with erudite information gave me a post card with synonyms down the ages for 'immediately'.

Imagine my chagrin upon discovering that using 'momentarily' in this sense, which I had taken, like 'prioritizing', as a recent Americanism, dates back to 1799, and is cited as 'now rare' (you don't watch the same television programs as me, mate).
 
Also, be sure not just of the meaning of words, but the way they sound out loud, too. Have a look at this great piece by Mary Robinette Kowal:
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/debut-author-lesson-audio-books/

Read your book aloud. Yes. The whole thing. Even a 700 page monster should not take you more than a week to read aloud. Even if it took two weeks…. you spent how long writing the thing and now you are balking at spending two weeks to read it aloud? Do it when you’re proofing it. You’ll spot things that you wouldn’t have otherwise. For audio, you’ll also spot things that are just going to sound strange when read aloud. Here are some samples from actual books (one of them is mine).

  • Then Seaman erupted from the bush.
  • You know, Ainho did it. (Ainho is pronounced, “I know.”)
  • How well do you know the knowe?
  • Aye, I’ve had my eye on him for a wee bit of time.
  • It lay on her neck like a necklace of jet.
  • He ran into the copse. (Note: copse is pronounced like “cops.” This character had just evaded the police.)
Click to expand...
 
Interesting article, Juliana, and the bit about being lumbered with an accent made me laugh. Years ago I heard a comedy sketch (?part of a show?) where an actor was reading a story live on the radio, but he was late and hadn't rehearsed it, and he was doing all the accents on the fly, and kept having to change them eg (can't recall the exact details but this kind of thing) someone he thought was male was a woman; someone he'd given an child's voice turned out to be elderly; a man he'd got speaking RP English was a Scot, so he then gives him a broad Scottish accent, only for the next line to confirm that although Scottish he spoke in the tones of a Welshman.
 
For some reason I am reminded of the line in A Christmas Carol that Scrooge had no further intercourse with spirits. There is also, IIRC, a spectacularly unfortunate moment in The War of the Worlds where a man is interrupting his wife, which gives the impression that they have been, shall we say, disturbed at an intimate moment.

A friend of mine, who is a sound engineer, once recorded an audiobook where the reader made exactly that mistake. The doctor had a deep, old-man voice, until the reader noticed that all the pronouns were "she".
 
O.E.D. is a usefull reference site, Brian. Thanks.
 
Brian Turner said:
With my fantasy WIP, I try to avoid using modern words which might imply modern meanings.

I therefore use the Online Etymology Dictionary a lot to check word origins.

Anyway, in a section to rewrite, one of the characters uses the word twat, so I thought I'd double-check the origin.

And found the entry quite funny. :)

http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=twat&searchmode=none

So remember that lesson. :)
Click to expand...

That's... damn. That's great. So the lesson is: don't be a twat and always look up your words?
 
To be fair, words do change meaning over time. A QI episode remarked that in a Sherlock Holmes story, at one point, a man ejaculates out of a window.

[The term 'ejaculate' meant 'exclaim' back when the stories were written].
 
You win, you win! That was damn quick.

Masterful, if a little transparent
 
My wife is listening to an audiobook of "The Mill On The Floss".

Audiobook: It's been a long while since you had a dispute with Dix.
Me: "A Dispute With Dix"? Sounds like bad George R. R. Martin fan-fiction.
 
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