Pedants' Paradise

[Pabmusic]

two things;
I've been cogitating on the "w" sound as in

William, Gwillem, Guilliame and variants;

Wales, Gwalia;

oui, ouest, cornouaille ( cornwall;)

( off topic...apparently Langue d'Oc is where they say oc for oui (OK?))

guard, ward and garderobe, wardrobe (clothes placed in toilets as the urine vapour kept the bugs away).

no doubt there are others to tease us.

and secondly, watching excavations on TV in the west-country, a ledger is a stone slab over a grave or tomb. who knew? not me and I've been doing crosswords for decades!

Interesting. Wales (more particularly Welsh, which is older) is from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and means "not like us", "not of our tribe", or "foreign". The AS word was wælisc or wylisc (walish or wilish) - hence the surname Wallace. It was appled to non-Germanic tribes, such as Gauls as well. William Wallace's name, for instance, suggests that the family was notably 'foreign' (he lived in a time when such names often had meanings that counted).

Another W sound is that in Qu. Q was introduced into English by the Normans - Old English had no Q (or K for that matter). 'Queen' in OE was cwen.

As regards OK, this seems to be fairly well settled. There was a craze at Harvard from 1838 for expressions based on initials - PDQ for 'pretty damn quick' is one that has survived, but there were hundreds (RTBS - remains to be seen; GTDHD - give the devil his due, SP - small peas, ad inf.). One of them was OK for 'oll korrekt' ('all correct' in Dan'l Boone-talk). It might have died with the rest if 1840 hadn't been a presidential election year in which Martin van Buren was elected, His nickname was "Old Kinderhook" (from his birthplace) and "van Buren OK!" became an election slogan. The Democrats also founded the Democrat OK Club to support van Buren. The earliest printed use of OK seems to have been in a Boston newspaper on 23 March 1839.

[jean]

I believe the OK story is true - but didn't van Buren lose?

[Pabmusic]

I believe the OK story is true - but didn't van Buren lose?

I really don't know, Jean. I may be guilty there of assuming...

[jean]

I only know that because I remember reading Michael Quinion's article!

[Pabmusic]

I only know that because I remember reading Michael Quinion's article!

Oh yes! Bill Bryson covers it too. I have a (large) notebook in which I've jotted many of these things over the years, and I rather suspect some of it came from Quinion - but I didn't note whether van Buren won or lost.

I also see that I should have written "Democratic OK Club".

[clive heath]

"quick" and "wick", are variants meaning "alive" as in "The quick and the dead" and "wick" in dialect (The Secret Garden? Dickon? the Gardener?)

cornwall has acquired a smiley which puzzles me as I didn't intend it, no matter I'm sure it is deserved.

[french frank]

off topic...apparently Langue d'Oc is where they say oc for oui

Yes, both forms, as French, deriving from Latin which didn't have one word meaning - specifically - 'yes'. In the south, they said (h)oc; in the north, the more emphatic, *ho(c) illi > oïl > oui. So you had the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oïl.

[Serial_Apologist]

I wonder when the difference between our OK and the American okay came about.

[jean]

It was the American OK to begin with.

[jean]

...That was followed on Friday evening by the more guttural report on News UK...

Throaty?

What do they mean?

[french frank]

What do they mean?

Gutteral, of the gutter?

[jean]

I wondered if it might be that!

[jean]

Congratulations to Eleanor Bron on Words snd Muisic this evening for getting the pause in the right place:

"Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq., who left this life and is gone to that blessed place where only...his harmony can be exceeded."

[french frank]

Intrigued to follow up RT's comment (on the Wolf Hall thread) about 'fit the bill' as I'd never really thought about it. I can't see the phrase exactly in OED, but they have instead 'to fill the bill' dating from 1866, where 'bill' refers to a 'playbill', with the various turns being itemised: hence, I suppose: corresponding with what is advertised/expected. 'Bill' in that sense is found in Pepys.

[gurnemanz]

Intrigued to follow up RT's comment (on the Wolf Hall thread) about 'fit the bill' as I'd never really thought about it. I can't see the phrase exactly in OED, but they have instead 'to fill the bill' dating from 1866, where 'bill' refers to a 'playbill', with the various turns being itemised: hence, I suppose: corresponding with what is advertised/expected. 'Bill' in that sense is found in Pepys.

Some relevant discussion here.