Three Levels of Understanding

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:26 AM -0400 5/13/05, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>The recent Duane Campbell "tree falls in the forest" posting reminds me of
>a theory I have often toyed with.  (I don't mean to say that Mr.
>Campbell exactly illustrates the theory, his posting just reminds
>of the theory.)
>
>I find that, with regard to quotation origins and word origins, there are
>often three levels of understanding:
>
>1. The man-in-the-street (or woman-in-the-street) understanding, which is
>usually erroneous.
>
>2. The more sophisticated explanation found in reference works and
>writings about language, which often proclaim superiority over the
>erroneous first-level explanation.  Curiously, though, the second-level
>explanation is often wrong too.
>
>3. The truthful explanation unearthed through original research.
>(Curiously, the third-level explanation is sometimes the same as the
>first-level understanding.)
>
>Example: the phrase "the exception proves the rule."  The
>man-in-the-street understanding is that this, illogically, means that an
>exception to a rule strengthens the evidence for the rule.  The
>second-level, pseudo-sophisticated explanation is that "proves" in this
>expression has an archaic meaning of "tests."  The third-level, accurate
>explanation is that this is a legal proverb meaning that the very fact of
>there being an exception proves the existence of a rule in cases not
>excepted.  If there is a law saying you can't buy liquor on Sundays this
>implies that you can buy liquor on the other days.

Nicely put.  This is a more detailed and careful distillation of what
I describe as the difference between a first-order folk etymology
(instantiating #1) and etymythology, the second-order process in #2.
This is basically the way I differentiated them in my AS paper last
year (2004: 39).  I've been using "the exception proves the rule" in
class to illustrate this distinction since Rudy Troike brought it to
our (or at least my) attention in his ads-l posting of 2/5/96.  (I
had previously assumed erroneously that the etymythological
explanation noted by Fred was correct, but I'm mollified to discover
that Cecil Adams himself not only accepted it but promulgated it
authoritatively until various readers forced him to admit the error
of his ways.)

Another more mundane example is "elephant and castle", supposedly
(but etymythologically) derived from "infanta de Castile".  And then
there are "Welsh rabbit" (< rarebit) and "spitting image" (<"spirit
and image" or, according to me, < "spit and image").  Or "jo(h)nny
cake" (< "journey cake"), although arguably #1 is wrong on this too
(if it's from "jonakin").  Many etymythologies involve a
"sophisticated" #2 stage without an ultimately correct #1 version,
though, as with many of those faux acronyms (POSH, FUCK).  Two that
might qualify for the three-stage process are COP (if the #1
assumption does connect it with the verb) and NEWS (#1:  something
new; #2:  North-East-South-West).

Larry