T.I.P. acronym--1895

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:23 AM -0500 3/19/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 19:43:23 -0500, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
>
>>>Maybe, but it's surprising to me that they were even thinking
>>>acronymically as early as 1895.
>>
>>I asked a related question here some time back about a very dubious
>>acronym much earlier (not in English but mentioned in English sources):
>>
>>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0204A&L=ads-l&P=R912
>>
>>If there are backronyms (bogus acronyms) can true acronyms be far
>>behind?
>
>The acronymic interpretation of "hep" as the Crusader's cry "Hierosolyma
>est perdita" ("Jerusalem is lost") is an interesting case -- the OED dates
>it to 1839, twenty years after the "Hep! Hep! riots" against Jews in
>Hamburg, Frankfurt, and other German cities.

Well, there were some actual acronyms around before then in religious
contexts.  The oldest I know of is the famous "I-CH-TH-Y-S" for Jesus
Christ/fish, immortalized on bumpers to this day.  Then there are all
those Hebrew ones, KATZ, RAMBAM, TANACH, etc.  (I'm sure Mark knows
this stuff better than I do.)  So the "HEP" story is not
inconceivable, at least as something plausibly believed at the time,
if not actually true.

larry

>-----
>hep, int.
>[Said to be f. the initials of Hierosolyma Est Perdita;
>or, the cry of a goatherd.]
>
>Usu. hep, hep! The cry of those who persecuted Jews in the 19th century.
>Also attrib.
>
>1839 Penny Cycl. XIII. 122/1 They [sc. the Jews] were massacred at the cry
>of 'Hep', 'Hep', the initials of the words 'Hierosolyma est perdita'.
>-----
>
>Cecil Adams <http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_241b.html> discusses
>this and finds it much more likely that "hep" came from the herder's cry.
>But the OED's 1839 cite shows that the acronymic explanation was being
>given not too long after the German riots.  Perhaps there were
>anti-Semitic tracts floating around Germany at the time of the riots
>giving the Crusader story, thus popularizing the "Hep!" cry.  Or perhaps
>it was simply explained this way after the fact by observers trying to
>link the riots to earlier expressions of anti-Semitism.
>
>An earlier backronym in English is "cabal", linked to the ministerial
>cabinet of Charles II, c. 1670: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley,
>Lauderdale.  Though "cabal" derives from Hebrew "Kabbalah", it came to
>mean any kind of suspiciously secret matter, and by the mid-17th Century
>it had already developed a secondary meaning of "a small body of persons
>engaged in secret or private machination or intrigue" (see OED defs. 3-6).
>  The coincidence of the names in the CABAL Cabinet cemented this meaning
>as the primary one.
>
>I'm not sure, though, of the extent to which the ministerial acronym was
>later presumed to have been the *source* of the word (rather than simply
>reinforcing one sense of the word).  Here's a Making of America cite from
>1876 suggesting that the acronymic explanation was taken seriously:
>
>-----
>http://tinyurl.com/6shg4
>Lieber, Francis. _Manual of political ethics_, 1876.
>The word cabal, as is well known, is now generally believed, according to
>Hume, ch. 65, to have been composed of the letters with which the names of
>the five dangerous ministers of the time began,-- namely, Clifford,
>Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale. (Burnet, Own Times, an.
>1672.) Others derive it from the Hebrew Cabala, denoting a mysterious
>philosophy brought from Egypt. [It is certain that cabal was used to
>denote a faction or junto before the time of Charles II. It was borrowed
>from the French, who derived it from Cabala.]
>-----
>
>Speaking of the Kabbalah, there are various Kabbalistic backronyms used as
>a kind of mystical folk etymology.  For instance, the word PARDES
>('paradise, garden') is expanded so that each consonant represents a level
>of scriptural interpretation: Peshat (literal meaning), Remez (allegorical
>meaning), Derasha (Talmudic interpretation), and Sod (mystical meaning).
>This acronymic explanation first appeared in the 13th century in the works
>of Moses ben Shem Tov (author of the Zohar).
>
>Similarly, early Christians made the Greek word for 'fish', ICHTHUS, stand
>for "Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter" (Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior).
>Based on this backronym, the fish has been used as a symbol for Christ
>since at least the 2nd century (and now can be seen affixed to the back of
>SUVs across middle America.)
>
>And going back even further is Plato's Cratylus, but I'll stop for now...
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer