Linguistic dark matter

[Mark Mandel]

Replying to Victor's query at the bottom w.r.t.

>>My shyster of Pembroke hath wylled me to rem'ber her humble dewty to

>>my Lorde and you, wyth desyre of hysdayly blessynge. Assoone as she is

>>able she wyll dowe yt her selfe.


That really is "sister". Victor's citation is a PS to a letter; the second
sentence of that letter reads

The causse I wylled hym to declare to your La.[dyship] whych was the
> extremity that my syster of Pembroke was in at that tyme [...]


It may have been a spelling error, but I can't see using the word "error" so
readily of a ... chronolect? ... in which there was so much less of a
standard. (Cf. Shakespeare's signatures.) Letters came and letters went, and
who the *h* cared? Call it variation.

m a m


On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> "y" instead of "i" does occur, although I can't say how often nor do
> I know much about the 16th century.
>
> "Syster" appears 63 times in various entries in the OED, one being
> "given to my syster Anne".  There are only 14 instances of "shyster",
> and enough of each quotation is given to say none are
> "sister".  "Blessyng*", also in Victor's quotation, which I chose
> because I have seen that spelling (I sometimes read sermons), appears
> 35 times in various entries.  I will not attempt to date them, since
> the new OED interface makes it impossible to go to quotations.
>
> Joel
>
> At 12/20/2010 04:43 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> >The search, in fact, is already done at ngrams site. You can see a
> >string of date ranges at the bottom of the page when looking at the
> >trend graph. The breakdowns are not always useful and I am not sure if
> >they can be adjusted other than going to "advanced search" in Google
> >Books. Looking at "shyster, Shyster" results (case-sensitive), there are
> >a couple of small bumps prior to 1860, so it's hard to discern the
> >earliest occurrence. And the automatically generated ranges are not
> >helpful--1800-1905 for "shyster" and 1800-1868 for "Shyster"
> >(apparently, going by quintiles).
> >
> >But the graph is also inaccurate--there are hits for 1843, 1849, but
> >they are not reflected in the graph at all, even though there are
> >several minor bumps recorded. These bumps correspond to single hits (all
> >mislabeled, but that's not relevant). So the other two also should have
> >showed up.
> >
> >But there is also an odd 1819 cite. It's not an OCR error--the word
> >"shyster" is on the page. But it could not possibly be the same word
> >that appears in all the other places...
> >
> >The book is from 1819, but the text is much older.
> >
> >http://goo.gl/BjCN8
> >Hallamshire: The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in
> >the County of York. London: 1819
> >ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER AND OF THE
> >HISTORY AND MANNERS OF THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. p. 84/2
> >>My shyster of Pembroke hath wylled me to rem'ber her humble dewty to
> >>my Lorde and you, wyth desyre of hysdayly blessynge. Assoone as she is
> >>able she wyll dowe yt her selfe.
> >
> >The date on the letter is 1575. Could "sister" really have been spelled
> >"shyster" in 1575? All the other words with an "i" in modern spelling,
> >appear to have a "y" in this piece. Or was it something else that it
> >meant? I am clueless, as usual, about such things...
> >
> >     VS-)
> >
> >On 12/19/2010 11:47 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> >>One does a search in Google Books.
> >>
> >>Fred Shapiro
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org