Q: English 'bizarre' = 'irascible'?

[Larry Trask]

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Me again.  This is a question on English 'bizarre'.  I think I need to provide a bit of background before I ask my question, but, if you already know the origin of 'bizarre', you can skip the intro and go to the question.

English has a word 'bizarre' (= 'weird'), which it shares with several other European languages.  In most of these the word has about the same sense, but Spanish <bizarro> oddly means 'gallant, brave'.

In 1607, the Basque writer Baltásar de Etxabe proposed that the Spanish word must derive from Basque <bizar> 'beard', on the ground that being bearded equals being manly and brave.  This idea was picked up by Friedrich 
Diez, who popularized it, and as a result the Basque story is presented as gospel in most reference books -- all of which conclude that French took the word from Spanish, and most of which propose that the French sense results from the startling effect of the bearded Spanish soldiers on the clean-shaven French troops.

But the Basque story was shot to pieces several decades ago by the Catalan philologist Juan Corominas, who demonstrated that the word came from Italian.  Italian <bizzarro> is abundantly and steadily recorded from the 13th century on, and it even occurs in Dante and in Boccaccio.  The original Italian sense, used by these writers, was 'quick to anger', 'irascible', and only later did the word develop semantically along the lines of 'quick to anger' > 'unpredictable' > 'eccentric' > 'weird'. French <bizarre> is attested only from 1533 and only in this last sense. Spanish <bizarro> is recorded only from 1569, and its odd sense appears to be explained by the observation that the Italian word has developed regional senses which are approving, such as 'spirited'.

Moreover, there is an Italian source, in the word <bizza>, originally 'quick flash of anger', today 'tantrum'.  And Italian also has another derivative of this noun, <bizzoso>, which has developed semantically in roughly similar ways but which has seemingly not been borrowed.

So that seems to be that, and the Basque story is dead.  But now to my question.

The OED and other standard sources insist that English 'bizarre' is recorded only from 1648, already in its modern sense.  But I've just been looking at William Brohaugh's recent popular book on English word histories, and Brohaugh tells me that, in fact, 'bizarre' is recorded at least once in English in the 13th century, and in the original Italian sense of 'irascible'.  Unfortunately, Brohaugh gives no source and no precise date.  I can't find confirming evidence anywhere, and I can't locate Brohaugh on the Net.

So, my question is this.  Can anybody point me at that 13th-century attestation?

It occurs to me that the word *might* have occurred in an early English translation of Dante, if there was one that early, but I don't know if there was.  It seems awfully early.

Reference: William Brohaugh. 1998. English Through the Ages. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

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