Sum: English 'bizarre'

[Larry Trask]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Shortly before Christmas, I posted a question about a putative 13th-century
occurrence of 'bizarre' in English in its original Italian sense of
'irascible', reported in a popular book by William Brohaugh.  Here is what
I learned.

There appears to be no trace of 'bizarre' in English at such an early date
or anything close to it, in any sense.  There is no mention of the word in
the Middle English Dictionary, in Literature Online, in the Anglo-Norman
Dictionary, or in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources.
Brohaugh's report therefore appears to be an error.  One respondent
suggests that the error might result from a misreading of a passage on page
165 of T. E. Hope (1971), Lexical Borrowing in the Romance Languages
(Oxford: Blackwell), in which the author notes Dante's use of the word in
the sense of 'irascible'.  But the earliest known appearance of the word in
English is seemingly still 1648, as given in the OED.

Anyway, no such early attestation could occur in an English translation of
Dante, because Dante's work was not written until 1307-1321, and not
printed until 1472.

In my posting, I quoted Corominas as saying that French <bizarre> is
recorded from 1533, and Spanish <bizarro> from 1569.  But one respondent
reports that he can find no trace of the French word before the appearance
of <bigearre> in 1546, in Rabelais, and no trace of the form <bizarre>
before 1585.  Another reports that the Spanish word can now be dated to
1528, in La Lozana Andaluza, by Francisco Delicado, as given on page 128 in
the text as it appears on the RAE CORDE database.

Fascinatingly, an Italian proper name <Bizzarra> is recorded on maps from
the 12th century -- perhaps earlier than the ordinary word.

My thanks to Richard Coates, Stefan Georg, Max Wheeler, Roger Wright, Nigel
Vincent, David Trotter and Martin Huld.


Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)