World Wide Words -- 08 Mar 03

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS           ISSUE 331          Saturday 8 March 2003
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Contents
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1. Book Review: Coined by God.
2. Weird Words: Spanghew.
3. Q&A: John Doe.
4. Endnote.
A. Subscription commands.
B. Contact addresses.


1. Book Review: Coined by God
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The title is modelled on that of Coined by Shakespeare, an earlier
work by the same authors. But while the Bard may really have coined
the words attributed to him, the English translations of the Bible
are without doubt the work of Man. The authors try to pre-empt
possible criticism of the title in their introduction: "It is this
seemingly unstoppable tradition of Biblical translation and
interpretation that we are calling 'God' in our title".

Whatever your faith, in knowing English you will have been deeply
influenced by the language of translations of the Bible by men such
as Wycliffe, Tyndall, and Coverdale. The editors of the Authorised
Version started with a revised version of Coverdale's Great Bible
of 1539, which itself was partly based on a translation by Tyndall.
All the early translators wrote in the vernacular, in spite of
great opposition from Church authorities, as they wanted the words
of Scripture to be understood by ordinary people. They were writing
at a time when English was going through great changes from what
scholars call its "Middle" period to its "Modern" one, when
printing and increased literacy were standardising it. Because the
Bible was so widely read and heard, the style and vocabulary of the
translators influenced generations of writers and influenced the
way the language developed.

Quotations from the Authorised Version are common even now, often
without people realising they are referring to it. A quick count in
the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations finds Shakespeare in front by a
good margin (71 pages against 39) but in the three centuries
following its completion the Authorised Version became intimately
familiar to many people who never heard Shakespeare.

After all this, Coined by Shakespeare is a disappointment, mainly
because it feels such a slight volume. There are only about 130
entries, a mixture of original words that first appear in one of
the major translations with some of the phrases that are often
still used as quotations.

Among the words are everyday forms like "beautiful", "civility",
"blab", "dishonour", "excellent", "female", "horror", "liberty",
"needlework", "persuasion", "plague", "scapegoat", "seashore",
"treasure", "uproar" and "wordy". Among the phrases are "all things
to all men", "am I my brother's keeper", "the blind leading the
blind" (a slight misquotation), "eat, drink and be merry", "no man
can serve two masters", "you cannot live by bread alone", "ivory
tower", "the quick and the dead", "the love of money is the root of
all evil", "stranger in a strange land", and "through a glass
darkly".

The treatment is strictly alphabetical, with about a page of notes
for each word or phrase. There are indexes of terms by editions of
the Bible and by the book in which they appear, together with a
bibliography and a short introduction.

[Malless, Stanley & McQuain, Jeffrey, Coined by God, hardback,
pp221; ISBN0-393-02045-2, published by Norton, New York, on 24
February 2003; publisher's recommended price US$23.95.]

AMAZON PRICES FOR THIS BOOK
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2. Weird Words: Spanghew
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To throw or jerk violently into the air.

"Especially a frog, etc, as a game," says my Concise Scots
Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary concurs. Sadly, I have
turned up no details to support this description of what sounds
like an especially cruel and primitive sport. The only sporting
connection I can find refers to a horse, not a frog, and it's the
horse that's doing the throwing: "Hercules had 'spang-hewed' so
many triers, and the hideous contraction of his resolute back had
deterred so many from mounting, that Buckram had began to fear he
would have to place him in the only remaining school for
incurables, the 'Bus". This is from Robert Surtees' Mr Sponge's
Sporting Tour of 1853.

The origin of second part is obscure - there's no evidence to link
it to any of our usual senses of "hew". The first part is the Scots
and Northern English dialect "spang", originally a verb meaning to
spring, leap or bound. The Reverend M C F Morris wrote about it, in
his Yorkshire Folk Talk in 1892: "It is probably now obsolete,
though its disappearance is regrettable, being very expressive in
such a phrase as "spang thi gaits", i.e. put your best leg
foremost. It is, however, still in use in such a phrase as "he
spang'd him doon", i.e. he threw him violently to the ground".


3. Q&A
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Q. I have spent two hours searching the Net for information about
the expressions "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" that American authorities
use for people who cannot be identified. US courts also allow the
names to be used by people who do not want to provide their real
names in certain cases. Was there a real original "John Doe" and
what was famous enough about him? [Kevin Webster]

A. There's a lot we don't know about the origins of these names -
and others that are sometimes used - but it seems certain that
there never was a real John Doe.

The name is known from the eighteenth century - the best-known
early example is in Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the
laws of England of 1765-69, but it is certainly older - the Oxford
English Dictionary editors tell me that they've recently found it
in a work of 1659: "To prosecute the suit, to witt John Doe And
Richard Roe". Suggestions I've seen that it dates back to Edward
III's reign in the fourteenth century seem wide of the mark,
though.

It was used in a rather complicated and long since obsolete legal
process called an action of ejectment, which would be brought by a
wrongfully dispossessed owner who was trying to get his land back.
For arcane legal reasons, landowners who wanted to establish their
rightful titles would use fictitious tenants in the ejectment
action. In order to find whether this imaginary tenant had a right
to be in possession, the court had first to establish that the
supposed landlord was actually the owner, which settled the true
reason for the action. This highly technical procedure was done
away with in Britain by an Act of Parliament in 1852.

We know that it became standard by the time of Blackstone to use
the name of John Doe for the fictitious plaintiff and Richard Roe
for the equally unreal defendant in such cases. We have no idea
where these names came from. However, it does seem likely that the
first names were chosen from the most common personal names then in
use (John as a generic name also appeared in "John Company", a
nickname for the East India Company; much more recently, "John
Citizen" and "John Q Public" are American names for the man in the
street, based on the same idea). The surnames were both associated
with deer (a doe being a female deer, as you will remember from The
Sound of Music, and roe is a European deer species), but how they
came to be used isn't known.

These weren't the only names. John Stiles and Richard Miles were -
and still can be - used for the third and fourth participants in an
action. Another, long since obsolete, was John Nokes (originally
John-a-nokes, a medieval name meaning John of the oak). Jane Doe
(or Jane Roe) is a much more recent introduction, for a woman whose
real name is unknown or withheld for some reason; these are obvious
enough extensions from their male equivalents. (The most famous
example is in the abortion-rights case of Roe v Wade in 1973.) She
can also be called Mary Major in American federal cases, but the
origin of this is totally obscure.


4. Endnote
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When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after
another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that
promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal
justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce
no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases
from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his
language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in
his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once
from folly, vanity, and affectation. [Samuel Johnson, Preface to
his Dictionary of the English Language (1755)]


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