Pedigree collapse

The other day my eye was caught by a BBC report:

Boris Johnson 'is descendant' of mummified Basel woman

more  here

Well GOLLY, I thought. A while ago More or Less dealt with a similar issue; in fact, the event was so Earth-shattering that Google will find it with the string Dyer Edward III.  1,560,000 hits. The Great Relatedness to Edward II Factoid leaves our Danny having to "take a moment" while the stupendousness (banality?) of the discovery sinks in. (Not quite banality – but what was extraordinary was not that he was a descendant: [after all, most people of English heritage are] but that his heritage could be documented.)

So when I heard about  the good woman of Basel's mummy I was underwhelmed. Huh, I scoffed, aren't we all descended from her? Well no; I had failed to consider the difference between the two cases: two or three centuries on the one hand, as opposed to  six or seven  – to give the Factors-of-2 magic its chance.

I was not the only sceptic. Stephen Fry tweeted:

But his tweet was met by a flurry of corrections (rebuttwals?): GNEURR Mr Smartypants Fry <eye-roll>, haven't you heard of pedigree collapse?






Nor had I. Fortunately, last week's More or Less explained (about 18 minutes in). Taking advantage, I guess, of  Stephen Fry's presence in Wogan House (or wherever) mentioned in this tweet...

 ⇒

... Tim Harford recorded a request from the genial polymath (from about 20'20") and went on to explain.


In his extreme case, if a man marries his sister they share a single maternal great grandmother (not four, as unrelated people have). Of course, very few of Edward III's descendants went in for this degree of inbreeding, but the general case is clear: the closer the consanguinity, the fewer the maternal great grandparents. This pedigree shows how 1st cousins marrying share only three maternal great grandparents.

When 1st Cousins M and F Marry

<digression>

This reminds me of the issue of pedigree's pedigree ... Hmm... [See PPS]

</digression>

But I'm missing this week's More or Less.

b

PS: A couple of clues:

• I will do it again (despite this key skills deficit). (10)
  
• Do they turn up trousers before droning on?. (8)
  

Update: 2018.02.05.12:30 – Added PPS on pedigree's pedigree

PPS  – As prefigured in my last digression., I've been looking into the derivation of pedigree. The version I was told 40+ years ago, and still favoured by many authorities (including the OED and Etymonline – but not having the wholesale  support of some current scholars ...

<example_scepticism source="Anatoly Liberman">
This offering from the OUPblog asks Does the current etymology of pedigree [pied de grue] have a leg to stand on?
</example_scepticism>

... ) is pied de grue. As Etymonline says

pedigree (n.)

early 15c., "genealogical table or chart," from Anglo-French pe de gru, a variant of Old French pied de gru "foot of a crane," from Latin pedem accusative of pes "foot" (from PIE root *ped- "foot") + gruem

According to this derivation, the pun with degree (in the sense of descent) was a happy accident of Middle English.

To quote that OUPblog again

In 1895 Charles Sweet, the brother of the famous Henry Sweet, and Round put forward the same explanation: according to them, the mark used in old pedigrees had the shape of a so-called broad arrow, that is, a vertical short line and two curved ones radiating from a common center, like three toes of a crane’s foot, with an allusion to the branching out of the descendants from the paternal stock.

So the jury's still out.

What we do know is that English crane and French  grue are related. Etymonline's entry for crane says:

Old English cran "large wading bird," common Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon krano, Old High German krano, German Kranich...from PIE *gere-no-, suffixed form of root *gere- (2) "to cry hoarsely," also the name of the crane (cognates: Greek geranos, Latin grus, Welsh garan, Lithuanian garnys "heron, stork"). Thus the name is perhaps an echo of its cry in ancient ears...

But what bothers me is this statememt from  the same entry:

Metaphoric use for "machine with a long arm" is first attested late 13c. (a sense also in equivalent words in German and Greek)...

And in French of course .  Scholars who question the crane's foot derivation of pedigree seem to be very concerned about the vowel: Isn't degree a more likely root for pedigree, preserving the /i:/ of degree? They seem to overlook the fact that the tongue positions for English /i:/ and French /y/ are very similar (if not identical –  many a language teacher uses this device for teaching /y/: Get ready to whistle and try to say /i:/); the main difference is in the lip-rounding.

OK, crane and grue are related. But if the first attested version of the lifting machine  dates from the 13th century, who thought of the metaphor first? Or is this a case of "convergent etymology".  Either an English builder thought

Pierre has named this machine after a bird that stands on one leg. That‘s a good idea. I‘ll do the same. Right, this hitherto unnamed device, which he calls une grue will henceforth be a crane. 

Or a French builder thought

Les Rozbifs ont donné à cette machine le nom d‘un oiseau qui se tient d‘une seule jambe. Formidable. Je ferai également. D‘accord: d‘ici en avant ce truc sans nomme, nommé outre-manche a crane sera une grue.

Well, no, that‘s silly. It‘s hard to imagine how people felt about language in the 13th century, when French, Latin, and English vied for... no, even that is an over-simplification. There was no "vying";  people just used whatever communication mode was suitable. And on a 13-century building site, with rulers setting impossible deadlines...

<Building_Times date="1250">
"I want a cathedral here in two years".  

"But sire, there  are not enough stone-masons in all Anglia."  

"Then get some from Francia. Two years I said.")
</Building_Times>

...the linguistic picture would have been very fluid.

b
Update: 2018.06.18.11:40 – The answers at last: ILLITERATE and WINDBAGS

The coolness of Purcell

In my last post I wrote that my use of art in a particular context depended on "an overly etymological understanding of the word art". I've been thinking about this with a certain amount of self doubt, and have found that my use of the word etymological was dubious.

Etymology (the word) is developed ultimately from the Greek adjective ετυμος (there may be a diacritic or two there – we didn't do them at O-level ).  It means true or real. A calque...

<recently_provided_gloss date="2017-01-17" skippability="max">

<digression>
To form a calque the receiving language borrows the format that the donor language uses to construct a typically two-part compound, but not the word itself. It translates each element of the compound using a native word: for example Latin omni- + potens, Old English æl- + mihtig (whence our almighty), Spanish todo- + poderoso. [Incidentally, that bunch of examples isn't supposed to suggest a series of any kind, historical or otherwise; its just a bunch of examples.] ...
</digression>

</recently_provided_gloss>

...used by Cicero was veriloquium (says Etymonline); sadly there's no English borrowing *veriloquy.

But what of art? There's nothing particularly real or true about the meaning I was referring to.  Etymonline says this:

art (n.)

early 13c., "skill as a result of learning or practice," from Old French art (10c.), from Latin artem (nominative ars) "work of art; practical skill; a business, craft," from PIE *ar-ti- (source also of Sanskrit rtih "manner, mode;" Greek arti "just," artios "complete, suitable," artizein "to prepare;" Latin artus "joint;" Armenian arnam "make;" German art "manner, mode"), from root *ar- "fit together, join" (see arm (n.1)). In Middle English usually with a sense of "skill in scholarship and learning" (c. 1300), especially in the seven sciences, or liberal arts. This sense remains in Bachelor of Arts, etc. Meaning "human workmanship" (as opposed to nature) is from late 14c. Sense of "cunning and trickery" first attested c. 1600. Meaning "skill in creative arts" is first recorded 1610s; especially of painting, sculpture, etc., from 1660s. Broader sense of the word remains in artless... _{More here}

So the words "Meaning 'human workmanship' (as opposed to nature) is from late 14c." hit the spot, but of course the meaning kept developing; the meaning I had in mind was not original (not that that matters, as I keep emphasizing, and as this blog argues – it was just one of many stops along the way).  A rolling word gathers dozens of meanings. In  fact, even stops is the wrong image – meanings are more like a river (which has different general characters at different points of its passage, but which at any moment can take on any new meaning or nuance of meaning, depending on context). 

 

See a bigger one here

My reason for making the assumption that human workmanship was the original sense was the text of one of Purcell's pieces that my choir will be singing in – oo-er – less than four weeks: Come Ye Sons of Art. When I first sang this piece (with another choir) I realized that sons of art weren't people like Constable (Junior) and his school-chums, assuming (stupidly) that this sort of art was the original meaning. Offshoots like artless and Bachelor of Arts should have saved me from leaping to this conclusion.

In that choir, our MD was a music teacher, and in one concert we sang part of Dido & Aeneas – possibly the sailors' chorus "Come Away, Fellow Sailors" where they...

...take a boozy short leave of your nymphs on the shore
And silence their mourning with vows of returning
But never  intending to visit them more.

(Age-old sailor behaviour – ‘doing a "Bobby Shaftoe"', as mentioned before.)

<FWIW>
Etymonline notes boozy as dating from 1719, and OED is one of its sources. So – unless Etymonline is missing a trick – Nahum Tate's libretto of Dido & Aeneas, written in the last years of the previous century, was putting a pretty untried neologism in the mouths of the sailors.
</FWIW>

Anyway, Dido. We  were singing from a set of scores borrowed from our MD's A-level set. And in the margin next to the marvellous descending ground bass at the beginning of Dido's Lament the previous owner had written

‘Purcell, you are so cool'.

Well, he is. Come and hear, on 4 March at Reading University‘s Great Hall.

b

PS And here's a clue:

• The pathologically dependent, in for a penny,  accuses. (7)

Update: 2017.09.09.15:55 – Added PPS

PPS
The answer to that clue: INDICTS

Trumpery and Popery

Just  imagine: Trump  meeting Pope Francis; the personification of being in denial meets the personification of self-denial. What I wouldn't give to be a fly in the ointment during that conversation...

But there are two metaphors where the vocabularies of rampant, bullying, exploitative, self-regarding capitalism on  the one hand and the papacy (though probably not Pope Francis in one case) on  the other intersect. The one where the present occupant of the shoes of the fisherman is presumably blameless is nepotism. 

Nepotism

Many readers of this blog won't need telling that the word is derived from the Latin nepos -otis (= "nephew"), or – in the simpler, more direct Vulgar Latin notation (explained elsewhere in this blog, passim) NEPOTE(M). Where the papacy comes in is that in the bad old days of monastic shenanigans the nephew-word (whatever it was, certainly not "Italian", which didn't exist at the time; something Italic [or come to think of it, given the context, maybe they just used Latin]) was used as an (impious, not to say impish) euphemism for what the strait-laced OED [secondary source, I'm afraid] calls "the natural son" of the Pope; born the wrong side of the chasuble, as it were.

In fact this Etymonline excerpt shows that the word was not specific to one particular relation:

nephew (n.) c. 1300, from Old French neveu (Old North French nevu) "grandson, descendant," from nepotem (nominative nepos) "sister's son, grandson, descendant, grandchild," and in a general sense, "male descendant other than son" (source also of Sanskrit napat "grandson, descendant;" Old Persian napat- "grandson;" Old Lithuanian nepuotis "grandson;" Dutch  neef; German Neffe "nephew;" Old Irish nia, genitive niath "son of a sister," Welsh nei)....

In that respect, come to think of it, it is reminiscent of cousin in Shakespeare's day: Falstaff, as I remember, was wont to address Prince Hal as "cuz". Old English nefa, which Etymonline says persisted into the 16c, could mean "nephew, stepson, grandson, second cousin"; almost any male blood relative – so it doesn't quite work for Trump's son-in-law [not that I'm a sufferer from  the Etymological Fallacy].

Pontifex

The simplest and most self-evident explanation of this word is that it is an amalgam of words for bridge and make; the maker of a bridge between us miserable offenders and Heaven. There have been suggestions that there has been an element  of folk etymology in the derivation, and that something either Umbrian or Etruscan was involved; I'm satisfied, though , with bridge-builder, as was the Northumbrian monk who used the word brycgwyrcende "bridge-maker". (If you screw your eyes up you can just about see work in the middle of that calque – linguist's jargon for a loan-translation).

<digression>
To form a calque the receiving language borrows the format that the donor language uses to construct a typically two-part compound, but not the word itself. It translates each element of the compound using a native word: for example Latin omni- + potens, Old English æl- + mihtig (whence our almighty), Spanish todo- + poderoso. [Incidentally, that bunch of examples isn't supposed to suggests a series of any kind; its just a bunch of examples.]

Incidentally, it's /kælk/, not /kɔ:k/ or /kɔl:k/;  I'm not sure I've ever heard it said, though – it's that sort of word.
</digression>

Oops  – left a bit out. See update.

L'Envoi 

So [and that is a subordinating conjunction, if that sort of thing bothers you] these two metaphors make a (fairly tenuous, admittedly) link  between the sublime and the ridiculous. Time's wingéd chariot, though...

b

PS Here's a clue:

Re-recording makes Midge Ure a really legendary creator. – (8)

Update: 2017.01.17.11:45  – Added PPS

PPS
Sorry  – I missed out a bit of the argument: what links Trump to pontifex? Given a pontiff,  together with a belief in his infallibility, you get an action verb: pontificate  – to say what must be true, on the highest authority.  In a way familiar to students of language ...

<digression theme="semantic somersaults">
(here I mentioned the link between glamour and grammar, as discussed by David Crystal in The Story of English in 100 Words. You can read Crystal's discussion for yourself, but I would go a bit further; as I said in that post:

...This is the root of the word glamour, which came to refer to charm or attractiveness in the early twentieth century. Crystal doesn't say so, but it seems likely to me that Hollywood had something to do with it. The progression from wizardry to smoke & mirrors to magic lantern shows to movies strikes me as a fairly likely one.

</digression>

... the meaning flipped. From being a Good Thing (telling the truth, unquestionably) it became a Bad Thing (shooting your mouth off on subjects you have a shaky grasp of and expecting to be believed unquestioningly). Trumpery? You make the link.

Updatt: 2017.08.17.19:05  – Added PPPS

PPPS: Another case of that semantic somersault (the post I mined that Crystal quote from). is backlog ; as I said this process is very familiar to students of language. I should have specified, though, that I was referring to students of meaning-development in languages

And that clue: the answer, at last: DEMIURGE.