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Authors: David Crystal
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occasions, a word got borrowed twice.
Why borrow a word twice? If English speakers were already using it, what would be the point? The answer lies in the fact that the people who introduced these words had different social and linguistic backgrounds. In the early part of the period, they were usually speakers of the dialect of French spoken in Normandy; in the later part, they were people who had learned the French of Paris – the ‘posh’ dialect that was becoming the standard. Several words had different forms in these two dialects. The Norman version was borrowed first; a Parisian version came along later. And English sometimes kept both of them.
That’s why we have both
gaol
and
jail
. The
g
-spellings are recorded first, in the 13th century: we read about a
gayhol
and a
gayll
. The
j
-spellings, such as
iaiole
and
iayll
come long later (
i
and
j
weren’t distinguished as separate letters in the Middle English period). It must have been quite confusing. Which form should one use? Even as late as the 17th century, people were scratching their heads. The point was noted by the political author Roger L’Estrange, writing in 1668: he talks about the ‘rage’ some people feel because they can’t decide ‘whether they shall say [write] Jayl or Gaol’.
5. In Monopoly, one goes directly to jail, not gaol. Over a hundred local variants of the game have now been licensed. A spin-off dice-game was called ‘Don’t Go To Jail’.
But at least the meaning stayed the same in this instance. In many other cases of ‘double borrowing’, the two words developed different meanings. Today,
convey
(from Norman French) doesn’t have the same meaning as
convoy
(from Parisian French). Nor are Norman
reward
,
warden
,
warrant
and
wile
the same as Parisian
regard
,
guardian
,
guarantee
and
guile
.
Three hundred and fifty years on, the problem of
gaol
and
jail
is still there in British English. The Americans sorted it out in the 18th century, opting for
jail
, and that’s the only form found in the USA today. But Britain kept both. Official legal documents preferred the
gaol
spelling. British and Irish prisons were originally spelled
Gaol
. Oscar Wilde wrote a ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’. In speech, of course, there’s no difference: both words are pronounced ‘jail’.
Gaol
seems to be disappearing from everyday writing nowadays in Britain, though lawyers still use it. And it’s still popular in some other countries, such as Australia. Overall it’s definitely the junior partner: a mere 2 million hits on Google in 2010, compared with 52 million for
jail
. It’s difficult tosay just when the replacement trend started. Some people put it down to the influence of the popular board game Monopoly, invented in the USA. When the game was ‘translated’ into Britain in the 1930s, the non-London squares weren’t changed. That’s why there is a distinctly American-looking policeman on the ‘Go To Jail’ square. And suddenly British players were being sent ‘directly to jail’.
Take away
a phrasal verb (13th century)
It must have come as quite a shock to Samuel Johnson, slowly working his way through the alphabet for his
Dictionary of the English Language
in the early 1750s, when he reached the letter T. The end of his great project was in sight, and then he encountered the verb
take
, with its remarkable number of senses. He had had to deal with complicated verbs before:
come
had ended up with 56 senses,
go
had 68 and
put
had 80. But
take
was going to require an unprecedented 124.
The high total was caused by a large number of combined forms, where
take
was used along with another word, such as
in
,
off
,
up
and
out
, or two words, as seen in
take up with
. These are called
phrasal verbs
in modern grammatical parlance. The combination of words expresses new senses.
Take off
, for example, has such meanings as ‘become airborne’, ‘be successful’ and ‘remove’. Aircraft and projects can take off. Clothes can
Why borrow a word twice? If English speakers were already using it, what would be the point? The answer lies in the fact that the people who introduced these words had different social and linguistic backgrounds. In the early part of the period, they were usually speakers of the dialect of French spoken in Normandy; in the later part, they were people who had learned the French of Paris – the ‘posh’ dialect that was becoming the standard. Several words had different forms in these two dialects. The Norman version was borrowed first; a Parisian version came along later. And English sometimes kept both of them.
That’s why we have both
gaol
and
jail
. The
g
-spellings are recorded first, in the 13th century: we read about a
gayhol
and a
gayll
. The
j
-spellings, such as
iaiole
and
iayll
come long later (
i
and
j
weren’t distinguished as separate letters in the Middle English period). It must have been quite confusing. Which form should one use? Even as late as the 17th century, people were scratching their heads. The point was noted by the political author Roger L’Estrange, writing in 1668: he talks about the ‘rage’ some people feel because they can’t decide ‘whether they shall say [write] Jayl or Gaol’.
5. In Monopoly, one goes directly to jail, not gaol. Over a hundred local variants of the game have now been licensed. A spin-off dice-game was called ‘Don’t Go To Jail’.
But at least the meaning stayed the same in this instance. In many other cases of ‘double borrowing’, the two words developed different meanings. Today,
convey
(from Norman French) doesn’t have the same meaning as
convoy
(from Parisian French). Nor are Norman
reward
,
warden
,
warrant
and
wile
the same as Parisian
regard
,
guardian
,
guarantee
and
guile
.
Three hundred and fifty years on, the problem of
gaol
and
jail
is still there in British English. The Americans sorted it out in the 18th century, opting for
jail
, and that’s the only form found in the USA today. But Britain kept both. Official legal documents preferred the
gaol
spelling. British and Irish prisons were originally spelled
Gaol
. Oscar Wilde wrote a ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’. In speech, of course, there’s no difference: both words are pronounced ‘jail’.
Gaol
seems to be disappearing from everyday writing nowadays in Britain, though lawyers still use it. And it’s still popular in some other countries, such as Australia. Overall it’s definitely the junior partner: a mere 2 million hits on Google in 2010, compared with 52 million for
jail
. It’s difficult tosay just when the replacement trend started. Some people put it down to the influence of the popular board game Monopoly, invented in the USA. When the game was ‘translated’ into Britain in the 1930s, the non-London squares weren’t changed. That’s why there is a distinctly American-looking policeman on the ‘Go To Jail’ square. And suddenly British players were being sent ‘directly to jail’.
Take away
a phrasal verb (13th century)
It must have come as quite a shock to Samuel Johnson, slowly working his way through the alphabet for his
Dictionary of the English Language
in the early 1750s, when he reached the letter T. The end of his great project was in sight, and then he encountered the verb
take
, with its remarkable number of senses. He had had to deal with complicated verbs before:
come
had ended up with 56 senses,
go
had 68 and
put
had 80. But
take
was going to require an unprecedented 124.
The high total was caused by a large number of combined forms, where
take
was used along with another word, such as
in
,
off
,
up
and
out
, or two words, as seen in
take up with
. These are called
phrasal verbs
in modern grammatical parlance. The combination of words expresses new senses.
Take off
, for example, has such meanings as ‘become airborne’, ‘be successful’ and ‘remove’. Aircraft and projects can take off. Clothes can
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