What makes interested so interesting is that both forms survived, but with the meanings totally overlapping.
• Disinterested is first recorded in the early 17th century. It meant ‘unconcerned, indifferent’. By the mid-century it had come to mean ‘impartial, unbiased’.
• Uninterested is first recorded in the mid-17th century with the sense of ‘impartial, unbiased’. A century later it developed the sense of ‘unconcerned, indifferent’.
We might think this would be a recipe for semantic disaster. By 1750 each form could express the same two different meanings.
Dr Johnson tried to sort it out. In his Dictionary he gave disinterested the unbiased sense (‘not influenced by private profit’) and uninterested the ‘incurious’ sense (‘not having interest’). From then on, people strove to maintain the distinction – but with only partial success. In the 20th century, surveys showed that over a quarter of all the uses of disinterested in Britain meant ‘bored’, and nearly twice as many used it in this sense in the USA. People regularly say such things as ‘After a while I became disinterested in football, and stopped going to matches.’
As the 20th century progressed, such usages came to be roundly condemned by people who felt that an important distinction was being lost. In fact, the context makes it perfectly clear what is meant. The usage wouldn’t have developed at all if there had been any real ambiguity. And it evidently wasn’t a big issue in Henry Fowler’s day, for he doesn’t even mention it in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage in 1926. But concern evidently grew in the following decades, and when Sir Ernest Gowers came to revise Fowler in the 1960s he added an entry on disinterested and pleaded for the distinction to be rescued, ‘if it is not too late’.
It wasn’t. Today, the difference between the two words remains a live issue, thanks to its flagship status among usage pundits. But for many, the controversy has engendered a distrust. If they write disinterested meaning ‘unbiased’, will it be understood in the sense they intend? The feeling has grown that perhaps it would be better to avoid the word altogether, and use a synonym. The future of disinterested remains in the balance.
Polite
a matter of manners (17th century)
We learn to be linguistically polite at a very early age. It starts during the fourth year of life, when children have acquired enough language to have proper conversations. Parents start drilling. ‘Say please.’ ‘Say sorry.’ ‘I haven’t heard that little word yet.’ ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ The kids learn that there are words that should not be used in polite company. These then become the most desirable words of all, of course!
As we grow up, we learn more sophisticated expressions.
Times of day are given a linguistic introduction (Good morning, Good night), along with their informal variants (Morning, Night-night). Unexpected body noises elicit linguistic apologies (Bless you, Pardon me). Written English introduces us to special formulae (Yours sincerely, All the best). We learn to use the appropriate terms of address for different kinds of people in society (§19). And at the informal end of the scale, different groups develop their own politeness routines (Hi, Yo, Cheers).
It’s never possible to predict which words and phrases in a language a social group is going to accept or reject as polite. What is clear is that, from age to age, these expressions change. We can see this if we look at some of the expressions Jonathan Swift noted in the early 18th century. He tells us he used to keep a notebook in his pocket when he went to visit the ‘most polite families’. After he left the company, he would write down ‘the choicest expressions that passed during the visit’. Modern linguists do the same sort of thing as they travel about.
Some of the expressions Swift heard are still with us today. The members of his polite families said such things as talk of the devil and it’s an ill wind. But most of them reflect a past age. A modern ear would make nothing of You are but just come out of the Cloth-Market – meaning ‘you’ve just got out of bed’. And although the gist of this extract from Swift’s Polite Conversation is clear enough, some expressions do require a gloss.
LADY SMART: Well, Ladies, now let us have a Cup of Discourse to our selves. [a cup of tea and talk]
LADY ANSWERALL: What do you think of your Friend, Sir John Spendall?
LADY SMART: Why, Madam, ’tis happy for him that his Father was born before him. [in other words, he isn’t thrifty]
MISS NOTABLE: They say, he makes a very ill Husband to my Lady.
LADY ANSWERALL: Well, but he must be allowed to be the fondest Father in the World.
LADY SMART: Ay, Madam, that’s true; for they say, the Devil is kind to his own.
MISS NOTABLE: I am told, my Lady manages him to Admiration.
LADY SMART: That I believe, for she’s as cunning as a dead Pig; but not half so honest.
Swift points out that the reader will find these phrases extremely helpful, for the expressions can be used over and over on all occasions. He wouldn’t find much difference if he were observing polite conversation today. Some things don’t change.
Dilly-dally
a reduplicating word (17th century)
English has some ingenious ways of making new vocabulary, but none more so than the technique of taking a word and saying it twice in quick succession – but changing one of the vowels or consonants in the process. The phenomenon is called reduplication.
It’s something that little children do quite naturally when they’re learning to talk. Many of their early words contain a repeated syllable – mama, dada, baba, bye-bye, night-night, wee-wee – and soon the reduplication appears with a change in the vowel – mummy, daddy, baby. It’s a short step from there to doing the same thing with two words. We hear it in many nursery rhymes and fairy stories. Do you remember Chicken Licken, who was so worried that the sky was falling down that he rushed off to tell the king? On the way he met a host of reduplicating friends – Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey – and, eventually, Foxy Loxy. The names vary in different tellings (such as Hen Len and Goose Loose), but the reduplication is always there.
This is reduplication for fun. The repetition is there to make the names sound appealing, and it also helps children remember the story. Grown-ups reduplicate for other reasons too. Sometimes it’s simply to emphasise a meaning, often adding a note of exasperation or criticism. This is what happened to dally, which already existed in 16th-century English as a verb meaning ‘trifle’ or ‘delay’. Around the beginning of the 17th century, it was reduplicated. Stop dilly-dallying! meant ‘Make your mind up!’ The same sort of development happened with shilly-shally, also expressing the notion of being undecided. This was originally shill I, shall I, a stronger version of shall I, shall I.
11. A children’s story that relies on reduplication for its effect.
Words like zig-zag are created for a different reason. Here there’s an attempt to symbolise a shape or movement in the outside world. The contrasting vowels reflect a change in direction. Zig-zag originally described a pattern of short, angled lines going in alternate directions, but it was soon used for all kinds of alternating shapes and movements – from lightning to knitting patterns. During the First World War it became a piece of military slang. If you were zig-zag, you were drunk.
Interesting things can happen to these reduplicated words. They can even be broken down into their parts, each one being used as a separate word. We can talk about people shillying and shallying. One such usage gained immortality in an old music-hall song:
My old man said ‘Follow the van,
And don’t dilly dally on the way’.
Off went the van wiv me ’ome packed in it,
I followed on wiv me old cock linnet.
But I dillied and dallied, dallied and I dillied,
Lost me way and don’t know where to roam …
The list of reduplicated words in English is a very long one. The usual pattern is for the first element to have a vowel high up in the front of t
he mouth and the second element to have one low down in the back of the mouth. The i-to-a change is very popular – pitter-patter, riff-raff, knick-knack, chit-chat … So is i-to-o: criss-cross, sing-song, ping-pong, tick-tock … Another pattern uses a change of consonant, and the two elements rhyme: helter-skelter, hanky-panky, fuddy-duddy, super-duper … Shakespeare evidently liked this kind of word creation, for several examples appear in his plays: skimble-skamble, bibble-babble, hugger-mugger, hurly-burly …
Some reduplications must be quite old. Although willy-nilly isn’t recorded until the 17th century, its forms reflect a much earlier state of the language – will I, nill I, where nill is Old English, a conflation of ne and will, meaning ‘will not’. And they evidently remain popular, as new reduplications continue to be created. Since the 1970s we’ve had hip-hop, happy-clappy and oogly-boogly. Oogly-boogly? Something scary that jumps out at you in a horror film. Remember the monster that bursts out of the chest of Kane (John Hurt) in Alien? That was an oogly-boogly.
Rep
a clipping (17th century)
If you’re a rep, what are you? In the 17th century, you weren’t one: you had one. Rep was short for reputation. People would say something upon rep, meaning, ‘I’ll stake my reputation on it’.
In the late 1600s it was linguistically fashionable to shorten words in this way. People didn’t say incognito in casual speech, but incog. They said That’s pos or pozz for positive – meaning ‘That’s certain’. And they talked about a crowd of people as a mob. That was a two-stage shortening. Mobile vulgus, meaning ‘fickle crowd’, had come into English at the end of the 16th century. During the next century it was first shortened to mobile, and then to mob.
Words which are reduced in size in this way are called clippings. The essayist Joseph Addison couldn’t stand them. In an issue of the Spectator in 1711 he complained about the way people have ‘miserably curtailed some of our Words’, and he cites all the above. (It didn’t stop him using pozz himself, a few years later, though.)
Clippings are very common in the history of English. The ends of words are clipped in ad, celeb, doc and prof. The beginnings go in phone and burger. And both beginning and end go in flu and fridge. They are typically informal in style, but in many cases the clipping has lost its informal tone and become the regular expression, with the full form perceived as more formal or precise: think of the full forms of fax, memo, gym, exam, vet, pub and flu. In some cases, such as bus and cello, the original full form (omnibus, violoncello) is hardly ever used. With mob, never.
Just because a word is clipped doesn’t stop it changing in meaning, of course, and the history of rep illustrates the point perfectly. In the 18th century it became a shortened form of reprobate – an immoral or dissolute person. A woman with a doubtful reputation was a demi-rep. At the same time, the clipping appeared with a capital R, first for Republic, then for a member of the House of Representatives (in the US political system) and in the 19th century for a member of the Republican Party.
The 20th century saw further developments. From around 1900 rep (for repertory) became the normal way of referring to a theatre company that put on a regular programme of plays. Actors appeared in repertory, or in rep. Then, during the century, reps turned up as representatives of all kinds of organisations. Holiday reps looked after you when you travelled. Union reps looked after their members. Sales reps tried to sell you things.
Since the 1930s, rep has also been short for repetitions. Instructions to perform an activity repeatedly are a routine part of many sport or health programmes. Twenty reps. Fifty reps. How many reps does it take to strengthen a muscle? Body-builders know.
Americanism
a new nation (18th century)
The United States hadn’t been born five years before the word Americanism was invented. It was coined by John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister who had become president of the College of New Jersey. Writing in a Pennsylvania journal in 1781, he says he made the word up on analogy with Scotticism. Any usage different from what was used in Britain he would henceforth call an Americanism.
The word caught on and was soon applied to everything American – behaviour, customs and institutions. It was all part of the process of forging a new national identity. When Noah Webster compiled his Compendious Dictionary in 1806, he emphasised the word’s general meaning, defining it as a ‘love of America and preference of her interest’.
This was the first dictionary to contain words specific to the USA. We find in its pages such local items as butternut, caucus, checkers, chowder, constitutionality, hickory, opossum, skunk and succotash. And we see the first sign of the spelling innovations which would soon become the hallmark of American English, such as color and defense.
Two hundred years on, a dictionary of Americanisms would be large indeed, especially if regional variations in usage were included. The five volumes of the great Dictionary of American Regional English contain several thousand entries. What words do people use for a strip of grass between the sidewalk (in Britain: pavement) and the street? The research team found boulevard, devil strip, grass plot, neutral ground, parking, parking strip, parkway, terrace, tree bank, tree belt, tree lawn and many more.
12. The British and American covers of this book in the Harry Potter series show how linguistic and cultural differences can affect even titles. The linguistic contrasts include idiomatic expressions as well as single words: ‘Bit rich coming from you!’ says British Harry to British Ron in Chapter 2 of The Chamber of Secrets. ‘You should talk!’ says American Harry to American Ron.
Leaving aside regionalisms, British and American English display hundreds of differences. Take the words for the parts of a car. British terms include wing mirror, number plate, petrol cap, aerial, windscreen, wing, bonnet and boot. The American equivalents are side-view mirror, license plate, gas cap, antenna, wind-shield, fender, hood and trunk. Abbreviations can cause a problem. Some, such as CNN and BBC, have travelled across the Atlantic. Others, such as ATT and BT, haven’t. British people need to be told about the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; Americans, likewise, about British Telecom.
Idioms can be a problem too. Most British people know next to nothing about baseball, so they look blank when they hear about a company that has hit a home run (‘been very successful’). Similarly, most Americans know next to nothing about cricket, so they look blank when they hear about a politician batting on a sticky wicket (‘having a difficult time’). Sometimes there are neat equivalents: if someone is caught off base, that’s baseball’s equivalent to cricket’s caught out.
Many American words are familiar in the UK now, thanks to the prevalence of American TV shows and movies. My five-year-old grandson is already well versed in faucets (‘taps’), drapes (‘curtains’) and railroads (‘railways’), thanks to repeated exposure to Mickey Mouse, Special Agent Oso and other inhabitants of the Disney Channel. I doubt whether American five-year-olds would be so well versed in the equivalent British English words. British English tends to get translated.
Not even Harry Potter is immune. In the British editions, the children eat crumpets and crisps; in the US editions they eat English muffins and chips. Cookers become stoves, dustbins become trashcans and jumpers become sweaters. But some differences are more cultural than linguistic. In the UK, one of the books was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In the USA, Philosopher was replaced by Sorcerer.
Edit
a back-formation (18th century)
‘Which came first?’ is the daily question when exploring the history of words. Normally, we find that words build up in size over time. We find nation in the 1300s, then national in the 1500s, then nation-alise in the 1700s, then nationalisation in the 1800s, along with denationalisation – and doubtless anti-denationalisation is out there somewhere now. That’s the expected pattern. So edit comes as a bit of a surprise, because there the pattern is the other way round.
We start with edition in the 1500s. A century late
r we find editor, and a century after that editorship. So far, so normal. Then, in the 1790s, along comes edit. The verb was formed by dropping the ending from editor. Linguists call such things back-formations.
Back-formations have been in the language a long time, but they seem to have increased in popularity over the past 200 years. Along with edit in the 18th century came swindle (from swindler) and gamble (from gambler). In the 19th we find such formations as shoplift (from shoplifter) and sculpt (from sculptor). In the 20th there was automate (from automation), babysit (from babysitter), televise (from television) and dozens more. It can take quite a while for a back-formation to surface. Burglar is there in the 13th century, but we don’t find burgle until the 1870s. Housekeeper dates from the 1440s; to housekeep only appears 400 years later. On the other hand, when staycation arrived in the 2000s, for a ‘stay-at-home vacation’, one concerned travel firm immediately introduced the slogan: Why staycate when you can vacate?
Not all back-formations are immediately accepted. Among the usages which have attracted criticism are helicopt, caretake and therap. Would you like to be helicopted? Helicoptered seems to be the preferred form. But the naturalness of back-formation is clear from the way people are very ready to make jocular coinages. I’ve often heard people say that someone was being couth (as opposed to uncouth). Shevelled and sipid? Not dishevelled or inspid. And the opposite of disgruntled? Gruntled, of course (a P. G. Wodehouse innovation).
The Story of English in 100 Words Page 12