New food words of 1806

This year is the 200th anniversary of Noah Webster's original American dictionary.

Among various celebrations, Merriam-Webster has posted a glossary of new words introduced in A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Among them:

butternut noun: an American tree with an oblong nut, also the nut
cervine adjective:pertaining to the deer
chowder noun: a dish of fish boiled with biscuit, etc.
conchology noun: the science of shellfish
hickory noun: a tree, a species of walnut
hommony noun: food made of maiz broken but coarse and boiled
porcine adjective: pertaining to swine
succotash noun: a mixture of new soft maiz and beans boiled
whiskey noun: a spirit distilled from grain

interesting: I've never seen "hominy" spelled that way

Succotash and hickory aren't huge surprises, as they are derived from Native American words, and so wouldn't have come into any use at all until these items were encountered during westward expansion.

But whiskey is a surprise, as it comes from the Scottish Gaelic, uisge beatha, which means "water of life," and it seems that that's been around for a while. Though perhaps, 200 years ago, though it would have been known among Scots, perhaps it had to mingle with more of the population in the US. It was about 200 years ago that "the Clearances" started, where the British claimed Scottish land and put Scots on boats for the New World, so perhaps it was the sudden influx of Scots that introduced "whiskey" to the American vocabulary.

Christopher Gordon wrote:interesting: I've never seen "hominy" spelled that way

As it's a Native America word (right, Amata?), "hommony" is a Latin alphabet approximation of a sound that was previously not written down, and it probably took some time for a spelling to be "agreed upon" by lexicographers.

Fun fact (marginally related to this discussion): Shakespeare "invented" the word "cater" (as in, to bring food), as well as "anchovy" and "to puke."

David Hammond wrote:Fun fact (marginally related to this discussion): Shakespeare "invented" the word "cater" (as in, to bring food), as well as "anchovy" and "to puke."

In that order? Must have been a bad anchovy that caterer served.

David Hammond wrote:

Christopher Gordon wrote:interesting: I've never seen "hominy" spelled that way

As it's a Native America word (right, Amata?), "hommony" is a Latin alphabet approximation of a sound that was previously not written down, and it probably took some time for a spelling to be "agreed upon" by lexicographers.

Fun fact (marginally related to this discussion): Shakespeare "invented" the word "cater" (as in, to bring food), as well as "anchovy" and "to puke."

I'm in love with transliterations(think Thai menus). They get the brain to spark a bit.

The food-related coinages announced as new in the 2006 update of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition:

big-box
gastric bypass
supersize

Cynthia wrote:But whiskey is a surprise, as it comes from the Scottish Gaelic, uisge beatha, which means "water of life," and it seems that that's been around for a while. Though perhaps, 200 years ago, though it would have been known among Scots, perhaps it had to mingle with more of the population in the US. It was about 200 years ago that "the Clearances" started, where the British claimed Scottish land and put Scots on boats for the New World, so perhaps it was the sudden influx of Scots that introduced "whiskey" to the American vocabulary.

I thought at first this might have something to do with the distinction between Scotch whisky and American whiskey. (Maker's Mark is one of the few bourbons that doesn't spell it with an E. Canadian is whisky, Irish is whiskey.) I was partly right.

A search turned up....

Random House wrote:The word in its current form dates from the early eighteenth century. Usquebaugh, a Scottish or Irish English spelling, dates to the sixteenth and is still in use to refer to whisk(e)y in Scotland and Ireland.

So it's not the term or product that was new, just this spelling.

David Hammond wrote:Fun fact (marginally related to this discussion): Shakespeare "invented" the word "cater" (as in, to bring food), as well as "anchovy" and "to puke."

David,

I'm glad you put (scare-)quotes around the word invent here because it surely is not the appropriate verb, without doubt in the first two cases and almost without doubt in the third. I was wondering where you came across this claim?

Both 'anchovy' and 'cater' are loanwords, the former with ultimately obscure origins (though likely from an Iberian language -- i.e., pre Indo-European language of Iberia, likely related to Basque) and the latter with a fairly clear but rather complex history of development within English (ultimately going back to a Latin word, then with various semantic and morphological developments in addition to the phonological developments).

'Puke' may well be first attested chez Mr. Shakespeare -- one of my etymological dictionaries indicates that -- but it strikes me as very unlikely he 'invented' the word. That it is first attested in a text by him is to be sure interesting and amusing but, given the nature of the word, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the word had been around for a more or less very long time and that it just doesn't happen to turn up in any (survivng) texts that predate Shakespeare. The word fuck is similarly attested first in the early modern period but is in my opinion (as an historical linguist) without doubt much older. I believe the same is true for 'puke' and can think of lots of evidence to back that up just sitting here in the kitchen that goes beyond what my (respectable but often wrong or incomplete) etymological dictionary says or what the typical Googly resources spew up. The "probably imitative" etymology is hardly all that we can say about this word's origins.

***

About hominy, David, you're quite right; it's a borrowing from an Algonquian language and so one would expect a variety of spellings to appear in the early period of its inclusion and adaptation in English. Perhaps Amata will comment further on that word and other Amerindisms.

Antonius

Hey A,

It’s been variously estimated that the number of words “invented” by Shakespeare is somewhere between 1,400 and 1,700, which is remarkable, and as you say, probably not literally true. Those many words may, indeed, have appeared for the first time in his work, but the number he actually came up with “out of thin air” is no doubt smaller. I suppose a similar claim could be made for Chaucer and Dante, who also wrote down, for the first time, many words that had not appeared in print before.

When it’s said Shakespeare “invented” words, included in this list are words that are simply new verb forms of existing nouns and vice-versa. So, does Shakespeare get credit for “inventing” words that existed in another, perhaps more basic form elsewhere, but which are simply dressed differently in his plays? I guess it depends upon how charitable/awe-struck the commentator happens to be.

It would seem to me that although it’s likely many of the words attributed to Shakespeare are from other sources now lost, without evidence to the contrary, he gets credit for inventing “countless words,” including “anchovy” – at least according to such indisputable linguistic resources as Appreciating Shakespeare for Dummies (http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-1149.html).

David “Deferring over here, boss” Hammond

In Joyce's "Ulysses" there are extant over 30,000 different words in utilization, a number exceeding that of Shakespeare's entire canon.
As for how many he "invented," I do not know.
Oh, Poldy!

ParkerS wrote:In Joyce's "Ulysses" there are extant over 30,000 different words in utilization, a number exceeding that of Shakespeare's entire canon.
As for how many he "invented," I do not know.
Oh, Poldy!

Janitor/loner Henry Darger wrote over 30,000 PAGES of text (not counting hundreds of illustrations) in his largely unread The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, the longest known English novel. From what little I've read of Darger's novel, I don't think Bill or Jimmy has much to worry about...it is some odd-arse stuff.

I believe Darger "invented" the phrase "Glandeco-Angelinnian."

Of course, at least some of the discussion rides on how one defines "invent." John Milton invented "Pandemonium." The Greek roots existed before Milton combined them to create a name for Satan's palace in hell, which he intented to be the antithesis of "pantheon," a term that already existed. Same with Richard Sheridan's "Mrs. Malaprop," from which we get malapropism. But the French phrase "mal apropos" existed prior to Sheridan's use. I suspect that a lot of the "inventions" writers have made over the years is in the way they use words, in the adapting words from other languages, or the way they have changed the part of speech of word to make a point ("Out-herods Herod," for example).

As for "puke," I always still laugh at the line in the "All the world's a stage/Seven Ages of Man" speech in As You Like It, when Jacques describes "the infant, mewling and puking* in the nurse's arms." I just think the sound of "mewling and puking" is funny. But on a more serious note, the OED does not attribute the invention of the word "puke" to the bard, but rather inventing the use of it as referring to vomiting. The OED relates that "Previously the word had been used to mean a dignified dark brown colour. Not surprisingly, once the new meaning took hold, the previous meaning disappeared rapidly; its last recorded use was in 1615."

Hey David,

Thanks for the deference and please indulge my desire to comment further on this topic; I'm passionate about the subjects I study and really like to see things gotten right.

David Hammond wrote:Hey A,
It’s been variously estimated that the number of words “invented” by Shakespeare is somewhere between 1,400 and 1,700, which is remarkable, and as you say, probably not literally true. Those many words may, indeed, have appeared for the first time in his work, but the number he actually came up with “out of thin air” is no doubt smaller.

Yep, yep, and I would say a very, very much smaller number. We all know that he, as a poet, was personally very inventive in his use of language but that doesn't mean actually 'inventing' words and those figures are simply absurd. Shakespeare was author of a large and minutely studied corpus and we know lots about his personal usage in his writing. Same with Chaucer and Dante. But none of these literary giants 'invented' vast numbers of words in any meaningful sense of the word 'invent'. Strange claims about these and other similar figures' inventing words or even inventing the literary varieties of their respective languages reflect the exaggerated importance of the written word in the popular mind and the lack of recognition of the generally secondary nature of the written to the spoken (even allowing for all we know about how literary varieties develop their own peculiar dynamics alongside spoken language). Much of what Shakespeare wrote and which sounds striking in one way or another to us was a product of his creative genius but much of it was the borrowed speech from the mouths of the people he lived around, and of course knowing what to borrow and where to put it was itself part of his individual creative genius as a playwright and poet.

The consciousness and understanding among the general educated population of how language actually works is remarkably limited. That's no big deal -- heck, I'm in the same boat with regard to things like nuclear physics -- but striking, given that language is in a sense the fundamental institution of human society. The fact is, linguistics, like nuclear physics, is a specialised field that requires a lot of study and people who aren't specialists in the field are no more likely to have insights into things linguistic than people who aren't nuclear physicists are likely to have insights into the mysteries of subatomic particles. In any event, as a scholar, I find it depressing that people who write books, such as the author of the Shakespeare book you refer to, blether with great confidence about things whereof they know little or nought.

Anchovy was not invented by Shakespeare and the claim that it was gives us cause to wonder about the reasoning power of the Dummy-book author. What does s/he mean? The great bard saw one day a little fish from the ocean and said: "Let ye henceforth be known to us as 'anchovy'!" Or, if the Dummy-author is aware of the fact that the word existed in other languages before entering English, is the claim that William S. must have been the one person who -- having learned the word from some speaker of a foreign tongue –– decided that this word must be introduced to the English lexicon forthwith? I really sort of doubt it, but even were that the case, it would be an instance of borrowing not invention. So then, even if it is indeed the case that the earliest extant written use of the word 'anchovy' in English is in a text by Shakespeare, does that mean he 'invented' it? If so, this is for me a hitherto unknown sense of the word 'invent' (though I've seen creative use of it in a culinary context, such as with regard to the 'invention' of chicken Vesuvio in Chicago). No, 'anchovy' is a word that was 'invented' long, long ago, most likely in pre-Roman Iberia, in the speech of a non-literate society of people who fished and liked to eat what they caught. The word ended up being borrowed into the local Latin after the conquest of the area by the Romans, the spoken Latin which gradually developed into the various Romance varieties of Spain and Portugal, and it's made its way into French as well, and has ultimately spread into the languages of other peoples on the Atlantic side of Europe, such as the Dutch and the English.

There is a direct analogy to things culinary: popular thinking loves to look for the rôle of some great or at least noteworthy individual for developments that very often were in fact brought about anonymously and in obscurity. More generally, many people like cute and/or simple stories that explain how things came about -- be it about chicken Vesuvio or the word 'anchovy' -- but historical reality, which often isn't all that cute and rarely is simple, offers in my estimation far more interesting fare.

Antonius

A,

I suppose people do hold the written word in higher regard than the spoken word, and it surely makes sense that most of the over 1,000 words Shakespeare gets credit for inventing* probably came from the mouths of those around him – but he wrote them down first, so like Dante (the alleged “Father of the Italian Language”), he gets some credit for being the first (if not actually the inventor).

But this discussion seems to turn on the interpretation of the word “invention.”

“Invent” does not mean bringing something into existence that never existed before. The invention of the telegraph, light bulb, etc. depended upon previous inventions (e.g., electricity, copper wire, etc.) so when we say someone invented something, we mean don’t they dreamed up the whole thing and created it ex nihilo. They just put things (already existing things) together in new ways. They “borrowed” previous inventions to “invent” something new. I think that’s a way of describing what Shakespeare did with many words – he took existing words, or word forms, and refashioned them for his purposes.

Shakespeare is the putative “inventor” of “marketable” – the word “market,” or some variant, existed well before Shakespeare, of course, but he invented this new application in As You like It (I, II, 88 ) to suggest a way one might become more attractive (so as to better "sell oneself"). It’s likely that for every palpable hit the playwright scored with a very usable word (such as “marketable”) he probably came up with many less usable words (such as “news-crammed,” used in the line right before “marketable,” which means, as you might guess, “full of news”).**

Any way, I find your arguments convincing and will endeavor to refrain from the temptation to amaze friends and relatives with bogus statistics regarding Shakespeare’s verbal inventions.

Hammond

*Incidentally, aside from the Dummy-author, no less an august scholar than Harold Bloom has estimated that Shakespeare “invented” over 1,000 words – but Bloom is frequently subject to hyperbole; I recently read an essay on Hamlet, wherein Bloom pronounced it “the greatest play ever written…and the greatest play that WILL EVER be written.” That seems, literally and literarily, an insane statement.

** One other small culinary point: a few lines before, at 57, Shakespeare mentions the use of mustard on pancakes, which has been my preferred way of consuming pancakes since I read these lines in college.

David Hammond wrote:“Invent” does not mean bringing something into existence that never existed before.

???

Sure it does!

Here's an example of an invented word the history of which we know: "beatnik" was coined by Herb Caen, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Obviously the parts of the word existed earlier (the Beat poets, plus -nik), but (unless Caen ripped off an anonymous witty friend) no one had said that word before Caen made it up.

Maybe Shakespeare coined some new words. We just don't know, because there is comparatively little textual attestation from earlier periods, and what there is tends to be official records, etc, without the full range of words that are used by Shakespeare.

The point is, the absence of a textual citation in the years before 1600 doesn't mean a word did not exist. Less was written down in that period, and much of what was written down then has not survived till the present day. Luckily, we do have Shakespeare's plays and poetry. Shakespeare's amazing corpus of work is valuable not only for its artistic merits, but also for giving us a snapshot of what the language of southern England was like at that moment of history. It's valuable because it reflects what lots and lots of people were saying then -- not because it necessarily introduced new words that the rest of the community then decided to adopt.

Amata

p.s. I'm not surprised that Harold Bloom would make such a claim about invented words. What Antonius says above about the general educated public not understanding how language works applies as well to the majority of faculty members in literature departments.

Amata wrote:

David Hammond wrote:“Invent” does not mean bringing something into existence that never existed before.

???

Sure it does!

Perhaps we’re talking about “degrees of inventiveness” in the creation of language. I agree that a word like “beatnik” shows more creativity and inventiveness than, say, a word like “marketable” (which may have existed as a noun form before Shakespeare used it as an adjective), but they are both the result of combining previously existing word forms into something new. In this example, “beatnik” shows more creativity and inventiveness on the part of the author (Caen: 1; Shakespeare: Lots more)

Perhaps I’m quibbling. That Shakespeare used words in new ways is, I think we’d agree, indisputable; if by invention you mean creating a word that is extraordinarily new, in the manner of “beatnik,” then Shakespeare probably created fewer words like that than he did words like “marketable” or “advertising,” which were different forms of already existing words. But both language acts are “inventive,” as least as I’m defining the word, which is not simply making something completely new, but rather combining existing word elements into new, previously unseen and unheard configurations.

Amata wrote:Luckily, we do have Shakespeare's plays and poetry. Shakespeare's amazing corpus of work is valuable not only for its artistic merits, but also for giving us a snapshot of what the language of southern England was like at that moment of history. It's valuable because it reflects what lots and lots of people were saying then -- not because it necessarily introduced new words that the rest of the community then decided to adopt.

No doubt, Shakespeare’s words are a reflection of where he lived, but using an author as a gauge of common usage at any given time seems a tricky proposition. Is Faulkner a trustworthy guide to the language patterns of the Southern US in the mid-twentieth century? Is e.e.cummings reflective of the dialect spoken in his native Massachusetts?

I’m with you, though, in your assertion that Shakespeare probably did not create hundreds of new words that his loving public immediately adopted as their own -- and that many of the words he is lauded for "inventing" were already in use before he wrote them down.

David “You really should try mustard on pancakes” Hammond

David Hammond wrote:A,

I suppose people do hold the written word in higher regard than the spoken word, and it surely makes sense that most of the over 1,000 words Shakespeare gets credit for inventing* probably came from the mouths of those around him – but he wrote them down first, so like Dante (the alleged “Father of the Italian Language”), he gets some credit for being the first (if not actually the inventor).

It is probably true that there are quite a few words (not necessarily invented by but) first written down by Shakespeare but the fact is, the transmission of English before the Early Modern period, robust as it in comparison with those of other languages, is full of linguistic holes. There are two issues: a) in some cases, these words may have been written before Shakespeare but the text or texts in which they appeared are no longer extant; b) lots and lots of words (especially in certain semantic fields) weren't written down. Let's face it, no one was sitting around in the Middle Ages trying to write a dictionary of English, which itself really was a collection of very diverse dialects (the London oriented standard only really starts to arise gradually in the 14th century or so). So, why should we expect to have words like 'puke' or 'fuck' attested before the explosion of texts that appears in the Early Modern period (rise of the printing press plays a big factor)? In the case of 'anchovy', the crucial question is when the borrowing into English likely took place, and a question like that can't be answered without a fair amount of linguistic and historical investigation.

But this discussion seems to turn on the interpretation of the word “invention.”
“Invent” does not mean bringing something into existence that never existed before...
Shakespeare is the putative “inventor” of “marketable” – the word “market,” or some variant, existed well before Shakespeare, of course, but he invented this new application in As You like It (I, II, 88 ) to suggest a way one might become more attractive (so as to better "sell oneself"). It’s likely that for every palpable hit the playwright scored with a very usable word (such as “marketable”) he probably came up with many less usable words (such as “news-crammed,” used in the line right before “marketable,” which means, as you might guess, “full of news”).**

I certainly agree with you, as I said in a post above, that Shakespeare was very inventive in his use of language but what I mean by his linguistic inventiveness involves precisely cases such as 'markatable'... and perhaps that is indeed a good example and one that I'm glad you brought into the discussion. The only thing is, it's hard to say with any certainty in lots and lots of individual instances whether he was being inventive (in coining a new derivative or extending or altering the semantic load of an existing word) or just using a term in a way that for one reason or another hasn't been attested in earlier texts. But let's face it, the case of 'marketable' is quite different from cases like 'anchovy' or 'puke' (more on this anon but for now I'll just say that the account for 'puke' cited by Cynthia above is well off the mark). And all this discussion started with my reaction to the to-my-mind absurd claim that in any imaginable sense Shakespeare invented the words 'anchovy' or 'puke' ('cater' strikes me as doubtful but maybe a case could be made for it). It seems likely to me that were a competent historical linguist/Anglicist to go through the list of thousands of words claimed by some to have been invented by Shakespeare and set aside the absurdities (anchovy, puke) and the cases that are impossible to evaluate with any degree of certainty, the list would be reduced considerably. All this is not meant to diminish Shakespeare's status and, frankly, I think the way to do him proper honour is to appreciate his works and, if studying them from some historical perspective, to do the analysis in a sober, competent, hyperbole-free manner.

** One other small culinary point: a few lines before, at 57, Shakespeare mentions the use of mustard on pancakes, which has been my preferred way of consuming pancakes since I read these lines in college.

Interesting. But then, remember that crêpes and galettes and their analogues in the Low Countries, pannekoeken, are all eaten both in sweet and savory versions and I'm tempted to guess that the pancakes with mustard were more of the Dutch/Flemish pannekoeken sort than American pancakes.

What kind of pancakes are you eating with mustard?

A

Antonius wrote:I certainly agree with you, as I said in a post above, that Shakespeare was very inventive in his use of language but what I mean by his linguistic inventiveness involves precisely cases such as 'markatable'...

...the case of 'marketable' is quite different from cases like 'anchovy' or 'puke'

A

Yes, it seems most likely that Shakespeare's major contribution to the "growth of English" was in his ability to expand the meaning (or as you say, add to the “semantic load”) of existing words by either using them in different contexts or shifting the roles of existing nouns, verbs, and so on with such apparent neologisms such as "courtship," "countless," and "discontent" (all of which seem to appear in writing for the first time in Shakespeare). I agree, these words are very different than “anchovy” (I really touched a nerve there, didn’t I, perhaps because of your well-known fondness for the little fish? ).

I started eating mustard on regular American pancakes, and I don’t suppose Touchstone was referring to that particular type of cake, but there you have it. Odder things are eaten (I just spent a few days in Florida with a crazy aunt who, for many years, had catsup sandwiches for lunch).

David

David Hammond wrote: I agree, these words are very different than “anchovy” (I really touched a nerve there, didn’t I, perhaps because of your well-known fondness for the little fish? ).

By God I do love those wee beasties but my personal loves never cloud my scholarship! Wait a few minutes and you'll see you might have been inclined to think I love 'puke'!!

I started eating mustard on regular American pancakes, and I don’t suppose Touchstone was referring to that particular type of cake, but there you have it. Odder things are eaten (I just spent a few days in Florida with a crazy aunt who, for many years, had catsup sandwiches for lunch).

An interesting taste combo, to be sure, but as you say, we all have some things we like to eat that others find strange. Ever tried a Nutella-anchovy sandwich? *

A

* Me neither.

Antonius wrote: 'Puke' may well be first attested chez Mr. Shakespeare -- one of my etymological dictionaries indicates that -- but it strikes me as very unlikely he 'invented' the word. That it is first attested in a text by him is to be sure interesting and amusing but, given the nature of the word, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the word had been around for a more or less very long time and that it just doesn't happen to turn up in any (survivng) texts that predate Shakespeare. The word fuck is similarly attested first in the early modern period but is in my opinion (as an historical linguist) without doubt much older. I believe the same is true for 'puke' and can think of lots of evidence to back that up just sitting here in the kitchen that goes beyond what my (respectable but often wrong or incomplete) etymological dictionary says or what the typical Googly resources spew up. The "probably imitative" etymology is hardly all that we can say about this word's origins.

Cynthia wrote:But on a more serious note, the OED does not attribute the invention of the word "puke" to the bard, but rather inventing the use of it as referring to vomiting. The OED relates that "Previously the word had been used to mean a dignified dark brown colour. Not surprisingly, once the new meaning took hold, the previous meaning disappeared rapidly; its last recorded use was in 1615."

Cynthia,

I mentioned above that I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare – in any meaningful sense of the word – “invented” the word puke and I stand by that. I would further add that I think the specification you cite of the sort of invention which should be attributed to him with regard to this word’s use is also quite wrong, namely, that he was personally and individually responsible for a poetic transfer of a then current word referring to a shade of brown (or some other dark colour) to its use in reference to vomiting. In the wake of this transfer to a new semantic value, use of the word in its old colour-related sense is supposed further to have then quickly faded away.

When I read your post I thought that this claim was really quite far-fetched and not just because it’s at odds with my own sense of what the origins of the word are; rather, because the semantic connexion is so weak and because the alleged massive shift in usage in the wake of Shakespeare’s ‘invention’ flies in the face of what any linguist or anthropologist or historian of the period knows. Given that, what you gave as a citation from the OED shocked me and moved me to check it out for myself and, indeed, the OED does not make that claim. A little more internet digging led me to what seems to be the direct source of this strange bit of lexicography and, as in the case of ‘anchovy’ (and surely many other putative Shakespearean lexical inventions), the culprit was a student of literature who knows not the first thing about how language change takes place. From what I gather, I strongly suspect you were misled by the people who put together the following website (or someone else who was citing them):

Internet Shakespeare Editions from the University of Victoria in Canada
http://ise.uvic.ca/index.html

If one goes to the page with the relevant passage from As You Like It…
http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/lifesubj+1.html
… and finds the relevant line…
At first, the infant, Mewling and puking* in the nurse's arms.
… and clicks on the word ’puking’, one sees the following little blurb in a pop-up space to the right of the text:

Internet Shakespeare Editions wrote:Puke
According to the Oxford Dictionary, this is the first recorded use of "puke" meaning "to vomit." Previously the word had been used to mean a dignified dark brown colour. Not surprisingly, once the new meaning took hold, the previous meaning disappeared rapidly; its last recorded use was in 1615 (As You Like It was written in about 1598).

Unfortunately, you assumed the proper attribution to be the OED and presented the quote as being from that source but the OED says nothing of the sort. This blurb presents a very muddled and clearly wrong interpretation of the evidence that the boys back in Oxford put together. As I see it, the basic points are these:

Shakespeare does give us the first attestation of ‘puke’ as a verb in the sense of ‘vomit’. However, an abstract noun, clearly one built off a preexisting verb, is attested in a text from 1581 (in the phrase “pewkishness of stomacke”), at a time when the bard was about 17 years old and 19 years before he wrote As You Like It. In other words, the word ‘puke’ already existed and, as I said earlier, it’s most likely just a by-product of the nature of the word itself and the transmission of texts in English that the word doesn’t start to appear until the late 16th century or so. There's really nothing odd about that.

With regard to the word ‘puke’ in the sense of a shade of brown (or perhaps more dark purple verging on black -- "betwene russet and black" (1538) as one old source says), it is clear that this is a homonym that has nothing to do with the word meaning ‘to vomit’. It derives from a Dutch word denoting a kind of cloth which, in English eyes at least, was a distinctive dark colour. Use of the word in that sense presumably died out with the gradual falling off in use of that particular cloth. The Dutch (also Low German) word itself is of obscure origin but clearly has nothing to do with regurgitation or such; its meaning in those languages is ‘excellent’.

So then, the ‘invention’ of the word 'puke' in the sense of ‘to vomit’ is something that can in no reasonable sense be attributed to Shakespeare. And as for the real origins of the word, it is most likely just one (albeit a curious one) of a number of variants in the West Germanic family of words including Eng. spew, Dutch spuwen, spugen, spouwen, spukken etc. etc. etc. (with further connexions elsewhere in IE, e.g. Lat. spuere etc. etc.).

The level of scholarship demonstrated by the people behind the Internet Shakespeare Editions site in this case is shocking and one can only hope that it is an isolated case. Unfortunately, the internet is rife with this sort of misinformation which gets all too easily passed along.

Antonius

P.S. One amusing note here is that in the 19th century the word ‘puke’ seems to have been a pejorative name for natives of Missouri used by Illinoisans… “Pukes from beyond the father of floods.” Please note, however, that I am not a native of Illinois and have nothing whatsoever against people from Missouri.

What a wonderful place is LTHForum, a site devoted to food and eating -- ingestion of food, if you will -- that, nevertheless, can devote such space to exhaustive exegesis of "puk[ing]." It is such things that lend meaning to my otherwise benighted and purposeless existence.

JimInLoganSquare wrote:What a wonderful place is LTHForum, a site devoted to food and eating -- ingestion of food, if you will -- that, nevertheless, can devote such space to exhaustive exegesis of "puk[ing]." It is such things that lend meaning to my otherwise benighted and purposeless existence.

Jim,

As they say, variety is the spice of life...

... and...

It's all good.



A

Antonius wrote:Jim,

As they say, variety is the spice of life...

... and...

It's all good.



A

Tony - Hogwash and/or balderdash! I don't believe a word of it. You make me doubt such root concepts as, which one between the two of us is the silver-tongued conciliator, and which the relentless, truth-seeking scholar. "It's all good." Hah! That's the best joke I've heard since Raymond Smullyan told me joke #45 during my metalogic class at IU 16 years ago.

Of course Shakes didn't invent all those words. It's well attested on the Internets that Edward de Vere made them up.

Have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner? -- Macbeth 1.3.84-85


There is no proof of P -- K. Gödel

Hehehe, that one cracks me up every time.

Antonius wrote:
I mentioned above that I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare – in any meaningful sense of the word – “invented” the word puke and I stand by that.

But that was my point -- how are we defining "invent"? "Facsimile" existed before "fax," "pan" and "demon" existed before "pandemonium," etc. It is, as you point out so correctly, really hard to nail down who invented a given word. (One might even question whether Sir Thomas Crapper could correctly be credited with the eventual name of the porcelain commode he invented.)

From what I gather, I strongly suspect you were misled by the people who put together the following website (or someone else who was citing them):

Internet Shakespeare Editions from the University of Victoria in Canada
http://ise.uvic.ca/index.html

If one goes to the page with the relevant passage from As You Like It…
http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/lifesubj+1.html
… and finds the relevant line…
At first, the infant, Mewling and puking* in the nurse's arms.
… and clicks on the word ’puking’, one sees the following little blurb in a pop-up space to the right of the text:

Internet Shakespeare Editions wrote:Puke
According to the Oxford Dictionary, this is the first recorded use of "puke" meaning "to vomit." Previously the word had been used to mean a dignified dark brown colour. Not surprisingly, once the new meaning took hold, the previous meaning disappeared rapidly; its last recorded use was in 1615 (As You Like It was written in about 1598).

Unfortunately, you assumed the proper attribution to be the OED and presented the quote as being from that source but the OED says nothing of the sort.

Alas, I was misled -- though not by the web site you found. This is recorded in other places, ones that I felt were fairly reliable (though, on the surface, the University of Victoria does sound as though it ought to be a reliable source). It is a trap I am always warning others of -- always check at least two sources for everything. Even Encyclopedia Britannica has errors. However, I do not find the muddiness of the definition quite as obvious as you do -- I've seen so many etymologies that are far more far-fetched than this that were better substantiated.

But I do appreciate your considerably greater scholarship in this area. It is the joy of having discussions of this nature -- one shares, one learns. Had I not posted what I had discovered, I would not have learned that this source was wrong. So I thank you.

And perhaps you would be the best person to ask about verifying the invention of the word "hello," which I have seen attributed to Edison.

JiLS says:

Hah! That's the best joke I've heard since Raymond Smullyan told me joke #45 during my metalogic class at IU 16 years ago.

Several points. First, it is well known in the logic community that Smullyan more often than not interchanged the punch lines of #45 and #54 (which, given Spooner, is not at all unexpected), which, of course, ruined the joke, since it thus led into the wrong possible world. B. Smullyan always was bedazzled by metalogic, which perhaps explains his Spoonerism. iii) Given your grade in first-order predicate calculus JiLS, it's always been an amazement to the rest of us how you got into the metalogic class in the first place.

Now back to the topic. I've been watching this whole thing, wondering when SOMEone was going to really, in detail get after the central problem: what the hell does "invent" mean? Typically, in the philosophy/history of science industry, we contrast "invention" with "discovery", and perhaps that's not unuseful in this case. I'm not at all sure, given some of Antonius' arguments, that Shakespeare didn't *discover* certain usages, rather than *invent* them. Viz, "puke" and "anchovy."

But I should be self-announcing. I'm pretty scary on the distinction. In my view, Lavoisier didn't discover oxygen, he invented it. On the other hand, it seems to me that Pythagoras (or whoever) indeed discovered the famous theorem, but did not in any sense invent it.

So maybe The Bard made a lot of linguistic discoveries, far more than he made liguistic inventions. What should be our approbation in that regard?

Geo

Geo wrote:JiLS says:

Hah! That's the best joke I've heard since Raymond Smullyan told me joke #45 during my metalogic class at IU 16 years ago.

Several points. First, it is well known in the logic community that Smullyan more often than not interchanged the punch lines of #45 and #54 (which, given Spooner, is not at all unexpected), which, of course, ruined the joke, since it thus led into the wrong possible world. B. Smullyan always was bedazzled by metalogic, which perhaps explains his Spoonerism. iii) Given your grade in first-order predicate calculus JiLS, it's always been an amazement to the rest of us how you got into the metalogic class in the first place.

Well, yes. But, just because of item iii., Ray took special care when telling me the joke, reciting it very slowly and carefully, like so:

"Jim, listen to this one! No, come on ... Look at me when I'm talking to you! 'FOOOORRRRTTTTEEEE ... FIIIIIIIIIIIVE.'"

I know that's hard to reproduce accurately on the written page, but trust me, his delivery was remarkable for its truth and completeness. So, despite his flair for improvisation in most things, the Prof played it straight with me, which was a good thing. Plus, you have to admit, #45 is much funnier than #54. (And he was a much better magician than comedian, anyway.)

Geo wrote:But I should be self-announcing. I'm pretty scary on the distinction. In my view, Lavoisier didn't discover oxygen, he invented it.

I say Lavoisier neither discovered nor invented oxygen; he named it. Maybe.

Geo wrote:On the other hand, it seems to me that Pythagoras (or whoever) indeed discovered the famous theorem, but did not in any sense invent it.

Goddamn Realist!

Geo wrote: In my view, Lavoisier didn't discover oxygen, he invented it.

Really? Why? Not discovered (detected) it's presence... why invented (it was aways there)?

Geo wrote:On the other hand, it seems to me that Pythagoras (or whoever) indeed discovered the famous theorem, but did not in any sense invent it.

Not "formulated?"

At any rate, as far as words go, I would think to use the word 'coin,' which has appeared in this thread (but only a few times - LAZ, Amata and Antonius). That gets to what 'coin' means (am I dragging this thread to what is is land?). Per the OED,
coin (v) = to make, devise, produce.
b. esp. in a bad or depreciatory sense: To fabricate, invent, make up (something specious, pretentious, or counterfeit).
c. spec. To frame or invent (a new word or phrase); usually implying deliberate purpose; and occasionally used depreciatively, as if the process were analogous to that of the counterfeiter.

So there you have it - the good bard* did make it all up...

*Bill or was it Francis

Geo wrote:On the other hand, it seems to me that Pythagoras (or whoever) indeed discovered the famous theorem, but did not in any sense invent it.

Well, guess what! We're all wrong! It appears you can invent mathematics -- since you can only patent something that is an invention!