shambles

I can’t imagine there are many of us who haven’t uttered the words ‘it’s a [expletive] shambles’ about something or other. So I’m sure you know that it means a state of disorder or confusion, AKA SNAFU. But, did you know that despite having been around since the end of the 16th century, it was only in the 1920s that ‘shambles’ came to mean this? Before that it had a much darker meaning… DUM DUM DUUUUUUM

Photo by Madie Hamilton on Unsplash

Okay, so the first meaning of shamble (singular) was a stool or a ‘money-changer’s table’ (this isn’t the dum dum dum, don’t worry), from the Latin for footstool, ‘scamellum’. After a time it took on the extra meaning of a ‘table for the exhibition of meat for sale’, with ‘shambles’ (plural) becoming a term for a ‘meat market’ (the kind that sells meat, not the Colchester Hippodrome on a Friday night in the 90s). It wasn’t long before ‘shambles’ became an alternative word for a slaughterhouse and, finally, was used figuratively to describe a scene of blood, like a battlefield or place of execution. DUM DUM DUUUUUUM (there it is).

Here’s ‘shambles’ in action in this way in Shakespeare’s Othello:

‘Desdemona: I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.

Othello: O, ay; as summer flies are in the shambles, That quicken even with blowing.’

Photo by Hayden Pollard on Unsplash

(I think this means he doth not esteem her honest.)

Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester (swoon) also uses it in this context:

‘If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter […] had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?"

YES, EDWARD, YES. Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes. The Shambles, the picturesque street of timber-framed buildings in York, is so called because there used to be lots of butchers’ shops there – 31 in 1885 apparently. Its full name was ‘The Great Flesh Shambles’. I can see why they rebranded.

I found a couple of different sources for ‘shambling’ as in wonky walking/zombies. Both stem from the stool/table-meaning I mentioned before all the dum dum dumming above. One source says that because people regularly hacked up chunks of meat on these tables, wobbly legs – or ‘shamble legs’ – were a hazard of the job. A second source says that it was to do with the bowlegged position you have to assume to sit on a stool, or shamble.

(I haven’t been able to find out why ‘shambles’ got sanitised in the early 20th century and came to have the hot-mess meaning it does today. Sorry.)

valentine

It’s that time of year again, when couples can be smug and single people can be depressed. To take my mind off my own spinsterhood, I thought I’d investigate exactly who the Valentine of St Valentine’s Day (note the apostrophe, card companies) is. And it turns out… no one’s entirely sure. Apparently there were a few Christian martyrs named Valentine who could have given their name to it, none of whom were particularly interesting (soz guys).

So, Christian martyrs were a bit of a dead end (both literally and figuratively). But while I was researching them I did stumble across Lupercalia, which is much more interesting. It was a Roman fertility festival which Valentine’s Day may or may not have its origins in (Wikipedia says it’s probably rubbish, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a bit more open to it). Lupercalia was held from 13th to 15th February, and was overseen by a group of priests called the Luperci, the name of which likely comes from ‘lupus’ – Latin for wolf. This is because Lupercalia was probably (the internet is a bit vague on this) connected to Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome who were suckled by a she-wolf (ewwww) after being abandoned on the banks of the river Tiber. They named the wolf Lupercal, and historians think that Lupercalia took place to honour her, and also to suck up to the Roman fertility god, Lupercus.

Lupercalia involved a bit more than flowers, chocolates and cards. It started with the priests sacrificing some goats and a dog, wiping the blood on themselves then laughing (yep). This was followed by the obligatory feast, after which the Luperci cut ‘thongs’ (which I assume are strips of leather rather than uncomfortable knickers) from the skins of the goats. They then took all their clothes off, and ran about whipping any women who got too close with the thongs. If you got hit with one, then lucky you, you’d immediately be super fertile.

Some scholars say there was also a jar of women’s names, which men would pick from. They’d then spend the festival with the woman whose name they’d pulled from the jar. Apparently lots of them went on to get married as well. Sounds better than Match.com to be honest.

In the late 5th century, the-then Pope, Gelasius I (who sounds like a super villain), decided that Lupercalia had to go (too much nakedness and BDSM I guess), and declared 14th February a day to celebrate some non-specific marytrs called Valentine. The new feast day didn’t have any of the lovey-dovey shenanigans that we have to put up with today though. These didn’t come about until the 14th century, when bloody Chaucer wrote a poem about it.

So how about it? Next year, forgo the sappy cards and garage forecourt flowers, and try hitting your other half with a piece of leather instead while running round the streets naked. They’ll LOVE it.

diaper

I was watching something American with babies in it the other day (possibly ‘This Is Us’?) and the word ‘diaper’ came up. Which started me thinking about why we (and a lot of other English-speaking countries) have nappies, and Americans have diapers. They’re not even close to being the same word. And while there are obviously lots of differences between British and American English, there aren’t that many words that I can think of where we say one thing and they say something completely different (obviously there are exceptions – many of them food-related (zucchini, egg-plant, scallions, etc.) – feel free to put me right in the comments with others).

A Chinese snuff bottle (1700–1800) showing three types of diaper background.

Because it’s American I assumed ‘diaper’ was fairly modern. Wrong. Check this out from The Taming of the Shrew by Billy Shakespeare:

‘Let one attend him with a silver basin
Full of rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers,
Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,
And say 'Will't please your lordship cool your hands?’

So, it turns out ‘diaper’ is actually a really old word from Middle English (which was spoken from the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the late 15th century). At this point it was a term for a pattern of repeated squares, rectangles or lozenges on fabric, but also on brickwork or paving, and other architectural type-stuff. The word comes from the Greek ‘dia’ for ‘cross’ (as in ‘diamond’ or ‘diagonal’) and ‘aspros’, Greek for ‘white’. So why did a piece of fabric used to wrap up a baby’s bum come to be called a diaper? Well, the first cloth nappies were cut into geometric shapes (as that made them easy to wrap round the bub) – hence, ‘diaper’.

When we colonised North America, the settlers took the word ‘diaper’ with them, where it remained. ‘Nappy’ is actually a much more modern word – it didn’t turn up until the 1920s – and is probably a shortened version of ‘napkin’. Although you wouldn’t want to wipe your face on one.

aspersion

To cast aspersions on someone (or have them cast on you), is to make false or misleading claims about someone meant to harm their reputation. But have you ever wondered what an aspersion actually is? Well, it turns out that back in the day an aspersion was actually quite a nice thing to have thrown at you. Have a look at this quote from Sir William of Shakespeare’s tale of a magical island The Tempest:

‘No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall.’

So, why is the aspersion sweet here? Let’s get our etymology on… ‘Aspersion’ comes from the Latin word ‘aspersus’, which itself comes from the verb ‘aspergere’, meaning to sprinkle or scatter. It first appeared in English in the 16th century and was used for nice sprinklings (which sounds weird), like holy water in religious ceremonies. In fact ‘aspersion’ is a type of sprinkly baptism, alongside ‘immersion’ (which is self-explanatory) and ‘affusion’ (which is when you get water poured on your head). There’s a whole load of kit that goes along with aspersion as well, including an aspergillum (a tool that holds the water pre-sprinkle), and an aspersorium, AKA holy water bucket (good name for a band). Aspergilla (the plural of aspergillum) aren’t limited to the Christian church either – apparently modern-day pagans and Wiccans also use them to throw liquid at other people in various cleansing rituals.

(There’s also a fungus called aspergillus, so named by its discoverer because it looked like a holy water sprinkler – he was a priest as well as a biologist – under a microscope. According to Wikipedia, aspergillus are ‘found in millions in pillows’. Gross.)

So when did aspersions become bad? Pretty quickly, actually – by the end of the 16th century we were using the word to describe reports that stain someone’s reputation. Why? I don’t know, is the short answer. But I imagine it was because most sprinklings to the face (that aren’t holy or made of chocolate) probably aren’t good. Probably.