364
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. NOV. 5, im.
ampton, South-ampton, Tarn-worth, &c.";
and whilst "Dannocks" is recognized as a
corruption of Tournay (or rather of Doornik,
the Flemish name), the same word spelt
" Dornock" is erroneously referred to a Scotch
town. Under ' Gibraltar ' we have an amal-
gamation of personalities remediable by ob-
serving that the Tarik Ibn Zeyad, from whom
the fortress gets its name, landed in the
neighbourhood in April, 711 ; whereas Tarifa
records the landing of Tarif Abu Zora in the
previous year on a scouting expedition ; and
here it may be noted that Gibbon's date for
the battle of Xeres, which followed these
operations, differs slightly from the one given
"s.v. ' .Roderick.' Again, it is difficult to recon-
cile the assertion that "every available source"
has been made use of with the acceptance of
the onomatopoetic origin of "Taffata"; the
fallacious derivation of "Varnish" from
Berenice, which was based on passages in
Eustathius and Salmasius ; the confusion
under 'Periwinkle' of the plant and the
mollusc ; the obtention of " Regale " from
L. regalis, "Rote" from rota, "Marl" from
argill, "Ledger-lines" from Dutch leggen, to lie,
"Tout "from Tooting, "Racy" from relishy,
" Tomboy " from Saxon tumbere, " Chemistry "
from Arabic kamai, to conceal, " Halter " from
hah, the neck, " Hob " from habban, to hold,
and so on. Some of the etymologies, indeed,
verge on the miraculous : " Drum " (a party)
from drawing-room, for example ; " hobby-
horse " from hobby - hause, hawk - tossing ;
"nag " from Danish og, &c. ; or " fluke" from
German gliick. Others rest on insecure
foundations or have become obsolete, such as
those given under ' Cheese,' * Foolscap,' * Gos-
samer,' 'Drake,' 'Labyrinth,' ' Hussar,' 'Pam-
per,' 'Strawberry,' 'Suffrage,' and several
given under ' Lucus a non lucendo.' Of guess-
derivations an unlucky instance occurs s.v.
'Curry Favour'; and another s.v. 'Tram,'
where Outram is rightly rejected, but " Greek
dram-ein, to run," is suggested. (It is in-
teresting, by the way, to find the word dram,
meaning timber from Drammen in Norway,
used in English since the middle of the
seventeenth century.) Many other false,
faulty, or dubious etymologies might be in-
stanced (for I have notes of a few dozen
more), but the above will suffice to show
that the prefatory guarantee is not sub-
stantiated by the text. Reference should,
however, be made to the mistaken assump-
tion that the letter C represents the hollow
of the hand, though originating in the Semitic
gimel, a camel, and to the untenable hypo-
thesis, s.v. ' Dover,' that Chaucer's " Jakke of
Dovere That hath been twies hoot and
twies coold " was a leathern bottle filled with
heel-taps. But an article on a subject cognate
with the foregoing needs more extended con-
sideration, from the miscellaneous character
of the misinformation supplied.
An abundance of " Misnomers " of various kinds is contained in the English language, yet the list of them which finds a place in this work is a curiously infelicitous selection. There was, I think, something similar in a dilapidated copy of an early edition I used to possess, which makes the continued exist- ence of this article somewhat puzzling. On the basis of the examples given therein a lover of paradox would find little difficulty in showing that our mother tongue is chiefly composed of words meriting the appellation in question. For, dismissing " Louis de Bour- bon" and " Vallombrosa," which hardly be- come misnomers through alleged mistakes by Sir Walter Scott and Milton, and the un- intelligible entry under 'Cinerary,' we find "canopy" and "mosaic" included because they chance to resemble Canopus and Moses respectively; "fish" (a counter), "laudanum," and "cullander," because they have under- gone alterations in spelling during trans- ference to English ; " celandine " because it has a mythical origin; "frontispiece" and "sovereign" because misspelt; "acid" and "elements " because of their special chemical senses. If the cogency of such reasons be allowed, then their consistent application would yield surprising numerical results. But this is not all. The catalogue of mis- nomers would become of vast length if we admit that "pen " must be included because it etymologically means a feather ; " china," because of geographical origin ; " slave," be- cause in Slavonic it meant "illustrious" or "intelligible"; "sealing-wax," because no longer made of beeswax ; " lunatic," because formerly associated with the moon ; " meer- schaum," becauseits origin was misunderstood; " lunar caustic," because an alchemical term. By parity of reasoning, a very large propor- tion of common words would become mis- nomers crystal, damask, currant, villain, book, jovial, saturnine, amber, mercury, and hundreds more. In short, words such as these, of which the original meaning is popularly forgotten, cannot properly be called wrong names. Nor can erroneous deriva- tions such as those given under 'Antelope,' ' Custard,' ' Crawfish,' ' Foxglove,' and ' Greyhound ' be held to justify their inclu- sion in this article. As to the wonderful account of "down," with its paradoxical corollary that "going downstairs really means going upstairs," the less said the
