Words for the week: Eaves, Snoops and Gossips
An enterprising employee in an office area near my office has a small cache of candy and other goodies that he sells. The little business depends upon the honor system; you put your fifty cents in a plastic container and choose your sweet. The sign at the top says “Snoops Are Us,” and as I read it, I wonder if people who are not of Dutch background would understand, for snoepen is a Dutch word for sweets, candy especially.
They might, for when I check the Oxford English Dictionary, I discover that the first definition of snoop is “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” And apparently there’s something sneaky about eating those sweets. For it is from that usage that the more common American use of snoop has developed: A snoop is “someone who goes about in a sly or prying manner.” He pokes his nose in where it does not really belong—but in a sneaky way. Sometimes, in fact, the snoop is an eavesdropper.
And what is an eavesdropper? The original meaning of eaves is "going over the edge." It comes from the German, and our English word over probably comes from the same word as eaves. The area between the house and the place where the water dripped from the roof was called the eavesdrop or eavesdrip. Thus someone standing in this area with his or her ear to the door or window, listening in, is called an eavesdropper. The action of listening is called eavesdropping. (I suppose people who are frequently caught by eavesdroppers saying and doing silly things might logically be called eavesdrips, but, as far as I know, they are not.)
These snoopy eavesdroppers, when they run to tell others the juicy stories they have heard, become gossips. The word gossip comes from two words, god and sibling (meaning relative). Literally, then, gossip meant “relative in God or spiritual relative,” and it was used to refer to a godmother or godfather, people chosen at baptism to be the spiritual mentors for children. As late as 1711 this meaning was used. For example, Hearne writes, "I was fully designed to come and stand gossip in person to Dr. Hudson's child."
But by the14th century, it had also come to mean “close friend.” In the 19th century, the great Romantic poet John Keats in his "Eve of St. Agnes" writes, "Ah, Gossip, dear, we're safe enough. Come in this chair and sit." And by the 16th century it also meant “one who indulges in idle talk, a bearer of tales, often false ones.” John Dryden uses the word this way in 1687 when he writes of "the common chat of gossips when they meet."
As you can see, all three meanings existed side by side for several hundred years. But that is not true for gossip today. Only the third one has survived: “As a noun designating an idle talker, as a noun designating the idle talk itself, and as the verb designating the act of talking idly.” What an immense semantic shift—from “spiritual relative” to “one who prattles loosely, often doing irreparable damage with half truths or outright falsehoods.” Yet how marvelously creative humans are as they take words for candy, the drip edge of a roof and godfather/godmother, and make of them all, words for sly, nasty people.
They might, for when I check the Oxford English Dictionary, I discover that the first definition of snoop is “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” And apparently there’s something sneaky about eating those sweets. For it is from that usage that the more common American use of snoop has developed: A snoop is “someone who goes about in a sly or prying manner.” He pokes his nose in where it does not really belong—but in a sneaky way. Sometimes, in fact, the snoop is an eavesdropper.
And what is an eavesdropper? The original meaning of eaves is "going over the edge." It comes from the German, and our English word over probably comes from the same word as eaves. The area between the house and the place where the water dripped from the roof was called the eavesdrop or eavesdrip. Thus someone standing in this area with his or her ear to the door or window, listening in, is called an eavesdropper. The action of listening is called eavesdropping. (I suppose people who are frequently caught by eavesdroppers saying and doing silly things might logically be called eavesdrips, but, as far as I know, they are not.)
These snoopy eavesdroppers, when they run to tell others the juicy stories they have heard, become gossips. The word gossip comes from two words, god and sibling (meaning relative). Literally, then, gossip meant “relative in God or spiritual relative,” and it was used to refer to a godmother or godfather, people chosen at baptism to be the spiritual mentors for children. As late as 1711 this meaning was used. For example, Hearne writes, "I was fully designed to come and stand gossip in person to Dr. Hudson's child."
But by the14th century, it had also come to mean “close friend.” In the 19th century, the great Romantic poet John Keats in his "Eve of St. Agnes" writes, "Ah, Gossip, dear, we're safe enough. Come in this chair and sit." And by the 16th century it also meant “one who indulges in idle talk, a bearer of tales, often false ones.” John Dryden uses the word this way in 1687 when he writes of "the common chat of gossips when they meet."
As you can see, all three meanings existed side by side for several hundred years. But that is not true for gossip today. Only the third one has survived: “As a noun designating an idle talker, as a noun designating the idle talk itself, and as the verb designating the act of talking idly.” What an immense semantic shift—from “spiritual relative” to “one who prattles loosely, often doing irreparable damage with half truths or outright falsehoods.” Yet how marvelously creative humans are as they take words for candy, the drip edge of a roof and godfather/godmother, and make of them all, words for sly, nasty people.
Comments
Post a Comment