000 Euralex 2010 02 Plenary

> The Genre of the Etymological Dictionary anatoly liberman 1 Etymological dictionaries among other comprehensive dictionaries Etymological dictionaries are stepchildren of lexicography. In surveys, at best a few pages are devoted to them. Even lists of the etymological dictionaries of English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages, that is, of languages having a strong tradition of producing such reference works, were impossible to find until I compiled and published them (Liberman 1998; 1999; 2005; the Dutch list still awaits publication). But years after I began this work I keep running into old, not necessarily worthless, works that fell between the cracks and wonder how many more I have missed (cf. the postscript to my 1999 paper added in proof and Liberman 2009b). One does not have to look far for the reason complicating this search. The common habit of depending on the latest products, which, allegedly, contain more pieces of distilled wisdom than their predecessors, severed our ties with the past, and few experts consult the first editions of Kluge (1883, etc.) or any of the four editions of Wedgwood (1859-1865, etc.), let alone dictionaries by less distinguished authors. As a result, references to them are rare. Theory of lexicography and excellent instructions to lexicographers exist (the market seems to be always ready for new encyclopedias and voluminous ‘handbooks’), but no one except Yakov Malkiel (1975) has taken the trouble to analyze the practice of etymological lexicography or look at the multitude of etymological dictionaries written in the post-medieval period. Those who know his book may agree that despite its scope it is not a fully satisfactory guide to the subject, partly because of Malkiel’s penchant for baroque style and partly because he was preeminently an expert in Romance linguistics, which made his opinions about Germanic and Slavic lexicography less valuable. Nor can a bird’s eye view of any subject replace a series of more specialized works. It is easy to see why etymological dictionaries have been pushed to the margin of theoretical lexicography. Ever since people became literate, they have been putting together glossaries and ‘lexicons.’ Travelers, merchants, statesmen, and officials had to communicate with foreigners, and in every epoch some language had the status of the most prestigious one, whether Egyptian, Hittite, Greek, Latin, French, or English. It is therefore no wonder that we have bilingual texts from the dawn of human civilization and thousands of medieval glosses. The collapse of the Tower of Babel provided language teachers and lexicographers with permanent employment. As time went on, culture gave an impetus to the the genre of the etymological dictionary 47 compilation of dictionaries of synonyms, homonyms, antonyms, slang, and so forth. By contrast, etymology, though excellent for lexicographic dessert, cannot pretend to be anyone’s main course. To speak, read, and write well, we do not need information on word origins. The study of language history is inseparable from etymology, but the public can thrive without knowing where words came from, and two factors keep this branch of scholarship afloat: the inertia of historical linguistics as an academic subject and humanity’s natural curiosity. People love etiological tales (‘just so stories’): they want to know how the big bang occurred, why the bat hunts at night, when and under what circumstances language originated, and, among other things, how sign (the form of any given word) and meaning are connected. This thirst for knowledge is almost instinctive (at least it is ineradicable), as shown by the popularity of word columns and countless books with titles like ‘Why Do We Say So?’ Etymological dictionaries purport to satisfy both professionals and the uninitiated, but, as regards their appeal, they cannot compete with explanatory, bilingual, and pronouncing dictionaries. To put it bluntly, they occupy the place they deserve, but without them the world would have been poorer; so may they live and multiply. 2 The reception of etymological dictionaries In literary studies and art history, reception theory has been a major topic for decades. In lexicography, it hardly exists at all. Scandal once resulted in the appearance of books featuring and commenting on the main reviews of a dictionary (Sledd [and] Ebbitt [1962]; Morton [1994]). Of course, I mean Webster’s Third International… , and how misspent those passions appear to us today! Dictionary wars have been documented. The reaction of the public to Samuel Johnson and the OED has been traced up to a point, but on the whole, as I said, reception of dictionaries by lay users and professionals is an almost nonexistent area. The authors of etymological dictionaries are even worse off than other lexicographers, for reviews of such dictionaries have never been collected or analyzed. Sometimes I wonder who reads them. Even the authors often disregard sensible suggestions while preparing later editions. Probably they have never seen the reviews. I am speaking from experience. More than twenty years ago, I began work on a new etymological dictionary of English. My goal was to write entries in which the literature on the origin of words would be discussed as fully as possible, various conjectures sifted, and reasonable conclusions 48 anatoly liberman drawn from the data. The models were many: Walde-Hofmann for Latin (1938-1954), Feist for Gothic (1939), Vasmer for Russian (1950-1958), and quite a few other etymological dictionaries (of Hittite, Classical Greek, French, Spanish, Old High German, Lithuanian, several Slavic languages, Old Icelandic, and Old Irish). An English dictionary of this type does not exist. Skeat (1882/1910), like his predecessors and followers, gave almost no references, so that someone who decides to study the etymology of an English word in depth starts practically from scratch. To what extent the project on which I embarked in the early eighties is feasible, given the resources at my disposal, is beyond the point in the present context, but the task I faced could not be clearer: it was necessary, for the first time ever, to collect the enormous literature on the origin and history of English words, summarize the findings, and offer convincing solutions. To find the relevant articles not only in the most visible journals but also in countless fugitive periodicals (with minor exceptions, word columns and letters to the editor in newspapers remained untapped by my team of about a hundred volunteers and meagerly paid assistants) was a formidable task. I had no illusions about the completeness of the final product (one cannot read everything; besides, new articles and books appear every day), especially because etymology is based on a good knowledge of cognates. One should screen the literature in and on all the Indo-European languages (and occasionally on the languages of other families) in the hope of finding the sought-for answers outside English (for example, someone might have guessed the origin of German gleiten , and this would solve the etymology of Engl. glide , or perhaps a preliminary agreement has been reached on Dutch big , which would then shed light on its connection with Engl. pig; the importance of works on borrowings and on words belonging to the Indo-European stock needs no proof ). Reviews were among the sources I studied with great care. All the publications used for the database have been copied, and more than 20,000 of them are kept in my office. At least a thousand of them are reviews. The database, as well as the introductory (‘showcase’) volume of the dictionary, has now been published (Liberman 2008 [dictionary] and 2009a [bibliography]). Since the reviews that ended up on my desk could be put to use only insofar as they contained discussion of words, some, however insightful, were not included in the bibliography, but I excerpted and preserved the rejects. My acquaintance with them (brief and long, devoted to minutiae and attacking general questions) justifies my statement that reviews of etymological dictionaries have not been used for any conclusions about the genre of the etymological dictionary and the genre of the etymological dictionary 49 exercise minimal influence on the authors. I hope to write a book on the etymological dictionaries of the Germanic languages and in addition to a survey and analysis of all of them, discuss their reception. Over the years, reviewers have been asking and often answering the same questions that interest me. Perhaps this chapter will even expedite the birth of reception theory in lexicography. 3 The readership and the market of etymological dictionaries Above I said that etymology stays alive (or afloat) because it is the foundation of historical linguistics and because the public wants to know where words come from. Every dictionary has a certain user in view. Although the authors of etymological dictionaries cannot disregard this circumstance, they do not always know what to make of it, for their idea of their audience is dim. It is instructive to compare introductions to etymological dictionaries. In Western Europe, the earliest of them appeared in 1599 (Kilian; Dutch). Kilian’s work was followed by similar dictionaries of German, English, French, and other languages. Front matter sometimes ran to more than a hundred pages and offered the author’s views on the origin of language and the derivation of words (a tradition that was upheld by Wedgwood and Skeat among many others, who in this respect did not differ from Samuel Johnson and Webster). It was not deemed necessary to justify the production of such a book since the uses and benefits of etymology were taken for granted. The first dictionaries were sometimes sold by subscription, and the lists of subscribers are long and impressive, from dukes down. Occasionally the first edition would be brought out by the author, who would break even or make a profit, so that the next edition would be undertaken by a commercial publisher.

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