Alchemical Calques Or the Transmutation of Language Rob Schleifer New York, New York
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® THE LANGUAGE QUARTERLY Vol. XXIX, No. 2 Summer 2004 Editor: Erin McKean Founding Editor: Laurence Urdang Alchemical Calques or the Transmutation of Language Rob Schleifer New York, New York n the fifth century , Empedocles of Acragas, Philologically, this occurrence, by which Greek Ithe Greek philosopher, proclaimed that the uni- pempte- ousia was translated, element by element, into verse was composed of four primal elements: fire, Latin quinta essentia, is known as a loan translation, or air, water, and earth. While not, perhaps, the most calque, a word derived from French calque ‘an‘an imita-imita- discriminating descriptive cosmology, this doctrine tion or tracing,’ insofar as one language is transposing VERBATIMnevertheless dominated Western philosophical the elements of another language into its own ele- thought for twenty-one hundred years and is today ments. French calque, in turn, is fashioned from the still favorably regarded by born-again astrologists. French verb calquer ‘to‘to tracetrace oror copy,’copy,’ whichwhich isis derivedderived But it did not completely satisfy Aristotle, who, from the Italian verb calcare ‘to‘to tracetrace oror trample,’trample,’ itselfitself writing a century later, explained that while these an adoption of the Latin verb calcare ‘to‘to treadtread oror four material elements could define all earthly sub- trample,’ which, for our purposes, finds its source in stances, a fifth immaterial element must define all the Latin noun calx ‘heel,’‘heel,’ asas thatthat partpart ofof thethe footfoot thatthat heavenly phenomena. He called this element pempte- does the trampling. As such, calques may very well ousia, or ‘fifth being.’ be the philosopher’s stone of discourse, the elixir or Nearly two millennia later, the medieval phi- mother’s milk of living language, an archeology of losophers, busy transmuting lead into gold and knowledge, transmuting the violent trampling of discovering the elixir of life, sought to translate translation into the intercourse of loan. this expression into Latin. But classical Latin had Much can be discovered in this archeology. no present participle meaning ‘being.’ Fortunately, The ancient Romans, as well as the Greeks, have however, Cicero had remedied this problem in the provided English with a potpourri of picturesque first century , averting this medieval embarrass- calques. Even at the dawn of Roman civilization, ment by taking the existing Latin infinitive esse—an as a Tiberine she-wolf (Acca Larentia?) suckled almost exact counterpart to Greek einai, the infini- Romulus and Remus, some inhabitant of the Italic tive governing ousia—and extrapolating from it the peninsula may have gazed at the sky one night and hypothetical Latin present participial base essent-, to fancied that faintly luminous band of stars overarch- create the neologism essentia, which corresponds to ing the heavens to be a road or way of milk, or via Greek ousia. Then, some fifteen hundred years later, lactea, a phrase that was translated by Chaucer in the medieval philosophers prefaced this word with Middle English as melky weye andand thencethence Milky Way, Latin quinta, ‘fifth,’ an ordinal number equivalent eventually passing into Modern English, where it to Greek pempte-, establishing the Medieval Latin became a candy bar. Or instead, I would tender, the phrase quinta essentia; and these two words eventu- Romans may have partially translated their via lactea ally coalesced and passed into English as quintessence. from Eratosthenes’ kyklos galaxias ‘circle of milk,’ In this linguistic process the medieval philoso- from which we derive galaxy, now a generic term phers had unearthed, seem- for the Milky Way, though formerly our specific 42 > ingly without knowing it, term; and kyklos galaxias may further be the source a means of transmuting of our obsolete English calque, lacteous circle, which the lead of a dead language would support this hypothesis. In any event, Latin into the gold elixir of liv- lac iiss cognatecognate wwithith GGreekreek gala and English milk, all 0 7447 0 05855 7 ing discourse. three words having descended from the common Page 2 V. XXIX, N. VERBATIM Contents Vol. XXIX, No. 2 Summer 2004 Articles Alchemical Calques, or the Transmutation of Language Rob Schleifer p. 1 Bacronymic Etymythologies Douglas G. Wilson p. 5 Presidential Words Richard Lederer p. 8 I Didn’t Catch Your Name Robert M. Rennick p. 12 The Ethnocentricity of E-mail Simon Darragh p. 10 Lipograms: The Presence of Absence Susan Elkin p. 15 The Skinny on the Dictionary of One-Letter Words Craig Conley p. 17 Holy Crapola! Mark Peters p. 19 Offending Words Gerald Eskenazi p. 21 Good Cop, Bad Cop Edmund Conti p. 29 Columns As the Word Turns: Y, O Y Barry Baldwin p. 24 Horribile Dictu Mat Coward p. 25 Classical Blather: Whatsinames and Thingamajigs Nick Humez p. 26 Ex Cathedra Erin McKean p. 31 plus the crossword puzzle and some and SICS! EPISTOLAE Contributions: will publish articles, anecdotes, squibs, letters, and other materials at the discretion of the Editor. If at all possible, please send your submission as an email attachment. Unless accepted for publication, unsolicited submissions willVERBATIM be neither returned nor acknowledged unless return postage is provided by the sender. Queries by email are STRONGLY recommended. Send queries or articles to the Chicago address below. Editor: Erin McKean Founding Editor: Laurence Urdang Editorial Consultant: Paul Heacock UK Representative: Hazel Hall Copy Editor: Lorraine Alexson Crosswords Editor: Pamela Wylder Board Members: Joan Houston Hall, Michael Adams, Simon Winchester, and Arnold Zwicky © ®, The Language Quarterly, ©2004, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, Summer 2004 (ISSN 0162–0932). isis a trademarktrademark rreg.eg. UU.S..S. PPat.at. OOff.ff. TThishis jjournalournal isis indexedindexed byby thethe American Humanities Index. (ISSN 0162–0932) is published quarterly for US$25 per year by Word, Inc., 4907 N. WashtenawVERBATIMVERBAT Avenue,IM Chicago, IL 60625. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mail- ingVERBATIM offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to , 4907 N. Washtenaw Avenue, Chicago,VERBATIM IL 60625. is printed in Canada on recycled paper. Business and editorial offices are located at 4907 N. Washtenaw Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625. email: [email protected] web page: http://www.verbatimmag.comVERBATIM For subscriptions inVERBATIM U.K., Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East (UK£18), please write to , P.O. Box 156, Chearsley, Aylesbury, Bucks HP18 0DQ, or email: [email protected]. For subscriptions in North America (US$25) or anywhere else not covered above (US$30), please write , 4907 N. Washtenaw Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625 (800–897 –3006), or email: [email protected] VERBATIM V. XXIX, N. Page 3 VERBATIM prehistoric Indo-European base melg- ‘to stroke, to Übermensch. In short, what began linguistically as an rub off,’ hence, ‘to milk,’ from which we acquire such accurate calque for a German concept transmogrified English derivatives as lactate, emulsion, and lettuce. into something quite alien, an example, if you will, But the Romans and Greeks are by no means our of semantic hypertrophy. sole legators of calques. In 1891, Friedrich Nietzsche But few calques have degenerated so bizarrely completed Also sprach Zarathustra, in which he elabo- in such a short a period. Religious calques, for rated upon his conception of the Übermensch, that example, have remained relatively stable over the rationally superior person who spurns conventional millennia, many of them deriving from the Hebrew Christian “herd morality” and transmutes himself, or Aramaic languages, the former the language of like a triumphant alchemist, to fully realize human the Old Testament, the latter the language spoken potential and creative mastery. Yet in a second- when Christ lived. ary transmutation, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, almost An enlightening religious calque is scapegoat. immediately upon publication of Zarathustra, was Though no longer commonly associated with any- misconceived as a man of extraordinary physical thing religious, it originally epitomized the atone- strength with a juggernaut-like “will to power” ment of Yom Kippur in which Aaron, the high priest over others. And in a tertiary transmutation, of the Jews, confessed the sins of his people upon the George Bernard Shaw, in popularizing and recast- head of a goat, which was then allowed to “escape” ing Nietzsche’s philosophy twelve years later, took into the wilderness, carrying away those sins. on the task of translating Übermensch into English. But the goat . shall be presented alive before But, evidently, he did not find the native rendering the LORD, to make an atonement with him, of overman or beyondman sufficiently mellifluous and and toto letlet himhim gogo forfor a scapegoatscapegoat intointo thethe wil-wil- instead translated the first element Über intointo itsits LatinLatin derness. (Leviticus 16:10, KJV) equivalent, creating for his new play and all posterity Scapegoat actually encompasses two calques and that immortal, hybrid calque . Superman! is an example of those words that I call doublecalques — Faster than a speeding bullet! (with double pronounced doo’bl\, in the French man- More powerful than a locomotive! ner). The biblical scholar William Tyndale, in pre- Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! paring his 1530 translation of the Pentateuch, coined Look! Up in the sky! scapegoat as a calque of the Late Latin (Vulgate) caper emissarius ‘emissary goat,’ itself a calque of Hebrew It’s a bird! It’s a plane! - - IT’S ÜBERMENSCH! ‘azazeel, the name of a desert demon which, ety- mologically, was understood as ‘e-z o-ze-l ‘goat‘goat thatthat Yes, it’s Übermensch, strange visitor from departs’—whence emissary goat, whence scapegoat, another philosophaster. Yet anyone who has had whence any person, place, or thing that bears the the pleasure of listening to that scholarly radio serial blame for others. of the 1940s featuring Bud Collyer, or of watching A more complex religious doublecalque is that intellectual television series of the ’50s starring Holy Ghost.