The Chinese cabbage, the ACCORDION and an old-fashioned English word for a mercy blow may not appear to have all that much in common, yet each one – like all of the entries in this chapter – is descended from some original root word meaning ‘heart’. The word heart itself is amongst the earliest recorded words in the entire English language, first attested in the text of an Anglo-Saxon psalter written in the early ninth century. As well as being the principal organ of the circulatory system, a heart can also be the core or centre of a fruit or vegetable; the central strand of a rope or string around which all others are tied; the sole of a horse’s foot; or the driest and innermost part of the trunk of a tree. In the Middle Ages heart was even used as an alternative name for the stomach, in the metaphorical sense of it being the source of a person’s energy and vigour.
The accordion was patented by the Austrian organ-maker Cyrill Demian in 1829, with the first mention to it in written English dating from the following year. Demian took the name of his invention from the much earlier musical term accord (essentially meaning ‘harmony’, as opposed to discord), which is in turn descended via French from the Latin accordare, meaning ‘to reconcile’, and ultimately the Latin word for ‘heart’, cor. The word concord, meaning ‘agreement’ or ‘unity’, is of similar origin.
Anacard is a fairly obscure alternative name for the cashew nut or cashew tree. Dating from the mid-sixteenth century in English, it is derived at length from the Ancient Greek words ana, roughly meaning ‘according to’, and kardia, meaning ‘heart’, and is said to refer to the cashew nut’s unusual curved shape. Kardia is also the origin of a whole host of other English words, including medical terms such as cardiac, cardiograph and tachycardia, an abnormally fast pulse rate.
The name of a type of Chinese cabbage with soft edible leaves and flowers, choy sum is derived from the Cantonese choi sam, literally meaning ‘vegetable heart’; indeed, the name is sometimes used more generally to refer to the tender inner leaves and stems of other Asian vegetables like bok choy. Similarly, dim sum, a Chinese dish typically eaten as a light snack or appetiser, is said to have a name literally meaning ‘touch the heart’.
Something said to be done à contrecoeur is done reluctantly, or else against one’s will or better judgement. First used in English in the early nineteenth century, the term is a direct borrowing from French, where historically it was used in the expression avoir contrecoeur to mean ‘to have an aversion to’ or ‘to dislike’. The word is a straightforward compound of the French words contre, meaning ‘against’ (related to the English counter, as in counteract or counter-clockwise), and coeur, meaning ‘heart’.
The English suffix -loquy derives from the Latin verb loquor meaning ‘to speak’, and hence is typically found in words conveying some sense of speech or talking, like soliloquy (a ‘private speech made by a character in a play’), somniloquy (‘talking in one’s sleep’) and obloquy (‘abusive language’, derived from the Latin ob, meaning ‘against’). Similarly, cordiloquy is a rarely used English word for a heartfelt speech, derived from cor, the Latin word for ‘heart’, and invented by the seventeenth-century historian Thomas Fuller in his 1642 work The Holy State and the Profane State: ‘might I coin the word cordiloquie,’ he explains, ‘[for] when men draw the doctrines out of their hearts’.
First used in English in the 1300s, the word courage originally referred to a person’s spirit, or their disposition or temperament. It is derived, via the French corage, from the Latin word cor, which as well as meaning ‘heart’ in an anatomical sense could also be used figuratively to mean ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’. Courage did not come to mean ‘bravery’ until the late fourteenth century, but could also be used to mean ‘vigour’ or ‘lustfulness’. In some contexts it was even used to refer to a person’s innermost thoughts or intentions, the somewhat obscure sense by which it appears in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (III. iii): ‘for my mind’s sake; / I’d such a courage to do him good’.
Frenzy is one of several English words – including frenetic, frantic and phrenology – derived from the Ancient Greek root phren or phrenos, generally translated as ‘the mind’ or ‘mental capacity’ (as in schizophrenia, literally a ‘cut mind’). In early Greek, however, phrenos could also be used to refer to the heart or the breast, as it was once maintained by some Greek scholars that the basis of a person’s mentality lay not in their brain but in their heart, and hence any disorder of the chest could cause mental illness or upset. Dating from the fourteenth century in English, a frenzy was originally a ‘state of insanity’ or ‘delirium’, with the later and slightly weaker sense of ‘excitement’ or ‘agitation’ developing in the early fifteenth century. The idea that the heart is the seat of human emotion and strength, meanwhile, is maintained in words like lionhearted, open-hearted and broken-hearted.
Dating from the seventeenth century, machree is one of several Irish terms of endearment to have made their way into the English language. A corruption of the Irish mo chroí, literally meaning ‘my heart’, the use of machree in English was popularized in the early 1900s by Mother Machree, the title of a popular folksong and novel adapted for cinema by John Ford in 1928. Other similar terms of endearment include macushla, derived from the Irish mo chuisle, meaning ‘my pulse’ or ‘heartbeat’, and acushla, a contraction of a chuisle mo chroí, literally ‘the pulse of my heart’.
The word misericord is derived via French from the Latin misericordia, meaning ‘mercy’ or ‘pity’, which is in turn formed from the Latin miser, meaning ‘wretched’, and cor, meaning ‘heart’. First recorded in the thirteenth century in a famous Christian monastic manual known as the Ancrene Riwle, at its earliest the word was used to mean simply ‘compassion’ or ‘pity’, but over the centuries it developed several other meanings and uses, including a ‘small blade or dagger, specifically one used to finish off a dying opponent’ (fourteenth century); a ‘projecting ledge on the underside of a church seat, used to support a person when standing’ (early sixteenth century); and a ‘room in a monastery or convent in which the rules adhered to by the resident monks or nuns could be relaxed’ (mid-sixteenth century).
An obscure and somewhat old-fashioned word almost entirely exclusive to Scottish English, perqueer dates from the late fifteenth century. It is derived from an Old French phrase, par cour, literally meaning ‘by heart’, and indeed on its first appearance in the language perqueer meant ‘known from memory’ or ‘word for word’. Over time, however, the word came to imply a number of other meanings including ‘skilfully made’, ‘knowledgeable’, ‘without question’ and ‘distinct’ or ‘clearly visible’. It has long since slipped out of widespread use and today survives in only a handful of local Scottish dialects.