The Seven Deadly Sins are not as much spoken of now as previously. In the Middle Ages, they were popularly personified for morality plays. Christopher Marlowe, for example, has them as characters in Doctor Faustus. They are, by name:
Vainglory (or Pride);
Covetousness;
Lust (understood as inordinate or illicit sexual desire);
Envy;
Gluttony (including drunkenness);
Anger; and
Sloth.
These same characters are cast in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s modern remake of the Faust story, Bedazzled.
We do not hear of vainglory these days. The latest quotation in the OED2 entry for vainglory is dated 1882. It is a near-synonym for pride in its bad sense. Obviously, pride is the noun cognate with the adjective proud; vanity is the noun cognate with vain. Proud and vain are two oddly ambiguous words. Their primary meanings are similar, their etymological origins are almost exactly opposite, and each has at least two senses — one, unfavourable, and the other, neutral or favourable.
The favourable sense of proud is ‘affording high satisfaction or gratification; (of things): stately, majestic, magnificent, grand …’ This sense is captured in comments such as ‘I am proud to be an Australian’ and ‘The ruins do shew that it hath been a verie statelie and proud fabrick’.
In its unfavourable sense, proud is defined in OED2 as ‘having or cherishing a high or lofty opinion of oneself; valuing oneself highly on account of one’s position, rank, attainments, possessions, etc.; … also arrogant, haughty’.
Proud comes from Old Norse, originally meaning brave, gallant, magnificent, stately. This is consistent with the favourable sense in which it is still used. It came into Old English in the eleventh century, brought by Norman invaders. Since the Norman invaders were unwelcome, their pride was offensive to the vanquished: the prud barun or prode chevalier was an outrageous affront to the Anglo-Saxon peasant, subjugated to their will — this at least is the speculation in OED2 to explain the early and rapid emergence of the unfavourable sense. No mistaking the sense in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, …
Proud has two further, related meanings. It can mean ‘large; projecting in any direction’. So, a construction in which something projects beyond the prevailing level ‘stands proud’. This is quite neutral. Also, ‘sensually excited; “swelling”, lascivious’ in reference to female animals. This use is now obsolete, although it adds a new sense to the old Credence Clearwater Revival song ‘Proud Mary’. In Britain ‘piss-proud’ is still current and refers to an early morning erection caused by a full bladder. It is a physiological curiosity because it makes micturition physically awkward, and when the need is met the ‘pride’ subsides. It calls to mind one of Shakespeare’s accurate observations of mankind:
Porter. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.
Macduff. What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.
(Macbeth, Act II: iv)
Vain comes from Latin vanus ‘empty, void, idle’. This is also the root of evanesce (to fade out of sight, ‘melt into thin air’, disappear) and wane (an obsolete adjective meaning ‘lacking, absent, deficient’). Incidentally, the verb to wane is unrelated, although its sense is similar. It comes from the Old English wanian: to lessen.
The original meaning in English of vain was ‘devoid of sense or wisdom; foolish, silly, thoughtless; of an idle or futile nature or disposition’. Then, by the late seventeenth century the current meaning emerged: ‘Given to or indulging in personal vanity; having an excessively high opinion of one’s own appearance, attainments, qualities, possessions, etc.; delighting in, or desirous of attracting, the admiration of others; conceited.’ Its secondary meaning is ‘pointless’, as in a vain endeavour. This is obviously close to the original meaning, but it carries no moral sting.
Pride bears the meanings of its related adjective, but it also signifies a social group of lions. This sense has been recognised since The Book of St Albans (1486).
Covetousness is a word not often heard these days. It is familiar from the sixth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.’ (It is interesting to reflect that there was a time when, within the constraints of just ten rules to govern the conduct of all mankind, it was thought appropriate, or necessary, to ban ox-coveting.) Covetousness means strong or inordinate desire. OED2 notes it as obsolete — the word, perhaps, but not the sentiment.
By contrast, lust is alive and well. It is a word that has sunk gradually. In the ninth century, it meant pleasure or delight; from the eleventh century it began to gather overtones of sexual appetite; and by the seventeenth century it signified ‘lawless and passionate desire’.
Envy comes from the Latin invidia, from which we get invidious (tending or fitted to excite odium, unpopularity, or ill feeling; offensively discriminating). Envy means ‘the feeling of mortification and ill-will occasioned by the contemplation of superior advantages possessed by another’. Ambrose Bierce defined it as ‘emulation adapted to the meanest capacity’. He also defined congratulation as ‘the civility of envy’.
Gluttony, like the other deadly sins, is still familiar to us as an idea, although the word is not often heard. It is ‘the vice of excessive eating’. It comes from Latin, and is first cousin to the Latin glutire: to gulp down. Bierce says that a glutton is ‘a person who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia’. W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale, 1930) picked it up in passing when he defined hypocrisy as:
the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
This casual pairing of adultery and gluttony seems natural but it is a curious thing that adultery is not listed as one of the deadly sins.
Anger is another deadly sin that has grown and prospered in generation upon generation. OED2 defines it as ‘that which pains or afflicts, or the passive feeling which it produces; trouble, affliction, vexation, sorrow’. Its meaning has been stable and unchanged since it was first recorded in the thirteenth century. It comes from Old Norse. Johnson quotes Locke: ‘Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind, upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.’ The added element of a desire for revenge seems not to accord with other etymologies, but is consistent with ordinary experience. Ambrose Bierce does not provide a definition of anger, but he does define wrath:
WRATH, n. anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, ‘the wrath of God,’ ‘the day of wrath,’ etc.
Sloth is a familiar phenomenon, but the word is not frequently heard. This might be due in part to ambivalence about its pronunciation: does it rhyme with both or moth? OED2 rhymes it with only one, namely both. (I would never have imagined that sentence possible.) Built on the Middle English word slaw or slow, it means ‘physical or mental inactivity; disinclination to action, exertion, or labour; sluggishness, idleness, indolence, laziness’. Appropriately, its meaning has not bothered to change at all since the twelfth century.
Sloth is also an animal, an ‘edentate arboreal mammal of a sluggish nature’. Two genera are known: the bradypus, or three-toed sloth, and the choloepus, or two-toed sloth. Flanders and Swann wrote a wonderful song in the 1950s about the bradypus, which begins:
A Bradypus or Sloth am I,
I live a life of ease,
Contented not to do or die
But idle as I please …
and concludes with the lament:
I could climb the very highest Himalayas,
Be among the greatest ever tennis players,
Win at chess or marry a Princess or
Study hard and be an eminent professor.
I could be a millionaire, play the clarinet,
Travel everywhere,
Learn to cook, catch a crook,
Win a war then write a book about it.
I could paint a Mona Lisa,
I could be another Caesar.
Compose an oratorio that was sublime.
The door’s not shut on my genius but
I just don’t have the time!
The Seven Deadly Sins make a strange list to modern eyes. They do not include some of the more serious misdeeds such as murder, adultery, and theft, although they may be precursors to those vices. These days they are more encouraged than avoided. The cosmetics industry is built on vanity; the fast food industry is built on gluttony; the advertising industry harnesses covetousness and lust; politics provokes anger and sport often gives it the name of action; and television induces sloth.
The list needs updating.
Incidentally, the Seven Deadly Sins are sometimes referred to as the seven cardinal sins. This is not because cardinals are apt to indulge in them, but because the original meaning of cardinal is ‘chief or principal’. It comes from the Latin cardo, or cardin-em: ‘hinge’. Thus the principal virtues are the cardinal virtues; the four main points of the compass are the cardinal points; and, less commonly recognised, the four principal winds are the cardinal winds. And the most important priests are cardinal priests, or simply cardinals.