It is a wonder that we manage to communicate more or less successfully, so many are the changes in the meaning of words over time. The shift of meaning causes special problems for lawyers as they struggle to draw sensible or convenient meanings from statutes or contracts. The difficulty increases in proportion to the age of the document to be construed.
Luckily for our daily conversation, the shift of meaning usually takes decades or centuries, although newly minted words often go through an early period of instability.
Documents written before the start of the nineteenth century are likely to present familiar words whose context will make the astute reader pause to wonder what the writer truly meant. For example, in Henry VI Part 1, Shakespeare has York address Joan of Arc (‘la Pucelle’) as miscreant. While he may have disagreed with her views or her conduct, miscreant in its modern sense (OED2: depraved, villainous, base) seems not to be what York intended.
Similarly, but less clearly, Lear’s exchange with Kent:
Kent: Now by Apollo, King, Thou swearst thy gods in vain.
Lear: O vassal! Miscreant!
The original sense is ‘false believer’. In times when religious belief was more important than it is now, it was natural that the word acquired the strong pejorative sense given it by Johnson: ‘a vile wretch’. The original meaning dates from the early fourteenth century and was current until the mid-nineteenth century. The current meaning emerged at the end of the sixteenth century. Thus, both senses were current when Shakespeare wrote. It seems clear that he intended York’s comment in the original sense. Lear’s comment is made in response to a comment about religious belief, but it may be that he was so vexed by daughters and circumstances that he intended the modern meaning and a blunt insult.
I have discussed elsewhere the slow decline of tawdry. St Audrey’s lace was fine and pure, but eventually cheapened to tawdry lace. Tinsel has followed the same path. Now meaning cheap and showy (unfairly attached to Sydney, which Melburnians refer to as Tinsel Town), it once had something of the divine spark. It comes into English from old French estincelle that in turn traces back to Latin scintillare: to sparkle or glitter. From the same root we have scintilla: a spark (‘not a scintilla of evidence’), and scintillating (‘brilliantly and excitingly clever, especially in conversation’).
This last definition, which is the current popular sense of scintillating comes from the New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998). It has no equivalent in the OED2 (1989). A similar sense is recognised by the Chambers Dictionary (1993), the American Heritage Dictionary (2000), and the Macquarie Dictionary (second edition, 1991; third edition, 1997). The Random House Dictionary (second edition, 1987) also recognises this sense, as does the Webster’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the same year.
It would be misleading to say this gap in the OED2 is baffling — at least, it would have been until the mid-seventeenth century. Originally, baffle had nothing to do with confusion or puzzlement. It referred to the treatment of a knight who had dishonoured his chivalrous obligations: he was (in person or in effigy) hung up by the heels, his escutcheon was defaced and his spear broken; he (or his effigy) was then subjected to the abuse and humiliations of the crowd. The person subjected to these indignities was said to have been baffled, and a baffle was a disgrace or an affront. By the time of Bailey’s Dictionary (tenth edition, 1742) and Johnson (1755) the only sense recognised was the modern one. Presumably this was for either of two reasons: the age of chivalry had passed, and its usages had lost their relevance; or knights of the realm had so improved their behaviour as to make their public disgrace no longer relevant.
Perhaps the knights exercised their influence at court to change the system. In those days however, influence had a somewhat different meaning: it was the ethereal liquid which was thought to flow from the stars and so affect the character and destiny of men and the behaviour of ‘sub-lunary things’ generally. In short, influence was the force that underpins the pseudo-science of astrology. Strictly, mortals could not exercise influence, but were subject to it. Modern times have reversed that — we seek to influence others and deny the theories of the astrologers.
Early medicine thought that disease could be caused by these forces from the stars. The Italian for influence is influenza. When an epidemic of one disease or another swept the country, it was referred to as an influenza di febbre scarlatina, or an influenza di catarro, and so on.
In 1743, an epidemic spread across Italy and then the rest of Europe. A report in the London Magazine referred to ‘News from Rome of a contagious Distemper raging there, called the Influenza’. The name stuck, and became specific to the particular viral infection whose symptoms are now well known. Later epidemics occurred in 1762, 1782, 1787, 1803, 1833, 1837, 1847, and a particularly bad one in 1889. The worst recorded epidemic of influenza was in 1918, in which 30 million people died.
Note that in the London Magazine the catarrh-like disease was referred to as a Distemper — a word which then signified any ‘deranged or disordered condition of the body or mind’. Its primary sense now is the specific catarrh-like disease of dogs (and, according to the Macquarie Dictionary, horses).
Originally, a distemper was thought to result from a disordered state of the humours. The humours were the four fluids of the body: blood, phlegm, choler, and black choler. Choler is bile. Melos is Greek for black, so black bile is melancholy. Thus the human tempers associated with the four humours were sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric (or bilious), and melancholy.
Each of these words is familiar, but they are not now used as diagnostic tools. Only sanguine presents linguistic problems: because of its connexion with blood, it has oddly ambiguous meanings. As a humour, people in whom it predominates are thought to have ‘a ruddy complexion and a courageous, hopeful, and amorous disposition’. However, it also means ‘causing or delighting in bloodshed, bloody-minded’. Thus, unless the context resolves the ambiguity, describing a person as sanguine may not improve their humour.
Although the primary current sense of humour concerns mirth or amusement (its adjective humorous has only that sense), the earlier sense is called on when we speak of ill-humour or bad humour.
And so the process goes — words shed old meanings and take on new ones, and it happens slowly enough that we can keep pace with the fashion (fashion: originally the action or process of making something, a sense retained in the verb to fashion a thing). Our language is built on shifting sands.
Paradoxically, the current sense of the word sand has been stable since the ninth century.