File under “Johnson, Samuel”: I find myself once again disagreeing with the eighteenth-century wordmaster with curmudgeonly respect.
I'm a curmudgeon. You know, cranky, grouchy, skeptical, stubborn. And only curmudgeons would have the audacity to grouse at the esteemed Dr. Samuel Johnson, compiler of 1755’s Dictionary of the English Language, a momentous and trailblazing work to which English-watchers (and -speakers) owe incredible debt. But, because I am a curmudgeon, I must point out that Dr. Johnson’s dictionary told us that the word curmudgeon “is a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur mechant”—a phrase using two French words that can be regarded as meaning “heart of evil.” OK, it fits, but it’s wrong. No one knows exactly where the word came from. Some people believe that the word came from a word meaning “hoarder of grain,” a nasty grain thief. The source of this fanciful explanation (with the background that com once meant grain in general) was a 1600 translation of Livy’s History of Rome by Philemon Holland. The Latin word frumentarius, meaning “corn dealer,” was translated (in a play on words so arcane that it took etymologists about 300 literal years to “get it”) as the commudgin.
Now, the grain-fed etymology is wrong, too. I know that. But, as a curmudgeon with an odd sense of humor making jokes that take people years to “get,” I find it exceedingly difficult to definitively dispute the “com dealer” explanation