File under “I’ll, Aisle, Isle”—and fisle it, too: Isles are not islands.
In my radio-writing subcareer, I had opportunity to script a series of commercials for a nationally syndicated radio commentator—or at least one of his characters. The series told the story of this character’s endorsement of his local convenience store. In one episode, he talks about the helpful staff, and to demonstrate, he asks a stockboy where the bread is.
“Aisle 2,” says the cheery, helpful stockboy.
“OK, how about the beef jerky?”
“Aisle 4.”
“And where do you keep the girly magazines?”
“Aisle kill you!” screams his wife, who, unbeknownst to our
hero, has happened upon the scene.
I tell this story so I can point out that despite the homonym, aisle and the contraction I'll have nothing to do with each other, which in turn allows me to segue (radio term, that) to the obvious fact that neither have relationship to homonymous isle, which in turn allows me to segue to a discussion of how isle and island are related.
They aren’t.
Isle is not a contraction of island, and the two words came to English through entirely different routes.
Bill Brohaugh
132
Oh, they are synonyms, but they are etymologically unrelated. And I grant you that two authoritative bits of evidence would seem to confirm solid relationship. One, of course, is the spelling similarity. But the far more compelling bit of evidence comes from no less of a language authority than the team of songwriter George Wyle and TV producer Sherwood Schwarz, who collaborated on “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island.” This poignant mini-opera concludes with the haunting words, “here on Gilligan’s Isle,” despite Wyle and Schwarz's probable understanding of the full name of the show. This has probably confounded deconstructionist music and language experts for years.
Island traces back to Old English, and one of its original senses denoted a piece of land bordered by a lot of water, and referred to peninsular territory or high ground that became isolated during flooding. Early spellings of island include igland, Hand, illond, yllond, and ile-land. But then this Old French word isle came along by around the year 1300. Isle traces back to the Latin insula, meaning “island” (the Professor would certainly understand that the castaways were insulated).
Ironically, isle had lost its S by the time it was brought into Middle English as He, but during the Renaissance learned Latin orthographers in France apparently thought that restoring the noble S was the pointy-headed thing to do, and apparently the English followed suit. lie reabsorbed the S, and eventually, so did English Hand because of association with French isle. Island had established itself as the accepted spelling by the beginning of the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, what’s the modern French word meaning “island”? Of course, simply He.
And in a different sort of irony, the word aisle that I so shockingly revealed to you was unrelated to isle shared some
orthographic history with the word—it, too, had no S in it, until “learned" Middle French orthographers decided it needed to be Latinized. (Next, we’ll have to figure out where to insert a silent S into the contraction I’ll. Is’ll? I’sll? Hmm.)
In the cases of the former aile, He, and Hand, who blundered and dropped that silly extra S in? I’ll blame Gilligan!