The Unexpected Evolution of Language (8 page)

For Roosevelt, the presidency is a sweetheart of a place to espouse one’s favorite causes. As a result, he referred to it as a “bully pulpit.” Since his time, however, people have forgotten there ever was a positive meaning of bully—and pulpit, for most people, has religious overtones. At one time, a pulpit was simply a generic word for a platform.

buxom

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
humble, obedient

NEW DEFINITION:
full-bosomed

Most contemporary men would like the buxom women of today to be like the buxom women of old. Originally, the word meant humble, obedient, compliant. In today’s parlance: easy.

The word first began to appear in the middle of the Middle Ages, and it referred to humble and obedient young women. In fact, “buxom” stems from an Old English word meaning, ahem, “capable of being bent.” Adolescent minds among you, please put an appropriate joke here.

Gradually, “buxom” began to shift in meaning. The word was applied to lively, healthy young ladies. At a time when many people were starving, “healthy” often meant, well, plump. Picture the paintings of Rubens, who was born in 1577, at the dawn of the modern era.

As fashions and tastes have continued to change, “buxom” has become less associated with “plump” and more associated with “voluptuous” (yes, men are pigs). Less Rubenesque, more like the woman described in The Commodores’s “Brick House.”

C

cabal

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
mystical interpretation of the Old Testament, sometimes spelled with a “k”

NEW DEFINITION:
shadowy group meeting in secret, often for nefarious purposes

The original meaning of “cabal” is closely related to the Kabbalah. It was simply a mystical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, as opposed to practical interpretations dealing with one’s day-to-day behavior. Remember the 1990s, when the Kabbalah became the “mystical philosophy du jour” of celebrities like Madonna? Basically, the Kabbalah is the mystical branch of Judaism that describes the connection between God and human beings.

The key point is that, from the beginning, the word “cabal” suggested something mysterious and secret. That meaning was solidified, and turned explicitly pejorative, during the reign of England’s King Charles II.

Charles’s reign was controversial, and so was he. He seems to have left illegitimate children in every village of England, and he ruled during the Great Plague, which killed about 100,000 people. In addition, he had some shady guys working for him: Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and Lord Lauderdale.

This group, whose initials were CABAL, spent most of its time concerned with infighting, rather than on strengthening ties between England and France, as it was exhorted to do. Folklore suggests that Charles II’s group was largely responsible for giving cabals their bad name.

carol

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a type of dance, not necessarily religious

NEW DEFINITION:
a type of song, associated with Christmas

One popular pastime of the early Middle Ages was “caroling,” or dancing in a circle to songs written in Latin. Yep, those peasants really knew how to have fun, didn’t they?

Almost from the beginning, the word “carol” referred to both the dances and to their accompanying songs. In their earliest incarnation, “carols” could be religious—but they didn’t have to be. Sometimes these dances, and their songs, were written and performed for festivals, some of which were pagan.

Sometimes, however, “carols” were used to accompany so-called mystery plays. A mystery play wasn’t so much a full play as a scene of a Christian miracle, performed to music (though, in time, they became more like “real” plays). For example, the resurrection of Christ would have been a typical mystery play. Over time, “carol” came to have an exclusively religious connotation and lost its “pagan” roots.

Why are most carols “Christmas carols”? During the Protestant Reformation, many eschewed such nonessential church trappings as carols. They practically ceased to exist. When they staged a comeback in the late 1500s to early 1600s, many of the earliest were written for Christmas.

censor

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
census taker

NEW DEFINITION:
one who removes objectionable content from a film, book, etc.

While the ancient Greeks were busy inventing philosophy, fine architecture, theater, and all sorts of other cultural advancements, the ancient Romans tried to do the same. Overall, they weren’t as successful. Even today, they seem like the “also-rans” in the ancient cultural wars.

Romans always seemed to have a more practical bent. They were right-brained. They perfected useful inventions, such as aqueducts (though, these actually had already been developed initially by the Greeks and several other cultures), and they excelled at government.

Even today, most (except the elected leaders in Washington, apparently) understand that governments require revenue. No one likes taxes, but almost everyone realizes they’re a necessary evil in order to keep a nation or republic strong. The ancient Romans were nothing if not great tax collectors.

In order to make an accurate assessment of taxes, the Romans started taking a census. If they knew how many people were in a community and what sorts of possessions they had, then they could squeeze from them the maximum amount of taxes.

A “censor” was someone tasked with collecting census data. He learned about more than what folks owned, however. Sometimes, he would report immoral behavior he witnessed. Thus, he became associated with upholding public morals.

Over time, censor has lost its connection to the census and to taxes. Nowadays, a censor is someone whose job is to uphold the morals of a given society by ridding media of content some consider immoral or objectionable.

charisma

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
a gift from God/the gods

NEW DEFINITION:
personal magnetism

Although the modern sense of the word “charisma” has existed since the 1920s, the word might as well have been invented for the thirty-fifth U.S. president, John F. Kennedy. He radiated health, humor, and vig-ah (vigor). He seemed to live a charmed life … until Camelot came crumbling down, that is.

Kennedy’s personal magnetism certainly played a factor in his triumph over his dowdy, frowning, not-made-for-television rival, Richard Nixon. The gods seemed to have favored Kennedy.

Using that example, it’s easy to see the connection between the new and old versions of “charisma.” Originally, the word referred to gifts bestowed by the gods or by God, and it came to refer to the “gift” of a person’s exceptional personal attributes. Initially, someone with “charisma” was believed favored by Jehovah himself.

Most likely, he or she had a talent for leadership, for bending others to his or her will. This ability, still so magical when one experiences it, truly does seem to be divinely bestowed.

The original sense of the word is retained in “charismatic” churches, in which people are said to demonstrate the divine gifts of healing, speaking in tongues, and handling serpents.

charlatan

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
indulgence peddler

NEW DEFINITION:
malicious, money-grubbing trickster

Indulgence peddlers were the used car salesmen of medieval times. The Roman Catholic Church, which
was
the Christian Church in most of Europe, sometimes ran short of cash. When that happened, they sold indulgences. Basically, these were “get-out-of-hell-free” cards. For the right price, you could buy an indulgence that would remove pretty much any sin.

Indulgence peddlers had to use the same high-pressure tactics as the modern-day car salesman in order to bilk money from their clients. Of course, they had the added benefit of being able to, literally, scare the hell out of people. In Italy, indulgence peddlers were called “cerretanos” after the community of Cerreto, which was notable for its indulgence peddlers. In English, the word ultimately became “charlatan.”

In the sixteenth century, the Church stopped selling indulgences. “Charlatan” then became a word primarily used to describe those who claimed to sell “medicine” that could cure all manner of evils. Like indulgence peddlers, they sold objects of dubious value using high-pressure sales tactics.

Eventually, “charlatan” became connected to any huckster, swindler, mountebank, con man, and phony, from those selling cars with rolled-back odometers to those who sell the Brooklyn Bridge to foreign tourists.

clown

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
peasant; someone from the country

NEW DEFINITION:
circus performer

“Clown” is a word like villain (see entry for “villain”) for which the English language has snobbery to thank. Associated today with circuses and children’s nightmares, “clowns” once referred to people who lived out in the country.

For example, if you’ve read Shakespeare, you’ll find his works are populated with “clowns.” When you first encountered the Bard in high school, you might have pictured … well, clowns, in makeup, with bulbous, oversized shoes. After all, Shakespeare’s “clowns” did offer what passed in those days for comic relief. In fact, the “joke” was that “clowns” were people from the sticks, and therefore backward, compared to urbane city dwellers like Shakespeare (who actually came from the sticks himself but clearly forgot where he came from—shame on you, Bill!).

Even as Shakespeare was still writing, “clown” began to mean something akin to what it means today. The country-bumpkin version of a “clown” got mixed in with some of the “clowns” of Italian theater, who wore makeup and outlandish costumes.

Ultimately, “clowns” became staples of traveling circuses, known for pantomime, fright wigs, and fitting en masse into tiny cars.

Coulrophobia?

Psychologists—and many children and adults—agree that a morbid fear of clowns exists. Yet etymologists don’t agree on whether the word “coulrophobia” is “real” or a pseudointellectual coinage of recent origin. What’s coulrophobia? The name for the morbid fear of clowns.

“Phobia” means fear, of course. Some etymologists believe that the first part of the clown-fearing word has its origins in an ancient Greek word that means, basically, stilt-walker. After all, some clowns do walk around on stilts.

Other logophiles suggest “coulrophobia” relates to the modern Greek word, “klooun,” which means “clown.” And still others believe the word is just supposed to look like it came from one of these legitimate origins but was, instead, created out of whole cloth, possibly as a joke.

complexion

ORIGINAL DEFINITION:
bodily constitution; personality

NEW DEFINITION:
appearance or color of facial skin

Back in medieval medicine, people believed in “the four humors,” and the amount of each in your body determined your overall personality and constitution:

1. An excess of black bile made you a depressed person.
   
2. Too much yellow bile made you intrinsically a grouch.
   
3. A lot of blood made you a party animal.
   
4. And excess phlegm made you, well, phlegmatic, or calm.
   

In addition to affecting your personality, these humors also affected your physical health. Sad people were considered sickly, for example. The word “complexion” originally had to do with someone’s combination of humors.

How could medieval physicians determine one’s “complexion”? The best way, in their estimation, was to look at the color of someone’s face. For example, even though the color scheme eludes us today, a red-faced person clearly had too much yellow bile to an ancient physician. Someone overly pale probably didn’t have enough blood. And so on.