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Archive for November, 2012
Much Ado About Possessive Apostrophes
Apostrophes are lovely little critters, but they tend to boggle the mind if you think about them too much. One of the most common questions on EL&U regards proper usage of an apostrophe to indicate possession.
The basics.
How do we use an apostrophe to indicate possession?
If the possessing noun is singular, add an 's (apostrophe-s).
Sara's beast friends were all balrogs.
If the possessing noun is plural and ends in s, add an ' (apostrophe).
The beasty balrogs' game was very fun.
Well, now, that’s pretty straightforward, right? Except that apostrophes have this annoying habit of jumping into your brain and scrambling your thoughts. There are lots of ways to get confused.
What if the possessing noun is plural and does not end in s?
Then treat it like the singular case, and add an 's (apostrophe-s).
The children's books were tucked away in their cubbies. The geese's honking alerted the dog to the fox’s presence.
What if the possessing noun is not plural, but ends in s?
Well, golly, it turns out this one is complicated. Generally speaking, these are treated just the same as other singular nouns:
The glass's rim was cracked.
But this has not always been the case. Historically, names ending in s followed the plural rule:
*Seamus' writings were well-known throughout Galway.
For proper nouns, this is considered a stylistic choice, but following the singular form is more common these days:
Seamus's writings were well-known throughout Galway.
You’d think with just four rules (which are really just two if you think about it) that noöne would have much trouble with possessive apostrophes. But those apostrophes sure are pernicious.
The Advanced.
What if the possessing noun is a conjoined phrase like “my wife and I”?
Kosmonaut gives an excellent answer to this question.
Those rules are all well and good, but how do I decide whether the possessing noun should be plural or not in the first place?
There are a lot of questions about this very sticky wicket on EL&U. Some examples are:
Happy Mothers’ Day or Happy Mother’s Day
Beginner’s or Beginners’ Guide
Does the guide belong to one user or many users? Is the day for one mother or all mothers? Either way is technically acceptable, but generally speaking, we consider a single instance and an abstract entity. So one copy of the guide for one abstract generalization of user means we usually say “User’s Guide.” Mother’s Day is trickier because we could celebrate all mothers on that day, but it is supposed to be a day on which we honor our own mother, so “Happy Mother’s Day” unless you have two mommies.
Finally, we see that possessive apostrophes are disappearing for plural nouns that demonstrate affiliation, so it is acceptable practice to use phrases like “User Group” instead of “Users’ Group.”
That is a little summary of possessive apostrophes, along with some fun links for further reading.
Looking Up a Gun: Common English Words with Nordic Origins
Old Norse words in the English language are much more numerous than many would suspect. Many common words such as gun, craze, and equip are of Nordic origin. Because the two languages were so similar, they have many loanwords. Often, they were mutually intelligible to quite a degree. In this post, I’m going to analyze the origins of these three common English words rooted in the Old Norse language.
There were a two main ways that Old Norse words made their way into the English language. First, between 865 and 954 (the Danelaw), the Vikings colonized eastern and northern England. During this time, many of their Old Norse words entered the Old English and have been in use since. Other words entered the Norman French and were passed on from there to Middle English during the Norman Conquest of 1066. The parallels between Old Norse and Old English facilitated the trading of words between the two languages.
Gun
In Nordic culture, the name Gunnhildr was fairly common. It had the meaning “war battle maid” and is a cognate to the more modern name, “Gunhild”. In 1330, Windsor Castle had an inventory of it’s munitions made. In the inventory, a specific siege engine was called the Lady Gunilda, a shortening of Gunnhildr. Later, the word gonnilde, yet another variation of Gunnhildr, became more generalized to mean “cannon” in Middle English. By the mid-fourteenth century, these had been shortened to gunne. It did not yet have the modern meaning of “gun”, though. It meant simply “an engine of war that throws rocks, arrows or other missiles”. So, the ballista and the trebuchet both fell into this definition. It wasn’t until the fifteenth century that gunne came to mean “firearm” (because that’s when firearms first came to major use). Around that time, it was finally shortened to “gun”.
Craze
Old Norse had a word krasa, which meant “shatter”. Around the mid-14th century, it entered the Middle French language as the word ecraser, which meant “to squash”. This evolved into both the modern French écraser, and the Middle English crasen, which meant “to break in pieces; to crack”. It also had a second meaning, “to be diseased or deformed”. Crasen evolved into the modern English crase (now obselete), however, it only carried the first meaning, “to break in pieces; to crack”. However, crasen evolved into another modern English word, craze. This carried the second meaning, “to be diseased or deformed”. However, it had evolved into the meaning “mental breakdown”. The current meaning of the word is “to become insane; go mad”, not a far cry from “mental breakdown”. The first reference to craze meaning “mania, fad” was in 1813. However, the original meaning, “to make cracks”, is still in use a with a slightly different meaning, “to make small cracks on the surface of”. This is used when referring to ceramic pottery.
Equip
The Nordic word skip meant “ship”. Skipa, another Norse word was derived from it, with the meaning “fit out a ship”. In the twelfth century, it entered the Old French as esquiper. In the 1520s, it was used in the Middle French as équiper. It meant “to supply, fit out”, thus it was no longer specific to ships. In the late sixteenth century, it made it’s way into English as Esquippe. In the seventeenth century, a p was dropped and the word became esquip. Later in the century, the s was dropped and it was shortened to “equip”, as we know it today. It was spelled acquip during that time, but that spelling never really caught on.
Estimates vary, but range from 15-25% of English words (non-scientific) originate from Old Norse. Given the size of the English language, that is a quite a considerable amount. Only Latin and French contribute more words to English than Old Norse. Our language owes a great deal to those ruthless Scandinavian seafarers. Without their contributions, I would not be able to say, “He often fumbled for words, which amused people greatly.” (Kylfdi mᴊǫk til orðanna, ok hǫfðu margir menn þat mᴊǫk at spotti.)
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