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Birth of the infantry
It's obvious, their youth, when you see pictures of soldiers who have died in action. It's not so obvious, their youth, when you see the word infantry.
But it should be obvious. It's staring you right in the face.
The word infantry arrived in English in its present meaning after a long journey (on foot, perhaps), through French, Spanish and Italian, and ultimately from Latin infant-—"youth." The infant in the word infantry is not a literal baby, but a figurative babe. The infantry were the less trained, usually the younger. They were the ground forces, smaller than the cavalry.
They were the lads, marching off to war. And there, too, we see youth as cannon fodder: Lads, in the first use of the word before they were servant males of "low birth" and before they were young men, were footsoldiers.
These lads could aspire to becoming cadets, one supposes, where they could go from being grunts to grunt-workers, toting the generals' golf clubs on foot . . . and becoming the word we know today as caddies.)
(Side note: This word exploration mirrors my recent post on the Everything You Know About English Is Wrong blog, which covers a variety of grammatical, etymological and grump-making topics. See the item directly below for more information on the wrongosity of our grasp of English.)
Everything You Know About English Is Wrong
A lot of what we "know" about English is BS, which stands for . . . well, you know what it means. And it's bull, too. But didn't I just say that?
Yes and no. BS is short for . . . that. Bull is not short for that, despite the common assumption. Bull has a separate origin—and that's the thrust of my latest project, Everything You Know About English Is Wrong.
Some of the book's revelations (or, should I say, clarifications):
- Winston Churchill did not say "That is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put." Or anything close to it.
- English does not come from England.
- Impact as a verb is not bad English—it is, in fact, perfect English usage.
- Hookers do not take their name from Civil War general Joseph Hooker.
- The proof is not in the pudding.
Want to find more misconceptions to argue about? Visit Everything You Know About English Is Wrong, the main website, or the blog: which is here, and reiterates why I hate the word blog. |
The gloomy truth behind the words you use
What sensitivities are you secretly offending when you use the words poppycock, bonfire, and porcelain? What political incorrectness are you courting when you describe someone or something as ethnic? Who have you insulted, what sensitivity have you jostled, what breach of propriety have you committed when you use such remarkably innocent words as butterfly, gymnasium, and fizzle?
Explore the Dark Side of the language . . .
Unfortunate English uncovers older meanings of words that are out of joint with almost everyone's sense of propriety--word histories that reveal the deintensification of the disgusting, the generalization of the ribald, the disguising of the grotesque, and the mutation of the offensive.
So open the book and start having fun ... or maybe you shouldn't, considering that fun originally meant ... well, something different |
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