{"id":5128,"date":"2020-02-18T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T14:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=5128"},"modified":"2020-02-18T21:28:35","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T21:28:35","slug":"word-of-the-day-gype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2020\/02\/18\/word-of-the-day-gype\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Gype"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>, is gype<\/em>, a noun which has changed meaning during the centuries. The earlier definition was \u201cA glutton; a greedy or avaricious person,\u201d a definition labeled \u201cobsolete\u201d by the OED<\/em>. The later definition is \u201cA fool, an idiot.\u201d The OED<\/em> says that the noun is northern, coming from Scotland or Ireland. Also, since it is the OED, it gives quotes for both definitions, and the most recent quote for the second definition is from just three years ago: \u201c2017 Aberdeen Evening Press <\/em>(Nexis) 31 Mar. 16 Daft gypes these days pay a fortune for ragamuffin troosers that make them look like they’ve just crawled out of a gorse bush.\u201d The American pronunciation of the word is \/\u0261a\u026ap\/, with a hard g<\/em> sound rather than the soft g<\/em> of genius<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found gype<\/em> on www.yourdictionary.com<\/a>, giving it the newer definition, \u201c(Ulster) fool; clumsy, awkward person; long-legged person; silly girl,\u201d adding, \u201cOrigin From Scots gype<\/em> (\u2018foolish, awkward person\u2019) (compare Old Norse geip<\/em> (\u201cnonsense\u201d)).\u201d The Merriam-Webster Dictionary website also uses the definition \u201cfool,\u201d but it adds the definition of an intransitive verb, \u201cto stare like a fool\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/gype<\/a>). Interestingly, both the dictionary.com and the etymonline.com websites have nothing for gype<\/em>. Merriam-Webster also gives this as an etymology: \u201cof Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse\u00a0geip<\/em>\u00a0nonsense,\u00a0geipa<\/em>\u00a0to talk nonsense,\u00a0g\u012bpr<\/em>\u00a0mouth, throat, Norwegian dialect\u00a0geipa<\/em>\u00a0to talk nonsense; akin to Middle Dutch\u00a0g\u012bpen<\/em>\u00a0to gasp, Old English\u00a0g\u012bpian, geonian<\/em>\u00a0to yawn.\u201d The OED also gives a derivative, gypery, meaning \u201cfoolish or silly behavior; nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, a friend who is also a pastor asked me about literary depictions of the seven deadly sins. We don\u2019t think much about the seven deadly sins anymore. One might say that we don\u2019t even think about sin much anymore, at least not in the public sphere, but when we do, it is more likely to be sins against political correctness than against any sort of Biblical norm. One certainly won\u2019t find much about the seven deadlies in contemporary literature. So I had to go back in time, to the Middle Ages, to think of something that would help him out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the seven deadly sins? Without the capital letters, they are not a Japanese manga series in which a princess is looking for a group of seven Holy Knights who were disbanded after the fall of the kingdom. No. The seven deadly sins are the really serious sins, according to the Roman Catholic Church. They are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath (or anger) and sloth (or laziness or indolence). They are contrasted by the seven heavenly virtues, which are the four classical virtues, prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude) combined with the three specifically Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity (see 1 Corinthians 13: 13, \u201cAnd now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity\u201d [KJV]). Charity<\/em> is, by the way, an old word for love<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The literary work I pointed my friend to is Piers Plowman<\/em> (or, William\u2019s Vision of Piers Plowman<\/em>, or The Vision of Piers Plowman<\/em>, or The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman<\/em> [or Ploughman]). Written between about 1367 and the 1380s, maybe as late as 1390, Piers Plowman<\/em> is a dream-vision poem (like Dante\u2019s Comedia<\/em>) and an allegorical poem (like Bunyan\u2019s Pilgrim\u2019s Progress<\/em>). In it, the character Will, who is the first-person narrator, has a series of dream visions. In these visions, he goes on an allegorical quest looking for the good Christian life. He meets numerous characters, including Piers the Ploughman, who is the model of the good Christian life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poem is divided in passus (steps), and it is Passus V that Will encounters the Seven Deadly Sins, who are confessing; well, most of them are confessing. Gluttony doesn\u2019t quite make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gluttony is on his way to the church to be shriven (to confess his sins and receive absolution) when he passes the tavern. Betty the brewer sees him out the door and calls to him: \u201cI\u2019ve good ale, good friend,\u201d she says, and the invitation is too much for Gluttony to withstand. He goes into the tavern just to try the ale, just to have one, before he heads on to church. But inside the tavern are some of Gluttony\u2019s friends: Cissy the seamstress, Wat the warren-keeper and his wife, Tim the tinker, Dave the ditch-digger, and more than a dozen others. They all greet Gluttony (I always think of Norm entering Cheers when I read this passage), and they drink and play games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before long, Gluttony is quite drunk. He begins to leave, but he doesn\u2019t get far:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as he started stepping to the door his sight grew dim;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

350 He felt for the threshold and fell on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clement the cobbler caught him by the waist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To lift him aloft, and laid him on his knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Glutton was a large lout and a load to lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he coughed up a custard in Clement\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

355 There\u2019s no hound so hungry in Hertfordshire<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would dare lap up that leaving, so unlovely the taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gluttony gets home and sleeps for two days; when he finally awakes, he gets an earful from his wife, and he finally confesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the point of this passage, besides its humor, is to show how gluttony leads to other sins: drunkenness, swearing, sloth, and others. The funny thing is that the truth of the passage has not changed in the 600+ years since the poem was written. And yet gluttony is not a sin that we talk about very much in 21st<\/sup> century America. We are quite concerned with sexual sin, but we give gluttony a pass. I read, a few years ago, about a pastor near where I live who had to retire because he could no longer climb up into the pulpit. I would like to think that there was a hormonal problem, but the truth is that a person doesn\u2019t hit 400 pounds without having a serious excess of calories on a daily basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I look at the definition of gype<\/em>, I see, in my mind\u2019s eye, someone who is greedy and grasping. But gluttony can look normal, even innocent. No matter how it looks, gypery is a sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is from the Bodleian MS Douce 104 (a manuscript named for Francis Douce who donated it to the Bodleian Library in 1834); it portrays Gluttony from Passus V, in the C-Text, the third version of Piers Plowman<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary, is gype, a noun which has changed meaning during the centuries. The earlier definition was \u201cA glutton; a greedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[190,189,192,191],"class_list":["post-5128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-confession","tag-gluttony","tag-seven-deadly-sins","tag-sin","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5131,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions\/5131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}