{"id":5470,"date":"2020-04-01T06:54:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T06:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=5470"},"modified":"2020-04-02T02:56:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T02:56:12","slug":"word-of-the-day-gallimaufry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2020\/04\/01\/word-of-the-day-gallimaufry\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Gallimaufry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is gallimaufry<\/em>, a noun meaning \u201ca hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley,\u201d or \u201ca ragout or hash,\u201d according to www.dictionary.com<\/a>. According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, the word first appeared in English in the \u201c 1550s, from French galimafr\u00e9e<\/em> \u2018hash, ragout, dish made of odds and ends,\u2019 from Old French galimafree<\/em>, calimafree<\/em> \u2018sauce made of mustard, ginger, and vinegar; a stew of carp\u2019 (14c.), which is of unknown origin. Perhaps from Old French galer<\/em> \u2018to make merry, live well\u2019 (see gallant<\/strong>) + Old North French mafrer<\/em> \u2018to eat much,\u2019 from Middle Dutch maffelen<\/em> [Klein]. Weekley sees in the second element the proper name Maufr\u00e9<\/em>. Hence, figuratively, \u2018any inconsistent or absurd medley.\u2019”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the word in The Dictionary of Hard Words<\/em> by Robert Morris Pierce, published in 1910 by Dodd, Mead, and Co. Dictionaries like this one have been around for over 400 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an article on the OED website, the first dictionaries were actually bilingual, intended to help people in English communicate around the continent: for instance, \u201cThe dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght <\/em> (1538), a Latin-English dictionary which went into several editions throughout the sixteenth century, Claudius Hollyband\u2019s Dictionarie French and English<\/em> (1593), and John Florio\u2018s Italian-English Worlde of Wordes<\/em> (1598)\u201d (https:\/\/public.oed.com\/blog\/the-first-dictionaries-of-english\/<\/a>). The Latin dictionary would have been important for anyone interested in education, because all scholarly writing was done in Latin. The French would have been important for members of the aristocrarcy; from 1066 onwards, most of the English aristocracy were originally Norman French, and French was the language of the upper classes for at least a few hundred years, but by the 1500s many of the English aristocracy spoke French poorly if at all. Furthermore, French was the lingua franca<\/em> of the European continent, especially in tsarist Russia. A lingua franca<\/em> is \u201cany language that is widely used as a means of communication among speakers of other languages\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/lingua-franca?s=t<\/a>), but the phrase itself comes from Italian and means \u201cFrankish tongue,\u201d or French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earliest English language dictionary, Robert Cawdrey\u2019s “A table alphabeticall conteyning and teaching the true writing, and vnderstanding of hard usuall English words, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French, &c. With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of ladies, gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons. Whereby they may the more easilie and better vnderstand many hard English wordes, vvhich they shall heare or read in scriptures, sermons, or elswhere, and also be made able to vse the same aptly themselues\u201d <\/em>(https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Table_Alphabeticall<\/a>) or Table Alphabeticall<\/em> for short, was, as its title suggests, a dictionary of the more difficult words in the English language. I guess even in 1604 teachers like Cawdrey perceived that the language was declining because young people weren\u2019t spending enough time studying. Other hard word dictionaries followed: \u201cJohn Bullokar<\/a>\u2018s English Expositor<\/em> (1616), Henry Cockeram\u2019s English Dictionary<\/em> (1623), and Thomas Blount\u2019s Glossographia<\/em> (1656)\u201d (https:\/\/public.oed.com\/blog\/the-first-dictionaries-of-english\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, one of the concerns of these makers of dictionaries was the fear that too many words were being borrowed from other languages or from the lower classes. Throughout the 17th<\/sup> century, other writers presented the public with dictionaries of slang, or what was called \u201ccanting\u201d dictionaries. Cant was the specific language of thieves and rogues; according to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, it first meant “\u2019pretentious or insincere talk, ostentatious conventionality in speech,\u2019 1709. The earliest use is as a slang word for \u2018the whining speech of beggars asking for alms\u2019 (1640s), from the verb in this sense (1560s), from Old North French canter<\/em> (Old French chanter<\/em>) \u2018to sing, chant,\u2019 from Latin cantare<\/em>, frequentative of canere<\/em> \u2018to sing\u2019 (from PIE root *kan-<\/strong><\/a> \u2018to sing\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1746, a group of booksellers got together with the idea of creating a dictionary that was more than just hard words or slang, and they hired a man who really didn\u2019t have a solid curriculum vitae.<\/em> But young Samuel Johnson promised that he would be able to compile the dictionary they sought in three years. It didn\u2019t happen as quickly as he had promised (it took seven), and he had to hire clerical support to help him put it together, but in 1755, he published A Dictionary of the English Language<\/em>, the first relatively comprehensive dictionary based on historical principles in the language. It was the standard for English language dictionaries until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>, which was begun in 1857 but not completed until\u2026. In truth, it is still an ongoing project, though editions of the OED<\/em> were published at times through the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson\u2019s Dictionary<\/em> was a bit less objective than the OED<\/em>, a bit more idiosyncratic. For instance, he defines oats as \u201c’a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.\u201d But perhaps the most famous definition in the Dictionary<\/em> is that of the word lexicographer: \u201cA writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.\u201d But at least he tried to create a dictionary that wasn\u2019t just a gallimaufry of hard words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is of the title page of Johnson\u2019s Dictionary<\/em> as published in 1775 by Thomas Ewing in Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day is gallimaufry, a noun meaning \u201ca hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley,\u201d or \u201ca ragout or hash,\u201d according to www.dictionary.com. According to www.etymonline.com, the word first appeared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[241,240,239],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-medley","tag-ragout","tag-words","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","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=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5472,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions\/5472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}