{"id":6322,"date":"2024-01-06T03:34:21","date_gmt":"2024-01-06T03:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6322"},"modified":"2024-01-06T03:37:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T03:37:07","slug":"word-of-the-day-piper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2024\/01\/06\/word-of-the-day-piper\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day Piper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, again thanks to the Old English Wordhord website, is piper<\/em>. A piper is someone who plays a pipe. The Old English is pipere<\/em> (\/\u02c8pi\u02d0-p\u025b-r\u0259\/ or pee peh ruh), and it means the same thing as the ModE word. It is called an \u201cagent noun from pipe<\/a>\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=piper<\/a>). According to Wikipedia, \u201can agent noun<\/strong> (in Latin<\/a>, nomen agentis<\/em><\/strong>) is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action<\/a>, and that identifies an entity that does that action<\/a>. For example, driver<\/em> is an agent noun formed from the verb<\/a> drive<\/em>. Usually, derived<\/em> in the above definition has the strict sense attached to it in morphology<\/a>, that is the derivation<\/a> takes as an input a lexeme<\/a> (an abstract unit of morphological analysis) and produces a new lexeme\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Agent_noun<\/a>). In other words, the verb (pipe<\/em>) takes on an affix (-r<\/em>) and forms a new word (piper<\/em>). The -r suffix is frequently used in English to create an agent noun from a verb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to etymonline, the verb pipe<\/em> appears as \u201cOld English pipian<\/em> \u2018to play on a pipe<\/em>\u2019 or similar instrument, from Latin pipare<\/em> \u2018to peep, chirp,\u2019 of imitative origin (see pipe<\/em><\/a> (n.1)). Compare Dutch pijpen<\/em>, German pfeifen<\/em>.\u201d There are lots of other cognates in other Germanic languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today is, of course, the 11th<\/sup> day of the Christmas season, which means, according to the \u201c12 Days of Christmas,\u201d the day when the receiver gets eleven pipers piping. The \u201c12 Days of Christmas\u201d is an old English folk song or carol coming out of the oral tradition. A folk song, or anything that is legitimately \u201cfolk\u201d in origin,\u201d has certain characteristics: there is no identifiable author, it exists in multiple versions, and it comes out of the oral tradition. This first published version of this song is from the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The English librarian and folklorist Steve Roud indexed English folk songs according to a number of characteristics. Each folk song was given a number, called a Roud number, along with all the variants of that song. \u201c12 Days of Christmas\u201d is Roud #68. The type of folksong is called a cumulative song, with each verse adding something to the total. Here is a partial list of some of the variations that have appeared over the years, courtesy of Wikipedia:<\/p>\n\n\n\n