{"id":6893,"date":"2025-05-20T14:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T14:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6893"},"modified":"2025-05-20T14:18:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T14:18:32","slug":"word-of-the-day-chagrin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/05\/20\/word-of-the-day-chagrin\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Chagrin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is chagrin<\/em>. The word can be used as either a noun or a verb, but the pronunciation is the same in either case, although the pronunciation, specifically the stress, is different between American English and British English. As a noun, it means \u201cdisquietude or distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/chagrin<\/a>). As a verb, it means \u201cto vex or unsettle by disappointing or humiliating\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M-W adds the following: \u201cDespite what its second syllable may lead one to believe, chagrin<\/em> has nothing to do with grinning or amusement\u2014quite the opposite, in fact. Chagrin<\/em>, which almost always appears in phrases such as \u2018to his\/her\/their chagrin,\u2019 refers to the distress one feels following a humiliation, disappointment, or failure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the word\u2019s French ancestor, the adjective chagrin<\/em>, means \u2018sad.\u2019 What may be surprising is that the noun form of the French chagrin<\/em>, meaning \u2018sorrow\u2019 or \u2018grief,\u2019 can also refer to a rough, untanned leather (and is itself a modification of the Turkish word sa\u011fr\u0131<\/em>, meaning \u2018leather from the rump of a horse\u2019). This chagrin<\/em> gave English the word shagreen<\/em>, which can refer to such leather, or to the rough skin of various sharks and rays\u201d (ibid.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But etymonline somewhat disagrees with M-W on the etymology of chagrin<\/em>. That website says that the words appears in the English language in the \u201c1650s, \u2018melancholy,\u2019 from French chagrin<\/em> \u2018melancholy, anxiety, vexation\u2019 (14c.), from Old North French chagreiner<\/em> or Angevin dialect chagraigner<\/em> \u2018sadden,\u2019 which is of unknown origin, perhaps [Gamillscheg] from Old French graignier<\/em> \u2018grieve over, be angry,\u2019 from graigne<\/em> \u2018sadness, resentment, grief, vexation,\u2019 from graim<\/em> \u2018sorrowful,\u2019 which is perhaps from a Germanic source (compare Old High German gram<\/em> \u2018angry, fierce\u2019) (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=chagrin<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then etymonline refers to another theory that comes from the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>: \u201cBut OED and other sources trace it to an identical Old French word, borrowed into English phonetically as shagreen<\/em>, meaning \u2018rough skin or hide\u2019 (the connecting notion being \u2018roughness, harshness\u2019), which is itself of uncertain origin. The modern sense of \u2018feeling of irritation from disappointment, mortification or mental pain from the failure of aims or plans\u2019 is from 1716\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may think of linguistics as the scientific study of language, but scientific does not mean that everything that is known is known absolutely. There are lots of gray areas (or should it be \u201cgrey areas\u201d?) that afford linguists the opportunity to argue and do further research. By the way, Gamillscheg refers to the Austrian linguist and \u201cRomanist\u201d Ernst Gamillscheg (1887-1971).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to On This Day, on this date in 1609, \u201cWilliam Shakespeare’s Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by publisher Thomas Thorpe\u201d (https:\/\/www.onthisday.com\/events\/may\/20<\/a>). Well, that\u2019s sort of true, I think. A Folger Shakespeare Library page says on this date \u201cThomas Thorpe went to Stationers’ Hall and \u2018Entred for his copie vnder th[e h]andes of master WILSON and master Lownes Warden a Booke called SHAKESPEARES sonnettes.\u2019 This first quarto edition appeared later the same year. Given the late date and the seemingly unusual structure of the sequence, some have questioned whether Thorpe might have published the sonnets against Shakespeare’s will; however, most scholars agree that there was nothing illegal or unethical about the book’s publication\u201d (https:\/\/shakespearedocumented.folger.edu\/resource\/document\/sonnets-first-edition<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets were probably written in the 1590s and were circulated in manuscript form among friends and associates. The 1590s saw the height of the popularity of the sonnet in England, though sonnet writing goes back to the first half of the 16th<\/sup> century when Sir Thomas Wyatt translated many of Petrarch\u2019s sonnets into English and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, adapted Petrarch\u2019s sonnets into his own. In 1557, Tottel\u2019s Miscellany<\/em> (actually entitled Songes and Sonnets<\/em>) reprinted many of the pairs sonnets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are wondering why Shakespeare didn\u2019t just publish the sonnets on his own, it probably has to do with the attitudes of writers in the late 16th<\/sup> century. People were not professional writers; they wrote as part of something else, some other project. Shakespeare may have received some slight compensation for the plays that he wrote, by his primary source of income was as an actor and later as a shareholder in the theater company of which he was part owner. It is true that a couple of his sonnets appeared in a 1599 publication, but there were no copyright laws preventing a publisher from just putting into a miscellany anything that they could get their hands on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the problems with the 1609 publication of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets by Thorpe is that we have no idea what kind of involvement Shakespeare himself had in the publication. We don\u2019t know if the order of the 154 sonnets is the order in which Shakespeare wrote the sonnets or if they are the order he would have put them in himself. It is possible to determine, from textual clues, that there are small sequences, and the order within those small sequences seem relatively accurate. Also, we have no idea why or to whom the sonnets were written. Perhaps that is a blessing as it has afforded scholars the opportunity to speculate on these issues for over 400 years now. There has been some speculation as to the dedication of the volume, \u201cTo W. H.,\u201d but the dedication may have been put there by Thorpe and not Shakespeare, so it may not matter to our understanding of the poet at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If someone were to invent a functioning time machine, and if that someone were to go back to the London of 1609, I imagine that that someone would learn three things about the 1609 publication of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets. The first is that William Shakespeare was a real person and a genius, and that he really did write the poetry and the plays that are credited to him. There is just way too much evidence in favor of the Stratfordian hypothesis, and the theories about others writing the plays are ultimately based on an elitist mindset, as if a middle-class boy could never grow up to be a genius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is that Shakespeare had nothing to do with the 1609 publication of his sonnets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the third is that when Thorpe\u2019s publication of Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets came out later that year, it was to Shakespeare\u2019s chagrin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is the title page of Thorpe\u2019s 1609 publication of Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnets (https:\/\/shakespearedocumented.folger.edu\/file\/special-collections-10739-title-page<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is chagrin. The word can be used as either a noun or a verb, but the pronunciation is the same in either […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[238,395,284,138,753],"class_list":["post-6893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","tag-shakespeare","tag-sonnets","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893","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=6893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6895,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions\/6895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}