June 03, 2006, 12:39
zmježdto dight
Poetry in English is a Greek loanword, ultimately from the verb ποιεω (
poieō) 'to make, create' (from PIE *
kwei- 'to pile up, build, make'), related to
cheetah amazingly enough via Sanskrit); poetry in German,
Gedicht, is from a verb (
dīhtan) that is a loan from Latin
dictō 'to say often, pronounce; dictate; proscribe' (an augmented form of
dicō 'to say')). The obsolete English verb
dight is also from the same root. The Greek word for poet, ποιητης (
poiētēs), literally 'one who makes', was borrowed by the Romans as
poeta. (Aside: while most of the nouns in the Latin first declension (ending in -
a) are feminine, there are a few exceptions like
poeta,
nauta 'sailor', and
agricola 'farmer'.) The Old English word for poet,
scop (whence our
scoff and related to some Old Norse words for mocking, mockery) has dropped out of use. Two compounds, also long gone, are
scopcræft 'poet's art; poetry' and
scopleóþ 'poem'. Why would the speakers of English abandon their native words? Nobody knows.
July 04, 2006, 17:23
<Asa Lovejoy>quote:
Originally posted by zmjezhd:
The Old English word for poet, scop (whence our scoff and related to some Old Norse words for mocking, mockery) has dropped out of use. Two compounds, also long gone, are scopcræft 'poet's art; poetry' and scopleóþ 'poem'. Why would the speakers of English abandon their native words? Nobody knows.
Did the switch occur post-Norman invasion? It seems it became "cool" to use Latin and/or Greek borrowings once they took control. Did the very nature of poetry change from primarily bardic oral tradition to written at that time?
July 05, 2006, 02:45
arniePresumably Old Norse
skald is also related to
scop. Interestingly,
scold comes from the same root. See
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=skald&searchmode=noneJuly 05, 2006, 08:16
arniequote:
Why would the speakers of English abandon their native words? Nobody knows.
Surely it was the Norman conquest? The only real audience for a poet was composed of people in the ruling (Norman French-speaking) class. A
scop at the time would probably have starved faster than his later peers would have starved in their garrets. The life of an Anglo-Saxon peasant was nasty, brutish, and short, with no time for the finer things in life such as
scopcræft.
Budding bards had to use the style of poetry used by the foreign invaders, with its alien concepts such as metre and rhyme.
July 05, 2006, 08:58
zmježd Surely it was the Norman conquest?It was a rhetorical question. But, seriously, people like to point out the cow/beef, swine/pork thing all the time. Here there are no couplets. I would imagine that there was an office, official or
de facto, of court poet, known as
scop, under the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, that was replaced in the new Norman court by a poet. The OED1 cites a use of scop from 1245 in the Brut of
Layamon, where ironically a poet of the court of King Arthur is mentioned.