Interesting, Geoff. Quinion says it's unlikely it came from coeur méchant. Here is what the OED has to say:
" The occurrence in Holland's Livy, 1600, of CORNMUDGIN (q.v.) has led to a suggestion that this was the original form, with the meaning ‘concealer or hoarder of corn’, mudgin being associated with ME. much-en, mich-en to pilfer, steal, or muchier, Norman form of OF. mucier, musser to conceal, hide away. But examination of the evidence shows that curmudgeon was in use a quarter of a century before Holland's date, and that cornmudgin is apparently merely a nonce-word of Holland's, a play upon corn and curmudgeon. The suggestion that the first syllable is cur, the dog, is perhaps worthy of note; but that of Dr. Johnson's ‘unknown correspondent’, c{oe}ur méchant for F. méchant c{oe}ur, ‘evil or malicious heart’, is noticeable only as an ingenious specimen of pre-scientific ‘etymology’, and as having been retailed by Ash in the form, ‘from the French c{oe}ur unknown, and mechant a correspondent’!"
I'm rather more exercised about the strange claims concerning the development of the English language. The site claims that
quote:
before the bubonic plague took over Europe (the Black Death) in the 1340s, much of what we now know as England used Latin as the primary language
That is nonsense. The primary language was Old English, a Germanic language. Since the Norman Conquest in 1066 the language of the upper classes and their retinues was Norman French. These gradually fused into Middle English and by the 1340s ME was the main language in the towns and cities, although at court Norman French was still used and many of the peasants working the land still used mainly dialects of Old English.
The only people who knew any Latin at the time were those who were literate and they were almost all connected with the church.
The paragraph about people coming across the channel to help repopulate England after the Black Death is also highly unlikely. The plague was a pandemic, which affected the whole of Europe and much of Asia. England wasn't the only place that was depopulated. People in the cities and towns don't seem to have been affected any worse than those in the country. In fact, since England's economy was mainly rural wages tended to rise to attract people to agriculture. Laws were enacted to try to fix wages at pre-plague levels; they led to dissension culminating in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.
To summarise, the entire page is full of nonsense.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
before the bubonic plague took over Europe (the Black Death) in the 1340s, much of what we now know as England used Latin as the primary language
Pretty absurd. As arnie said, Old English was pretty much the main language of England at the time of the Norman Conquest. Also, Scottish Gaelic in the North, Welsh in Wales, and Cornish in Cornwall. Oh, and Danish (Norse) in the NE of England. Latin had been the language of the Roman provinces in Britannia, but that pretty much petered out by the 6th century and was replaced by the Old English dialects. Immediately before 1381, most of England was speaking Middle English.
That aside. the website's disclaimer says it is for entertainment purposes only. It also talks about Kit Marlowe and the Earl of Oxford (i.e., Edward de Vere) conspiring with Shakespeare to confuse people about whether Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. Seems to be a site to raise the hackles of some grumpy old folks ...
I felt that the writer could have done a much better, and more authentic-seeming, history bit, but I found it to be a fun site despite its glaring shortcomings.
Now a more serious question: Do you think that most curmudgeons tend towards political conservatism? Are there any left-wing grumpy old farts of note?
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
I agree, too. It's also amusing to see how so many of the hell-raising rock stars and the like of my youth have become GOFs. Many of the have also sold out to The Man, too. Over here we have Johhny Rotten trying to sell us butter and Iggy Pop flogging insurance, to name just two examples.
I wonder, if they'd lived, what some of those who died young might be selling to us now? Jimi Hendrix might be selling us dental floss, perhaps, and Keith Moon anger-management courses. :0
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I don't know that raging against the machine and curmudgeonliness are the same. I remember the right-wing cartoonist Al Capp (Pogo) firing a good many broadsides at leftist students, lampooning them as S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant [about] Nearly Everything)
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
Yeah, Walk Telly! I'm all cornfoozed! Getting Pogo mixed up with L'il Abner! Well, Walt Kelly seemed to heckle the left more than the right. I always thought that L'il Abner was more generally satiric than curmudgeonly, but my memory's obviously not so good.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
Capp, who by all accounts was contrary and contentious by nature, was a maverick politically. He characteristically went against the grain. He was a liberal during the conservative 1950s, only to switch to conservative during the liberal, hippie-era 1960s.
Politically, Kelly would be more accurately described as a "progressive" independent rather than a liberal–he was a great supporter of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson. Conversely, he seemed to tilt to Democrat Harry S. Truman over Thomas Dewey, and he claimed to be against "the extreme Right, the extreme Left, and the extreme Middle." He skewered both Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon in later years, as well as J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace and Spiro Agnew. Kelly was considered a sufficient enough threat that his phone was tapped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Government corresponded with a newspaper reporter who claimed that the eccentric jargon Kelly created was a secret Russian code. Kelly was a great supporter of desegregation and free speech, and his name was recently discovered on a petition in support of Lenny Bruce.
I don't know that raging against the machine and curmudgeonliness are the same.
A new conjugational paradigm for the twenty-teens:
I observe rationally and dissent calmly. You ignore facts and spit while talking. He is brainwashed and rages against the machine. We are right. You are deluded. They are wrong.
