THE BOOK OF ORIGINS

Being an Almanac of ETYMOLOGY — which is the study of where words come from — and an Attempt to Restore to Every Word in the Realm the Meaning It Has Lost, mostly by Guessing, and once by Giving Up.

Compiled over forty years by Erasmus Prink, Wordwright, of no fixed office and less fixed income. Etymology, he will tell you before you have asked, is the tracing of a word back to its beginning — what it first meant, and how it came to mean what it means now — and it is, he holds, the noblest of the sciences, being the only one you can do sitting down, in the dry, with nothing but your own head and a strong opinion.

THE COMPILER'S PREFACE, WHICH IS ALSO A CONFESSION

A word without a meaning is an offence to me. It always has been. Other men are troubled by a leaking roof or an unpaid account; I am troubled by council.

I have spent forty years giving the words of this realm their meanings back. Where a word had lost its sense I have found it one — in an old root, in a older word, in the shape of the thing itself — and I have written it down with confidence, because confidence is the whole of my trade, and a Wordwright who hedges is a man selling you a door that may or may not be a door.

I will tell you at the front, once, the thing it has taken me forty years to be able to write.

There are a few words I could not do. A small number. I turned them every way I know and they would not give up a meaning, because there is none left in them — the thing they were for is gone out of the realm entirely, and only the word remains, said daily, by everyone, meaning nothing to any of them.

Those words nearly finished me. And they are the only entries in this book I am certain of, because for those, and only those, I was at last forced to write the word I hate above all others, which is unknown.

Each entry: The Word · What It Is Held To Mean · The Origin, As I Have Established It. The third column is where I have done all my guessing, save where it says otherwise, and where it says otherwise you may take it to the grave.

1 · SOGMARSH

The Word. The name of the realm. We live in it. We are of it. Not one soul in it can tell you what it means.

What It Is Held To Mean. "Here," mostly. People point.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. Sog, an ancient word for a king or high lord; marsh, his seat. Sogmarsh: the Seat of the Lord Sog. A noble derivation, and I am proud of it, and I have defended it at market against men who said, to my face, that it plainly means soggy and marsh and that a child could tell me so.

A child could not tell me so. A child would be wrong. The realm is soggy and it is a marsh, yes, but that is a coincidence, and a scholar does not build on coincidence, he builds on the Lord Sog, whom I have not found in any record, which is precisely how you know he was important.

2 · COUNCIL

The Word. Everyone says it. "The council saw to it." "That was a council matter." "He was retrained by the council."

What It Is Held To Mean. A body that sees to things. Beyond that, silence.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. Unknown.

I give it to you plainly. I have looked for the council for many years. There is a troll under the Foundling Bridge — the Grey, he is called, for a troll in this realm has no name but its colour, and his is grey. He was, by universal agreement, retrained by the council, and is now the most courteous creature in the district: he takes his toll, he gives a receipt no one can read, he tells you to mind how you go, and he has not eaten anybody in living memory.

They say he was green once, before — as the wild ones on the marsh still are — and that whatever a council is, it is the thing that turns a troll from green to grey, which is as good a definition of the word as I have ever got, and I have written it in the front of my mind and cannot get further.

Somebody retrained that troll. Somebody made a savage thing gentle and taught it receipts. The parish calls that somebody the council and cannot tell me one further thing about it — not where it sat, not who was on it, not what a council does, only that this one was, in the Grey's own words, "very fair."

I have asked the troll. The troll will not discuss the council. He becomes, if pressed, upset, and a courteous troll made upset is a poor afternoon, and I have stopped.

A council is a thing that retrains trolls and cannot afterward be found. That is the whole of the entry, and it is true, and it is the first true thing in this book.

3 · ENGINE

The Word. It is said in the realm. Not often. Always in the one pairing, and I will not write the pairing, as it is not done.

What It Is Held To Mean. —

The Origin, As I Have Established It. Unknown, and I have stopped asking, and I would advise the reader to stop also.

It is a word for a thing that does a thing. That much the shape of the word will yield and no more. We have kept the word and we have lost the thing and the doing of it both, and the word is said to be kept in one place, and I do not go there, and I was told not to, and by whom, and I have written that down elsewhere and not here.

This is the only entry in the book I have left deliberately as you see it. A man may guess at council. A man does not guess at this. Some words you restore. Some words you leave exactly where the realm has set them down, and you back away, and you keep the meaning you do not have the way you would keep a lid on a thing you have decided not to look in.

4 · TRAIN

The Word. Chiefly in the one great phrase, from the time of Aunt Millicent: the Great Train Robbery.

What It Is Held To Mean. A thing that was robbed, once, greatly, in a lady's day.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. I put train to three old men and got three answers, and all three were certain, and that is how I know a train is real and lost.

The first said a train is a procession — a great line of people walking behind a thing. The second said a train is the tail of a fine gown, dragged. The third, a powder man, said a train is a line of gunpowder laid to a charge. A procession, a gown, and a fuse. And Aunt Millicent's was robbed, and it was the Great one, so it was the longest procession, or the finest gown, or the biggest charge, and the realm has agreed, as it does, not to establish which, and I have agreed with the realm.

5 · THE CHANNEL

The Word. From the affair of Sir Algernon and the gravy boat, who crossed the Channel and would not abandon it.

What It Is Held To Mean. A water a Bastable crossed once, defending gravy.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. There is no such water in the realm. I have walked the coast. I have asked the harbour-master, who is the only honest man with a chart, and he laughed.

The Channel is wherever a Bastable will not abandon the gravy. It is not a place. It is a position, held. I am rather pleased with this one and the family have asked me to stop saying it.

6 · INTEREST

The Word. A Pennyworth word. "With interest." Money that grows in the dark, for no reason a plain man can find.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. From interesting — that which draws the notice. Hence: money the bank finds interesting, and takes a closer notice of, and charges you for the notice taken.

You laugh. But watch it work: the bank notices your money, and the more it notices, the more there is to notice, and you pay for every glance, and this is called interest, and my derivation explains it exactly, which no banker's ever has, and I have never had a Pennyworth man look me in the eye while I said it.

7 · CROWN

The Word. A thing for the head.

What It Is Held To Mean. A thing for the head. We are all agreed. We simply have no head it has ever been seen to fit.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. The word is sound and the meaning is plain and the object has gone the way of the engine's thing — into the one place, out of the daylight, out of the reach of the question. It is spoken most often beside that other word, and the two together I do not write, and I have never met a soul who could tell me what the pair of them means — only that they mean it, and mean it very much, and that the meaning is somehow the more certain for nobody's having it. Belief, in this realm, outlasts the thing believed in, and does very well without it.

8 · APPEAL — and one I got right

The Word. A Chancery word.

The Origin, As I Have Established It. To appeal: to make a matter last longer by objecting to it.

This is correct. It is the one word in the entire book upon which the Chancery and I are in perfect agreement, they having arrived at the meaning by practice and I by scholarship, and we are both, for once, describing the same thing, and neither of us is proud of it.

THE WORDWRIGHT'S CLOSING NOTE

Forty years. Some thousands of words, restored to their meanings, mostly by me, mostly wrongly, and I would do it all again, because a guessed meaning keeps a word warm, and a warm word gets used, and a used word is not yet dead.

But I will set down the thing the few unrestorable ones taught me, because it is worth more than all my guessing.

A realm keeps a word long after it has lost the thing the word was for — and the word does not go empty. It goes holy. Council. Engine. Crown. Nobody can fill them and nobody will give them up, and they are said with more certainty than the words we understand, because a meaning you have lost is a kind of grief, and this realm does not explain its griefs. It carries them. In the mouth. In words it will not define and will not surrender.

We keep our hollow words exactly as we keep our missing people — unrecorded, undefined, and not for the asking. And a man who has spent forty years trying to fill them has learned, at the very last, and against his whole nature, to leave the lid on.

— E. Prink, Wordwright. Learn the word etymology. It is a good one, it is spelled as it sounds if you sound it carefully, and it will let you argue with anybody about anything, which is the whole of an education.