By the way

Filed Under April 2007, columns 

A curse, foiled.

Dear Word Detective: A couple years ago I was reading Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” in which she tells of, as a young girl, being reprimanded by her grandmother for using the phrase “by the way.” Her grandmother said that this was “taking the name of the Lord in vain.” I’d never heard such an interpretation. Any thoughts? — Andrew C. Buckland.

No thoughts, just a blissful sense of wonder at how weird people can get when it comes to language. This reminds me of the little Texas county that common sense forgot a few years ago, whose civic leaders decided to officially discourage use of the greeting “hello” in favor of “heaven-o” (because then, you see, no one would have to say the word “hell” and consequently end up there, or something).

This is the point at which I admit that I have never read the book in question. But I assume that Angelou’s memory is accurate and her grandmother actually believed that “by the way” was a form of blasphemy (from the Greek “blasphemein,” to speak evil of), which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “a contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.” The remedy throughout history for blasphemy, given that human beings are perennially fond of expressing strong feelings through swearing and oaths, has been the concoction of euphemisms (from the Greek “euphemizein,” to speak pleasantly), superficially inoffensive words that serve as stand-ins for the forbidden. Euphemisms probably don’t fool the relevant deity, but they do spare the sensibilities of the easily offended. Often, in fact, euphemisms eventually become so established that speakers are unaware that the words began as euphemisms. For instance, “gosh,” “golly,” and the “grief” in “good grief” all began as euphemisms for “God.”

In the case of “by the way,” it appears that Angelou’s grandmother was looking for blasphemy-concealed-by-euphemism where none existed. “Way,” with the basic meaning of “road or path,” dates back to the Old English “weg,” and “by the way” has been used as a prepositional phrase meaning literally “alongside the road” since the 9th century. The figurative use of “by the way” to mean “incidentally” (as if “by the side” of the main route of the conversation) has been common since the 16th century, and has never had a religious subtext.

My guess is that Angelou’s grandmother was familiar with “the Way” used to mean Christ’s teachings (a usage found numerous times in the Bible) and had jumped to the conclusion that “the way” in “by the way” is a sneaky way of swearing an oath using Christ’s name. It isn’t.

 

 

Comments

5 Responses to “By the way”

  1. evershed on April 12th, 2007 4:32 am

    I suspect that this is a misguided reference to T H White’s “The Once and Future King” in which Merlin explains that “Bloody” is a corruption of “By Our Lady” - a statement that I am very dubious about. Perhaps you will be able to expound on this?

    James

  2. sarngate on April 14th, 2007 2:03 am

    Could Maya Angelou’s grandmother have considered this a corruption of “by Yahweh” and therefore equivalent to “by God”??

  3. wordsmith on April 19th, 2007 4:23 pm

    I don’t know how much history of the first century Maya Angelou’s grandmother may have known, but early on Jesus’s followers referred to themselves as “The Way”, and it was a sect in Judaism, then as now, a heterogeneous religion. It was called “The Way” because Jesus is alleged in one of the gospels to have said, “I am the way, none shall come to the Father except through me.” Even if Grandma did not know history, it is almost certain that she did know the gospels very well.

  4. JDaryl on April 21st, 2007 3:55 pm

    As a young girl, my mother had her mouth washed out with soap during a school softball game for yelling out, “Cheese and crackers! Son of a biscuit!” Ah well, that was in the late forties in public school when such blasphemisms were taken quite seriously…dang!

  5. words1 on April 21st, 2007 6:05 pm

    re “bloody”:

    http://www.word-detective.com/111097.html#bloody

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