Beguile

Filed Under November 2008, columns | Leave a Comment 

Now that’s a segue.

Dear Word Detective: Do you know the etymology of the word “beguile”? — Matt.

I sure do. Next question. Wait, don’t go. You get ten points for spelling “etymology” correctly. It drives me slightly nuts to be referred to as an “entomologist,” which is a scientist who studies insects (from the Greek “entomon,” insect). The study of word origins is “etymology,” from the Greek “etymon” (true sense) plus “logos” (word). The word “etymology” actually reflects the assumption, fairly widespread at one time, that the “original” or earliest meaning of a word is its “true” meaning. That theory is itself quite old but, ironically, not even close to being true. Words change their meanings over time, sometimes radically, and that “oldest equals truest” theory is now known as “the etymological fallacy.”

“Beguile” is a good example of how a word can change over time, dropping older meanings from common use and adding new senses so different from the original meaning that we are often surprised when we delve into the word’s origins. Today we most often use “beguile” as a loose synonym of “charm,” either describing personal attributes (as in “She had a beguiling smile”) or other things we find, for one reason or another, very appealing (”Many first-time home buyers were beguiled by what seemed like impossibly low mortgage rates”). If there’s a semantic difference between “charm” and “beguile,” it’s the faint premonition that what we find “beguiling” may not turn out as well as we’d hoped.

That premonition turns out to be justified by the roots and original meaning of “beguile.” When it first appeared in the 13th century, “beguile” meant “to delude, deceive or trick” with “guile,” which meant (and still does) “deceitful cunning, clever dishonesty.” The roots of “guile,” interestingly, lie in the Old French word “guile,” which also seems to have given us “wile,” most often used in the plural form “wiles,” originally meaning “trickery or deceitful schemes.” In modern usage, however, “wiles” are usually simply innocent artifice, often in the service of romance (”Lady Tippins’s winning wiles are contagious,” Charles Dickens, 1865).

A similar softening of tone has been evident in “beguile” over the centuries, as the raw “cheat and deceive” sense of the word took a back seat to “beguile” being used to mean, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “To win the attention or interest of (any one) by wiling means; to charm, divert, amuse.” By the late 16th century, in fact, “beguile” was being used to mean “to pleasantly divert or amuse so as to make something disagreeable less unpleasant” (”Took a book to beguile the tedious hours,” Washington Irving, 1820). So a word which originally meant “to trick or cheat” came to mean “charm and amuse.”

Interestingly, “amuse” itself followed a similar course, first meaning “to bewilder or puzzle,” then “to deceive or delude,” then “to divert or entertain,” and finally “to entertain with humor and good cheer.”

 

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Bolt, Skedaddle, Hightail and Book

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Later.

Dear Word Detective: When needing a quick exit, I might bolt for freedom, hightail it out of there, skedaddle, or just book it out of there. I conjecture that “bolt” comes from a bolt of lightning, and “skedaddle” sounds like it means, but why have “book” and “hightail” come to mean “leave quickly?” — Michael Duggan.

Leaving so soon? I must say that yours is one of the better jobs I’ve seen of shoehorning multiple questions into one email. At least the words are related in meaning. More often the question runs something like “Where did ‘cat o’ nine tails’ come from? Is the Mississippi named for somebody? And, by the way, is ’snuck’ a real word?”

Onward. As you’ve noticed, the lexicon of leaving is a rich and varied one, a tribute to the usual wisdom of choosing “flight” over “fight.” The verb “to bolt,” meaning “to dart or rush suddenly away” is one of the oldest on your list, but to explain the verb “to bolt” we must first explain the noun form. When “bolt” first appeared in Old English, derived from Germanic roots, it meant “projectile,” particularly the sort of short arrow fired from a crossbow. By the early 16th century, we were also using “bolt” to mean a discharge of lightning (”thunderbolt”) and, shortly thereafter, as a metaphor for something dramatic and unanticipated (”bolt from the blue”). The use of “bolt” to mean “arrow” also led to it meaning “stout pin used to hold things together” and even “a roll of fabric” (from its shape). “Bolt” as a verb meaning “leave suddenly and quickly” also harks back to this original “arrow” meaning, the sense being that the person leaves as if shot like an arrow.

“Skedaddle” is a much shorter story, simply because nothing is known of its origins. The best guess I’ve seen is that “skedaddle,” which first appeared as military slang meaning “to flee” during the American Civil War, is related in some way to the Irish word “sgedadol,” meaning “scattered.”

“Hightail” is easier to explain. Many animals, including deer and horses, raise their tails when they flee, making the action a good metaphor for a panicked retreat.

“Book,” meaning “to leave,” apparently has nothing to do with the usual senses of “book” as a noun or verb (as in “Book ‘em, Danno”). It comes, rather, from “boogie,” US slang from the early 20th century originally meaning a style of blues music and later adopted in a more general form to mean “to dance energetically.” An even broader use of “boogie” to mean “move quickly” or “get going” appeared in the 1970s, and “to book,” meaning “to leave; to move quickly and purposefully,” appears to be simply a modified form of “boogie” used in that sense.

 

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