ciated from the first with damn, damnation. Dr. Krapp's etymology seems to me to be open to question for various reasons. For one thing, the old adjective dern seems an unlikely source for an expletive. Looking through Mary Crawford's English Interjections in the Fifteenth Century, W. L. Ramsay's list in his edition of Skelton's Magnyfycence, E. C. Hills' Exclamations in American Speech, I find exhibited in them no tendency for expletives to develop from adjectives and adverbs. The main sources for exclamations, when they are not arbitrary coinages, are verbs and nouns. Dr. Krapp's analogous word addle (originally an adjective, becoming addled a participial adjective and addle a finite verb), to be the perfect analogy that he needs to support his argument, should have become an expletive. It did not and probably never will. Further, it is of importance, surely, to inquire how Dr. Krapp would relate darn the expletive to darn meaning 'mend.' The usual etymology of the latter word derives it from Middle English dierne, derne, and this seems a probable source for it. Are we then to think of the homophone verbs darn 'mend' and darn the expletive (both seventeenth-century dærn) as identical in origin but diverging in the last two hundred years. This seems hardly likely, and the early occurrences of the two words do not point toward it. Or are we to seek a new etymology for darn 'mend'? Assuredly the relationship of the two words should be scrutinized and explained before we appropriate the accepted derivation of the standard word for the dialect word. The phonetic difficulties in the way of a derivation of darn from damn that are pointed out by Dr. Krapp do not seem insuperable if we go back to the period when the pronunciation of damned was dissyllabic. There is a simple and convincing way, however, in which the -rn of darn may be accounted for, and its development placed later than Colonial or even than Puritan times. The earliest occurrence of darn cited by the Oxford Dictionary is from 1837-40. Haliburton has 'I guess they are pretty considerable darn fools'." Lowell has darned in the Biglow Papers and Dickens makes an American say darn in Martin Chuzzlewit, 'We don't mind them if they come to us in newspapers, but darn your books'. There is no evidence ♦ University of Nebraska Studies 13. 361–405. Early English Text Society, Extra Series 98, p. 83. Dialect Notes 5. 7. 253-84 (1924). 'T. C. Haliburton, The Clockmaker, 1837-1840 (1862), p. 29. 'You darned old fool.' 1. 145 (1845). 1843-1844. Ch. xvi. that requires us to go back to Puritan days. Darn, so far as it may be documented, sounds like a Yankee rather than a Puritan form. It gained currency rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century, and by the second half of the century it is in general dialectal and colloquial use, not only for America but for England and Scotland. The aphetic adjective tarnal, used to express abhorrence or disparagement and then merely as an intensive, is familiar to American readers from Lowell's Biglow Papers.10 It was used in the late eighteenth century. The Oxford Dictionary cites from 1790, "The snarl-headed curs fell akicking and cursing of me at such a tarnal rate that. . . . I was glad to take to my heels'. Probably tarnal derived its original force as an expression of execration from the phrase 'eternal (etarnal) damnation,' out of which came the form tarnation, a sort of amalgam of tarnal and damnation. The first instance of tarnation noted in the Oxford Dictionary comes, like tarnal, from 1790, 'What the rattle makes you look so tarnation glum',12 and the next from 1801, "The Americans say, Tarnation seize me or swamp me, if I don't do this or that'.13 Significant also, for our purpose, is the sentence from the New England Magazine (Boston, 1832), 'We have "tarnation" and "darnation" for damnation'.1 By the last half of the century tarnation is in general use, not only in America but in England, Scotland, Ireland. Mrs. Carlyle, for example, writes of 'tarnation folly'.15 Parallels would be lacking for the voicing for phonetic reasons of tarnation (with its r from tarnal) to darnation, but an explanation may be found in contamination. The influence of damnation itself, after tarnation had been formed, would explain darnation, the form with initial d that was eventually to be the more popular form. From darnation it is easy to derive the verb darn and the participial adjective darned. The earliest citations in the Oxford Dictionary of tarnal and tarnation take us into the eighteenth century. They antedate by some decades the appearance of darn, which is first adduced from Haliburton's Sam Slick, 1837-40; and this may well be taken into account. Nothing very decisive may be learned from the order of their appearance, for all 10 'I darsn't skeer the tarnal thing fer fear he'd run away with it.' 2.1.72. 11 R, Tyler. The Contrast 2.2.39 (1837). 12 Ibid. 5. 1. 88. I am indebted to Professor T. A. Knott for the suggestion that the relation of tarnation and darn be examined. 13 G. Hanger, Life 2. 151. 14 3.380. 15 Letters, 1857 (1883) 11. 329. come into view within a half-century. It is clear, however, that in the association of tarnal and damnation may be found another and an adequate explanation of the rn of darn, the sounds viewed as a stumbling block by Dr. Krapp and underlying his advocacy of a derivation from the old adjective dern. It is clear also that we need not go back to Old or Middle English, or to the Elizabethans, or even to the Puritans, if we accept, as explaining our popular expletive, the sequence: tarnal damnation, tarnation, darnation (with its d from damnation), darn, darned. By this route we are brought back to an association from the first of darn and damn. But we proceed from an aphetic adjective and an amalgam-noun expletive, and we move forward the origin of the expression to a period nearer to our own. . NOTES ON FRENCH HISTORICAL SYNTAX OLIVER M. JOHNSTON STANFORD UNIVERSITY I. Avoir with a Reflexive Pronoun in Old French Justifying his statement that Jean Renart, the author of Le Lai de l'Ombre, also wrote L'Escoufle and Guillaume de Dole, Bédier says:1 'Voici, à l'appui de notre opinion, une liste de quinze remarques'. One of the fifteen points discussed is as follows: 'Il se sot mout bien avoir.? Expression qui signifie "savoir bien tenir son rang". Elle reparaît par deux fois dans Guillaume de Dole (v. 570 et v. 2143). Il faut qu'elle soit peu usuelle, puisque l'éditeur de ce roman a voulu corriger l'un des deux passages où il la rencontrait.' The passage referred to in the latter part of the quotation just given is as follows: Itels rois doit bien tenir terre (Guillaume de Dole, 469-71, ed. Servois, Paris 1893). In line 570 of this passage the manuscript reads: Qui si set avoir et conquerre. The editor has changed set to fet, either because he misunderstood the meaning, or because he was not familiar with the use of avoir as a reflexive verb in the sense of se conduire.3 The following examples will suffice to show that this construction occurs much more frequently than has been supposed: Car bien afferoit à estre entre tels seigneurs qu'il estoit, et mieux s'y avoit sceü avoir que nuls autres. Froissart, Chroniques, 6. 390 (de Lettenhove: Bruxelles, 1870). Qui si vaillamment se savoit estre et avoir entre tous Seigneurs et toutes dames. (Froissart, op. cit. 6. 326). 1 Le Lai de l'Ombre, p. xi, Paris, 1913. Le Lai de l'Ombre, v. 71. 3 Avoir with a reflexive pronoun was also used in the sense of se tenir, se mouvoir: Si convenra sieuvir tout a piet, car il y a tant de vignes que cheval ne s'y poroient avoir. (Froissart, Chroniques 5.406). For examples of se ravoir (= se retirer, se sauver), compare Burguy's Grammaire de la langue d'oil 2.257, Berlin, 1853. Et sont ensi comme gent sauvage, qui ne se sèvent avoir. (Froissart, op. cit. 10. 336). Vous m'i verés entre les sages (Froissart, Poésies, ed. Scheler 2. 36. 1215.) Les estoires ensegnent comment on se doit avoir el siecle et en Diu. (La vie Carlemaine, B. N. 2168, fo. 198 c.) Belle estoit et jolie et bien ce sout avoir. (Le Mariage des Sept Arts et des Sept Vertus, by Jehan le Teinturier, Pub. by P. Paris, in Le Cabinet historique XIII [1867], 108). Cele ki biele n'est, si sace biel parler el courtoisement et se sace bien avoir. (Li Hystore de Julius Cesar, by Jehan de Tuim, ed. by F. Settegast, Halle, 1881, 169. 28).5 Celes qui pluz estoient beles Et qui miex avoir se savoient. (Der Roman von Escanor von Gerard von Amiens, ed. by H. Michelant, Tubingen, 1886, 23183.) Vous vous savez mult bien avoir. (Jongleurs et Troveres, publ. by A. Jubinal, Paris, 1835, 154.) Bel et bien se sorent avoir, Car moult ot en aus de savoir. (Li Roumans de Cleomades, Bruxelles, 1865, 16607.) Franchois, qui bien s'en seut avoir. (La vie Saint Franchois nach manuscrit francais 19531 der Nat. Biblioth. in Paris.) Je te vueil monstrer comment tu te dois avoir. (Le Menagier de Paris, Paris, 1846, 1. 222.) The French dictionary in vol. 7 of Du Cange's Glossarium mediae infimae latinitatis contains two examples of s'avoir in the sense of se comporter. With reference to the use of the construction under consideration in medieval Latin, Du Cange says: 'Habere se, Gerere se, Gall. se Comporter. Laurentius Bizinius de Origine belli Hussitici ann. 1421. apud Ludewig, tom. 6 Reliq. MSS. p. 171: Tentabant quatenus Pragenses Haberent Se ad defendendum. Bartholomaei Scribae Annal. Genuens. lib. 6 ad ann. 1244. apud Murator. tom. 6 Col. 509: Qui ad defensionem exercitus Mediolanensis et offensionem exercitus domini Friderici Se mirabiliter Habuerunt. Lanfranci Pignoli Annal. Genuens. lib. 7 ad ann. 1266 ibid. Col. 539. Quia vero dictus Admiratus et consiliarii et For another example of this construction in Froissart, see his Poésies 2. 141. 4764. 'Compare the same text 170.8. 'See opus cit., under habere. |