Hidden message?

English Language, we use it every day and sometimes we don't even realise that for other people some words may be surprising. Did you even wonder what people for whom English is a second language think when you use the word class or peacock? Agnieszka Zielinska, who was learning English as a second language and was really shocked when heard some words for the first time, decided to find some information about that.

For us, people who speak English since they can remember, those words sound perfectly fine, because we use them on a daily basis and we know what's the meaning of each one, but people who are learning English may wonder why did you say pea cock just now. There are over a hundred of words including cock. Shocking, isn't it? What will you say about 813 words with the word ass then? Did you even notice those words hidden in class, assume, assess etc? I don't think so. Now you are probably trying to think of any words that contain "bad words" aren't you? There are actually over 1500 words that contain a swear word but have nothing to do with its meaning. What do those mean then? Why there are swear words in there? Did it mean anything bad in the past? I will try to answer some of these questions.

Let's start with the word ass then, because of the great number of the words containing it. That word comes from Greek "asinus", which was fundamental of the creation of  "ass" and "anus". The word was a taboo word since it came into use. On the other hand, the word class was never even considered as a swear word. It comes from Latin "classis" which means "division". What's surprising, from the very beginning, this word was used by the English as a word meaning social class or group of students, and there were no objections about that. Does it mean no one even noticed what would have happened if we took two letters, c and l? According to Robert Stockwell, it was because the word came from the other language, which was Latin. Therefore at the beginning it was used mainly by upper class and people just accepted that.

What was the most interesting for me, was why there are two words that mean something completely different in the word peacock? I would understand that if the bird looked anything like either one, but I don't think it does. Why did someone call the poor bird like that then? The answer for that question was much more simple than I thought it would be, but somehow surprising as well. It was created by compounding po and cock. Pocock comes from Middle Eastern language and was first noticed in 1300. In English we write it in a different way because of how we pronounce it. In her book, Donka Minkova states that the word peacock was first used in 1390s. I was very interested in why people did not oppose. Calling the poor bird pea and a cock? Come on, they must have said something about that. But the word cock didn't mean anything relating to what it means now until 1610. Actually, it was a common name until 1500. Before that it was a nickname for "one who strutted like a cock". For us it might sound a little bit awkward, but in XV century people didn't know that one day something that means a male bird will change its meaning into something... Well, let's say still relating to a male bird, but in a kind of different way.

 

 

*For everyone interested in finding out their own words-with-a-swear-word, the website is     http://www.allwords.com/
*The history of the words comes from the book "English Words: History and Structure" by Robert Stockwell and Donka Minkova