Strangely Familiar

It calls itself a dictionary, and, published in 1623, it seems to be the first book in English to do so. It is not the very first of its kind, but it was the most popular for a generation or so, until the 1650s. It went through eleven editions.

But something is odd. In one modern reprint of just under 200 pages, there are five pages of words in EX-. It has roughly 160 ex- words in all. Among those words:

  excalceate: "take off shoes"

  excerebrate: "beat (someone's) brains out"

  expapillate: "bare the breasts to the nipples"

  ex(s)uscitate: "awaken (someone) from sleep"

All of which are as astonishing as they are obsolete. Yet this dictionary lacks examine, example, excellence, exceed, except, excuse and other ex- words that long had been common in English.

And the entire section for the letter K has only 11 words; and that for W has 19. No king or kind, no wonder and no woman.

Remembering that Latin also has almost no k- words and none in w-, at this point the thoughtful reader flips to the front of the book to be sure it is an English dictionary and not a Latin one spelled poorly. 

What to make of Henry Cockeram (even his dates are unknown) and his "Dictionarie" (as he spells it; he also refers to it as a "vocabulary")?

HERE'S WHAT

Place him in his time. Ask what he thought he was doing. That is one good way to learn from the past. The present, incidentally, is irrelevant.

In his introduction, Cockeram tells prospective purchasers his purpose:

Enabling as well Ladies and Gentlewomen, young Schollers, Clarkes, Merchants ; as also Strangers of any Nation, to the understanding of the more difficult Authors already printed in our Language, and the more speedy attaining of an elegant perfection of the English tongue, both in reading, speaking, and writing.

He offers to beef up their vocabularies — so that they can read what's written in English, which is blooming. The same words will impress their peers in rhetoric and conversation.

But a great many of them appear to be Cockeram's own additions. In the Oxford English Dictionary, his name is on the first attested use of hundreds of words. He tried to make hundreds more, but the grafts failed to take.

Almost all of them were from Latin; a few are from Greek. Middle English had collapsed; the literary class in the 1500s set out to rebuild the literary language, and to reinforce it from stronger, more stable stuff. The recent Renaissance rediscovered the Latin authors. In Latin, English found all it thought it needed.

Tudor English went to Latin famished for words, and it heaped its plate. It took more than it could swallow, but Latin never felt the loss, and the Elizabethan poets and stylists gorged.

Their English was a luxuriant language, a hothouse rosebush; even the flowers grew flowers. While it lasts, there is abundant beauty almost everywhere pen touches ink. Even the argumentative pamphlets and anonymous popular songs show suppleness and sure innovation.

And everywhere the new words rain into English. Lyly, notoriously over the top in prose, uses excantation "action of removing by enchantment." The inimitable Thomas Browne gives, among many others, exosseous for "boneless" (1646).

Sir Thomas Elyot, humanist and diplomat, favorite of Henry VIII, had designs to raise up a vernacular style for English. Such writers saw that English had too few words in the right places, and they discussed bringing in new words "apt for the purpose." They wanted for English the delicate turns and euphonies of Latin verse, the narrative charms of Livy or the grandeur of Tacitus.

So Elyot wrote one of the first comprehensive dictionaries of English. He wrote it in Latin. 

Among the now-common words he introduced are maturity (probably unaware that it had been used in other senses in English) and modesty. Among the now-obscure words he introduced were obtestation (n.) and pristinate (adj.).

He advised the nobles of England to raise their sons in Latin, rather than leave the boys to the slovenly English of the typical infant nurse (nouris, the origin of the Norrises):

It shall be expedient, that a noble mannes sonne, in his infancye, haue with hym continually, only suche, as may accustome hym by lyttel and lyttel to speake pure and elegant latyn. Semblably the nourises and other women aboute hym, if it be possyble, to do the same: or at the leaste waye, that they speke none englishe, but that, whiche is cleane, polite, perfectly, and articulate∣ly pronounced, omittynge no letter or syllable, as folyshe women often tymes do of a wantonnes, wherby diuers noble menne, and gentylmens chyldren (as I do at this daye knowe) haue atteyned corrupte and foule pronuntiation.

A love of big talk. The infatuation with Latin. Both tend to embiggen the language, and the words in it. Long variants flourished: We content ourselves with exercise (n.). Cockeram has exercitation. We intercede, Cockeram intercessionates; we call something spongy, he calls it spongious ("Hollow like a Spunge").

Some other gems from Cockeram:

  adolescenturate: "to play the boy, or foole"

  meridiation: "a sleeping at noone-tide"

  nutrication: "nourishing"

  obstetricate: "to play the midwife"

  propinquate: "to approach"

  stabulation: "a harbouring of beasts"

  stratuminate: "to pave"

  viridate: "to wax or make greene"

  vivificent: "lively"

WHEN IS A WORD?

Almost any Latin noun, verb, or adjective can be vamped into a Modern English equivalent by patterns proven in thousands of etymologies. Do all Latin words potentially have a match in English? We have subsidy from the 14th century, which might automatically imply a (latent) verb subsidize. But that verb doesn't appear in English until the 1700s.

We have suburb from the 14th century and suburban from the 17th, but suburbanization only from 1898 or so. Canonization and the like were in Middle English. Was suburbanization not latent in the language, waiting only to be uttered into being? Is *suburbanescence, or some other possible hyper-elaboration, a present English word ("the tendency to become a suburb"), or does it float in the etymological ether like an infant soul awaiting incarnation?

If, like Elyot and Cockeram, you're open to Latin, and there's a known formula for making an English word from any Latin one, you can select from the full tool-kit of every Latin verb. From Latin explere we get expletive. Elizabethan writers also had explement "that which fills up" (Nashe); explenish; explete "filled up" (Middleton); expletion.

Cockeram is full of such words, the lost siblings and cousins of words we've kept, failed transplants from familiar beds: We have belligerent, he has also belligerate "to make war." We have perennial, he has also perennity "everlastingnesse."

Others that seem both familiar and strange:

  mendicate: "To beg."

  nobilitate: "To make noble."

  infestuous: "Noysome."

  intactible: "Not to bee touched."

  occurrent: "Which happeneth in the way."

  ornature: "A setting forth or garnishing."

  pregnation: "Being great with childe." 

  umbrate: "To shadow."

  umbrosous: "Full of shaddow."

You meet familiar bodies with strange heads. Latin verbs often make it into English with many of the possible prefixes: Sets such as affect, effect, confect, infect, defect, prefect, perfect. But English had left many others in Latin. Cockeram tries them in English.

We have congregate; he has abgregate "To leade out of the flocke." We have addition, he has dedition "An yeelding, or surrendring." We have revolve, he has obvolve "To fold round about."

Sometimes it seems he's aiming to fill in all the blanks:

  abequitate: "to ride away"

  adequitate: "to ride by"

  coequitate: "to ride together"

  obequitate: "to ride about"

All long since ridden off into the sunset, but thousands of others from this era remain. This is the birth of Modern English.

For English without it, look at some of our recognizable Latin ex- words as they were glossed and translated into Old and early Middle English. Hear the language as it would be minus the borrowed togas: 

  exacerbatio: abolgennes

  exactio: geabulesmonung

  exactor: scultheta, scyldlæta, hæcewol

  excoriatus: beflæ

  exilium: wræcsið

  exitus: utgong, endestæf

  exhumo: unberye

  exorbitans: asuab

  expeditio: faerd, hergiung

  expensa: daegwine

  experientia: onfundennes

  experimentum: andwisnis

  exterminator: utdræfere

  extinctus: forþfaren, acweald

  extra: fremde

  extremus: ytemeste 

  exultatio: hihting

 (selected from Wright-Wülker)

Feel the difference? Latin tap-dances like a Nicholas brother; the English hoof it. If you read enough of the glosses the experience becomes silly and then hilarious, like listening to Benny Hill read from a French-Icelandic dictionary. There's a glory to having both registers in your tongue: Excoriate and beflay; exit and out-going; exhume and unbury; exterminator and out-driver; extinct and gone out; extreme and outmost. But sadly, too often, only one endures.

PRATFALLS

It's probably no coincidence that grandiloquent also enters English in Tudor times and sticks around. The Elizabethan blooms quickly ran to seed, and there's a fine line if any between grandiloquence and comical excess. The severity of 18th century English is in part a reaction to it.

In later times, embiggened English becomes the stereotype of how uneducated people imagine the over-educated speak. A malaprop (an 18th century word) is exactly Cockeram gone haywire: The speaker wants to impress by using big, uncommon words, and pratfalls by using amusing, wrong ones.

When Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan's Rivals, is said to 'deck her dull chat with hard words which she don't understand,' she protests, 'Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, & a nice derangement of epitaphs' .... She is now the matron saint of those who go wordfowling with a blunderbuss. [Fowler, "Modern English Usage," 1926]

Many of Cockeram's words seem never to have made it out of the dictionaries. In the 1989 OED, Cockeram is the only citation for exartuate, exdecimate, expalpate ("get by flattery"), excubation, expapillate, excalceate, expergefy, extorque ("exhort"), and so on. Some of his words (such as exauspicate) persisted in later dictionaries into the 1700s, but seldom if ever were seen outside them.

The bigging process continued after Cockeram: In the ex- section, Blount's "Glossographia" (1650s) has among others exacinate, exsanguinality ("bloodlessness"). Bailey's dictionary (just after 1700) has exacervation, exceptitious, exquisitious ("not natural, but procured by art"). 

Perhaps the hobo king of dictionary words is exsaturate "fill completely with food, satiate," which is in Cockeram, Blount, Phillips (1650s), and Bailey: lounging about in dictionaries for more than a century, surfeited and hardly ever showing up for work.

Here are more of Cockeram's (mostly) Latinate words, with his explanations of the common sense of them, for the fun of it.

VERBS

  Adstupiate: Greatly to esteeme riches.

  Advesperate: To waxe night.

  Advigilate: To watch diligently.

  Antelucidate: To worke by Candle-light before day.

  Bubulcitate: To cry like a cow-boy.

  Bulbitate: To befilth ones breech.

  Constuprate: Carnally to accompany a woman.

  Dapinate: To provide dainty meats.

  Debacchate: To reuile one after the manner of

drunkards.

  Deblaterate: To babble much.

  Dedoleate: To end ones sorrow or griefc.

  Deonerate: To unload.

  Desipiate: To wax foolish.

  Discalceate: To put off ones Shooes.

  Gallulate: To beginne to haue a big voice.

  Gingrate: To chirpe as birds doe.

  Huberate: To make plentifull.

  Illatebrate: To hide in corners.

  Imbulbitate: To befilth ones breech.

  Incordiate: To put into ones heart.

  Inoccate: To harrow the ground.

  Inodorate: To perfume.

  Inopacate: To make darke.

  Inquilinate: To dwell in strange place.

  Intervigilate: To watch now and then.

  Lallate: To speake baby-like, or childishly.

  Latibulate: Privily to hide ones selfe in a corner.

  Lurcate: To eate ravenously.

  Meretricate: To play the whore.

  Morigerate: To doe as one is commanded, to obey.

  Obganiate: To trouble one with often repeating of one thing.

  Oppignorate: To pawne

  Palpabrize: To flatter.

  Parentate: To celebrate ones Parents Funerals.

  Pernoctate: To tarry all night.

  Pipilate: To chirpe like a Sparrow.

  Prefulgurate: To glisterbefore

  Properate: To hasten.

  Prosternate: To beat downe flat to the ground.

  Quadrupedate: To goe on foure legs.

  Recalcitrate: To kicke with the heele

  Repignorate: To redeeme a pledge.

  Rumigerate: To spread tidings abroad.

  Sarculate: To weed.

  Secubate: To lie about by ones selfe

  Sepulize: To burie.

  Stellifie: To make one a starre, to shine like a star.

  Tertiate: To do a thing three times.

  Thesaurize: To gather riches.

  Thurificate: To perfume.

  Tonitrate: To thunder.

  Transnate: To swimme over.

  Vaporate: To cast foorth vapours.

  Vernate: To wax young againe.

  Villimate: To offer in sacrifice.

ADJECTIVES

  Adcorporated: Married.

  Consopiated: Luld asleepe.

  Duricordant: Hard-hearted.

  Frondosous: Full of leaves.

  Ignifluous: Full of fire.

  Immiserable: Whom none pittieth.

  Infestive: Without mirth or pleasantnesse.

  infestuous: Noysome.

  Inscient: Unskilfull. 

  Insecable: Not to be cut.

  Intactible: Not to bee touched.

  Intempestively: Out of season.

  Lubricke: Slippery.

  Luciferous: Haughtie, proud.

  Lucrificable: That bringeth gaine.

  Mesonoxian: Of, or belonging to midnight.

  Nemorous: Wooddy.

  Obolet: Old, it stinks.

  Palestricall: Of, or belonging to wrastling

  Pensiculative: Diligently considering of.

  Preclarent: Excellent.

  Redargutive: Of, or belonging to reproofe.

  Solelable: Which maybe comforted.

  Sylvestrick: Wilde, rusticall.

  Trinoctiall: Belonging to three nights.

  Vegetive: Which liveth as plants do.

  Villicated: Busie about husbandrie.

NOUNS

  Abrodieticall: A delicate person.

  Apophoret: A new yeers gift.

  Apricitie: The warmeness of the Sunne in Winter.

  Archiatrer: A chiefe of principall Phyfician

  Argologie: Idle or vaine Speaking,

  Assestrix: A woman assistant

  Aurigation: A driving of a Coach.

  Bellitude: Fairenesse.

  Calamist: One hauing his haire turning vpwards.

  Celeripedean: A swift footman

  Cermocinatrix: She that instructed to speake.

  Collachrimation: A weeping with.

  Conspurcation: A making foule, or a defiling

  Cunctation: Slacknesse, delay.

  Decollation: A beheading.

  Egritude: Griefe of mind,

  Enodation: A declaration.

  Internecation: A slaughter where none escape.

  Latration: A barking.

  Limpitude: Cleerenesse.

  Liquator: He which melteth.

  Longinquity: Distance of time.

  Macrologie: Long or tedious talke.

  Neogamus: A Bridegroome.

  Obambulation: A walking abroad.

  obumbration: A shadowing.

  Orbitude: The lacke of what wee love, when a

Wife hath lost her Husband.

  Peregrinity: Strangenesse

  Porculation: A feeding of swine.

  Proxenetrix: A woman which is a marriage-maker.

  Sermocinatrix: She which talketh.

  Sinisterity: Unhandsomnesse.

  Succollation: A bearing on the shoulders.

  Sullevation: A murderous intent.

  Surquidrie: Presumption.

  Thrill: One that hath no nose.

  Transfretation: A passing over the sea.

  Venditation: A vaine ostentation, or bragging.

  Venundation: A selling and buying.

  Vinolencie: Drunkennesse.

  Vitulation: A reioycing like a calfe.

Which last condition may you enjoy for the reading to the end of this.