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Authors: David Crystal
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be taken off.
Phrasal verbs became an important feature of English vocabulary during the Middle Ages.
Take away
is first recorded around 1300 in its general sense of ‘remove’ or ‘withdraw’, and it soon developed special applications. If someone was
taken away
, it could mean he died or was killed. If servants were
taking away
, they were clearing the table after a meal. If something
took away
from an achievement, it detracted from it. And other senses have arrived in modern times. Since the 1930s, we have had the option of eating food in the place where it has been prepared or
taking it away
to eat elsewhere.
A few phrasal verbs take on a second life as nouns. If I
hand something out
, what I deliver is a
handout
. If I tell someone to
go ahead
, I give them a
go-ahead
. And this has happened to
take away
too. In Britain, the shop that sells food that can be eaten off the premises is called a
takeaway
(often hyphenated, as
take-away
), usually with a characterising adjective: a
Chinese takeaway
, an
Indian takeaway
. The word can be used as an adjective too:
a takeaway curry
,
takeaway hamburgers
. And since the 1970s it has been applied to the meal itself:
We’re having a takeaway tonight
. But
takeaway
isn’t universal in the English-speaking world. In Malaysian and Singaporean English, they use a Chinese word –
tapau
, food. And American English has opted for different phrasal verbs –
take-outs
or
carryouts
.
Cuckoo
a sound-symbolic word (13th century)
Most words don’t resemble the things they refer to. There’s nothing about the shape of the word
table
that shows us an object with four legs and a flat surface. And there’s nothing in the sound of the word
commotion
that makes us hear a violent disturbance. But English has quite a few words where the opposite is the case:
cough, knock, murmur, zoom, crunch, bang, clatter, teeny, babble, splash, plop
… The sound of the word seems to imitate the reality to which it refers. Such words are often called
onomatopoeic
– a term from Greek meaning ‘word creation’ – especially when people are talking about the effects heard in poetry. Linguists call them instances of
sound symbolism
.
Cuckoo
is an excellent example of a sound-symbolic word. In many languages the name of this bird echoes the sound of its call. The effect can’t be heard so well in the Old English word for a cuckoo,
geac
; but in the Middle Ages it comes across clearly in the form
cuccu
. The earliest recorded use, from the mid-13th century, is in the famous ‘Cuckoo Song’, the earliest known singing ‘round’ in English:
Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu
The translation is ‘Spring has come in. Loudly sing, cuckoo!’ In Middle English, there was no separate word for springtime;
spring
as the name of a seasonisn’t recorded until the 16th century. The word
summer
was used for the entire period between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.
But even sound-symbolic words can change their meaning and lose their original echoic associations. This has happened to
cuckoo
. In the 16th century we see it being applied to people. The bird has a monotonous call and lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, so anyone engaged in unimaginative repetitious behaviour or doing something perceived to be stupid came to be labelled
a cuckoo
. When Aristophanes’
Birds
was translated in the 19th century, the name of the realm built by the birds to separate the gods from mankind was called
Cloudcuckooland
, and this was then applied to any impossibly fanciful world. ‘You’re living in cloudcuckooland,’ we might say. Later the expression was also used in a shortened form:
cuckoo land
. And in the 20th century, American English took this direction further: anyone who was thought to be crazy or making an absurd suggestion was, quite simply,
cuckoo
. And if you were thought to be seriously crazy, you might end up as Jack Nicholson did in the 1975 film, in a
cuckoo’s nest
.
Cunt
a taboo
Phrasal verbs became an important feature of English vocabulary during the Middle Ages.
Take away
is first recorded around 1300 in its general sense of ‘remove’ or ‘withdraw’, and it soon developed special applications. If someone was
taken away
, it could mean he died or was killed. If servants were
taking away
, they were clearing the table after a meal. If something
took away
from an achievement, it detracted from it. And other senses have arrived in modern times. Since the 1930s, we have had the option of eating food in the place where it has been prepared or
taking it away
to eat elsewhere.
A few phrasal verbs take on a second life as nouns. If I
hand something out
, what I deliver is a
handout
. If I tell someone to
go ahead
, I give them a
go-ahead
. And this has happened to
take away
too. In Britain, the shop that sells food that can be eaten off the premises is called a
takeaway
(often hyphenated, as
take-away
), usually with a characterising adjective: a
Chinese takeaway
, an
Indian takeaway
. The word can be used as an adjective too:
a takeaway curry
,
takeaway hamburgers
. And since the 1970s it has been applied to the meal itself:
We’re having a takeaway tonight
. But
takeaway
isn’t universal in the English-speaking world. In Malaysian and Singaporean English, they use a Chinese word –
tapau
, food. And American English has opted for different phrasal verbs –
take-outs
or
carryouts
.
Cuckoo
a sound-symbolic word (13th century)
Most words don’t resemble the things they refer to. There’s nothing about the shape of the word
table
that shows us an object with four legs and a flat surface. And there’s nothing in the sound of the word
commotion
that makes us hear a violent disturbance. But English has quite a few words where the opposite is the case:
cough, knock, murmur, zoom, crunch, bang, clatter, teeny, babble, splash, plop
… The sound of the word seems to imitate the reality to which it refers. Such words are often called
onomatopoeic
– a term from Greek meaning ‘word creation’ – especially when people are talking about the effects heard in poetry. Linguists call them instances of
sound symbolism
.
Cuckoo
is an excellent example of a sound-symbolic word. In many languages the name of this bird echoes the sound of its call. The effect can’t be heard so well in the Old English word for a cuckoo,
geac
; but in the Middle Ages it comes across clearly in the form
cuccu
. The earliest recorded use, from the mid-13th century, is in the famous ‘Cuckoo Song’, the earliest known singing ‘round’ in English:
Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu
The translation is ‘Spring has come in. Loudly sing, cuckoo!’ In Middle English, there was no separate word for springtime;
spring
as the name of a seasonisn’t recorded until the 16th century. The word
summer
was used for the entire period between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.
But even sound-symbolic words can change their meaning and lose their original echoic associations. This has happened to
cuckoo
. In the 16th century we see it being applied to people. The bird has a monotonous call and lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, so anyone engaged in unimaginative repetitious behaviour or doing something perceived to be stupid came to be labelled
a cuckoo
. When Aristophanes’
Birds
was translated in the 19th century, the name of the realm built by the birds to separate the gods from mankind was called
Cloudcuckooland
, and this was then applied to any impossibly fanciful world. ‘You’re living in cloudcuckooland,’ we might say. Later the expression was also used in a shortened form:
cuckoo land
. And in the 20th century, American English took this direction further: anyone who was thought to be crazy or making an absurd suggestion was, quite simply,
cuckoo
. And if you were thought to be seriously crazy, you might end up as Jack Nicholson did in the 1975 film, in a
cuckoo’s nest
.
Cunt
a taboo
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