TY - JOUR
AU - Grzega, Joachim
AB - The following contribution presents a few fresh etymological observations on some number terms (in ascending order).1 ‘0’ A recent lexeme for ‘zero’ is zilch. It is first used for ‘zero’ in 1956 (OED; not listed in Weekley, Klein, Skeat, Kenkyusha, ODEE). According to the OED it is of expressive origin. But already the OED lists important quotations that are more focused on by Barnhart, who emphasizes the earlier sense of ‘meaningless speech, gibberish (1960); and found in Mr Zilch an indefinite nickname (1931, in the humorous magazine Ballyhoo); possibly from association with earlier zip’. And in an OED quote from 1922, it says ‘Joseph Zilch, Mr Tinney’s mysterious off-stage friend’. As to the origin, the OED notes: ‘perhaps related to Joe Zilch, a name used for an unknown or inconsequential person [..] perhaps a variant of Zilsch, a surname of Central European origin [..].’ However, the name Zilsch was and is not very widespread in Central Europe; the choice in the humorous magazine was probably rather accidental. At any rate, zilch is less probably expressive, but more likely reflect a chain of sense developments: ‘sb unimportant’ > ‘sth unimportant’ (metaphor) > ‘nothing important’ (metonymy) > ‘nothing’ (metaphor). The expression zip, chiefly colloquial US usage, is attested since 1900 (s.v. OED, with a quote from Dialectal Notes). It is of expressive origin according to Klein and of uncertain origin according to the OED and Barnhart (not listed in Weekley, Skeat, Kenkyusha, the ODEE). The OED adds, ‘Perhaps an arbitrary formation, or perhaps < z- (in zero n.) + -ip (in nip n.3) [..]’. Why can zip be an expressive word for the abstract concept 0? 0 is nothing and nothing can comprehensibly be expressed by a combination of a soft, or voiced, consonant, a short clear vowel and a stop, just as pip symbolizes a short, high-pitched electronic tone used as a signal or as tip stands for ‘a light but distinct impact, blow, stroke, or hit, a noiseless tap’. A very challenging case is the word love. The origin of love as a numeral is not listed in Barnhart, Kenkyusha, Klein, and Skeat. In other works we find the following explanations. Weekley writes: ‘Love, no score (tennis, etc.) is due to to play for love, i.e. for nothing, which again is evolved from love or money’; the ODEE says: ‘The sense of ‘no score’ in games (XVIII) derives from the phr. for love without stakes, for nothing (XVII)’; according to the OED the first record of love ‘zero points [in whist, football, tennis, racquets]’ is from 1742 and is explained as going back to for love ‘without stakes, for nothing’, ‘applied to the practice of playing a competitive game for the pleasure of playing’ (first recorded 1678). However, the MED (s.v. love n.1) has a phrase for love or mede ‘for love or money’ already for 1425. This etymology, from the phrase for love (and money), shall be dubbed Hypothesis 1. There is also a Hypothesis 2 that is frequently repeated in works (e.g. Leibs2). Hypothesis 2 claims that love is a folk-etymological corruption of French l’oeuf ‘the egg’, which is said to be a metaphorical expression for the zero. How shall we evaluate the two hypotheses? First of all, the first OED quote of love in the sense of ‘zero’ is from 1742 in a description for the game Whist. The second OED quote is from 1780, also on Whist. The citation reads: ‘We are not told how, or by what means Six love comes to mean Six nothing’. So already in 1780 there is no conscience of the motivation for love as a term for ‘zero’. This might be a hint that this use of love is actually much older than 1742. As a matter of fact, it is the 1711 edition of Boyer’s dictionary (not yet the 1702 and 1708 editions)3 that lists love in the sense of ‘nothing/zero’ for the first time (Boyer 1711: s.v. love): ‘(used adverbially in reckoning at gaming) Ex. I am five love, J’en ai cinq à rien. Six love Six à rien &c.’. The record of this meaning is quite sudden. There is no hint of this use of love in Cotton’s 1684 book on games (nor the posthumous 1709 version) or Howlett’s 1710 description of games; and there is also no use of it in Seymour’s 1722 and Cotton’s 1725 versions on games4. However, after 1711 we also find Boyer’s first collocation also given in Serenius’s 1734 English-Swedish dictionary.5 What speaks in favour of Hypothesis 1? From a cognitive perspective, it is well imaginable that the phrase for love ‘for fun’, might have been metonymically interpreted as ‘for no money, for nothing but fun’ > ‘for nothing’. What speaks against Hypothesis 1? (i) The exact cognitive development of the single semantic steps has nowhere been made clear, and no record indicates that there actually was a point when ‘for fun’ was interpreted as ‘for getting nothing out of something’ in the 17th or 18th centuries; (ii) with the possible exception of the term amateur ‘sb who does sth not for money, but for nothing but fun’, there are no real parallel cases of a connection between love and zero. What speaks for Hypothesis 2? It is well imaginable that the zero is metaphorically connected with an egg; this motivation is also at the basis of other synonyms for 0, viz. duck’s egg (in Cricket, since 1863) and goose-egg (since 1880) (cf. OED). What speaks against Hypothesis 2? (i) Although there is proof that oeuf was used in French for emphasizing negation (ToLo) or for referring to ‘nothing’ (AND), there is no proof that this use was still current in the 17th and 18th centuries (cf. FEW s.v. ovum [rather, aux oeufs, literally ‘at/to the eggs’, is listed for ‘perfect’], TLFi s.v. oeuf) despite Cotgrave’s6 quote of a proverb (1656, not in earlier version; similarly Miège7) that goes ‘Un oeuf n’est rien; deux font grand bien; trois c’est assez, quatre c’est tout; cinq c’est la mort’, given as ‘One egge is none, two somewhat, three enow, four be too much, five give a deadly blow’. But it is imaginable that love in the sense of ‘zero’ is much older; (ii) in addition, a definite article would require explanation in this context. The problem can’t be solved at this point. Maybe the prominence of Hypothesis 1 in the etymological dictionaries is unjustified. Maybe we need to look for still a third hypothesis. For this search several observations from the early quotes should be kept in mind: First, Boyer (1711) restricts the use of love in counting to gaming, at least whist, piquet, backgammon (cf. Hoyle 17508) and cricket—as seen in the quote of the 1744 poem ‘Cricket’ by James Dance ‘When nothing can your languid Spirits move/Save when the Marker bellows out, Six Love!’—but not to a specific game (if it ever was, then the spread of this use must have happened quite quickly). In a posthumous version of Hoyle’s guide (1787, possibly enlarged by James Beaufort), it is also used for billiards and tennis. The etymon is therefore likely to be found in the context of gaming. Secondly, there seems no formally similar or synonymously prior word of love in scoring so that there was probably no slow subconscious alteration in the sense of a folk-etymology, but a conscious coinage, potentially humorous. Thirdly, in the earliest records of love in counting, it is used without a preceding to—in contrast to regular numerals. Boyer (1711) categorizes love as an adverb. It indeed is always the pattern ‘figure + [games] + love’, without to, while it is ‘figure + [games] + to + figure’, i.e. two games love, but two games to one etc. (cf. Hoyle 1741: 14). Therefore, the original meaning may not refer to the points of the opponent, but refine the points that the winner has gained eventually: six love would then mean something like ‘six alone’, ‘six unchallenged’, ‘six without counterpoints’, and ‘six firmly’. This brings us to a few new suggestions. (1a) The notion of ‘firmly (in one’s hand)’ could be connected to ‘(firmly in one’s) hand’ and thus speak for love ‘palm of the hand, (fist)’ as an etymology (cf. MED s.v. love n.3, OED s.v. loof n.1); (1b) it is also imaginable that ‘without counterpoints’ was connected with a beat of the ‘love’, the palm of the hand, on the table as a symbol of perfect winning. (2a) The winning of all tricks in some card games (e.g. Ombre) is referred to as vole∼voll (cf. OED s.v. vole); is love a humorous corruption of this (like a forerunner of 19th-century back-slang)? (2 b) In the card game Lanterloo, or briefly, loo, the verb loo means ‘to cause to never win a trick’ (Cotton 1709: 104, 1725: 49). Is this the trigger for a humorous love ‘without any counter-tricks’? ‘1’ The Old English word for 1 is ān or an. A regular development of OE ān should have yielded ModE [oʊn], which actually is the result in the derivates alone and only. But how can the ModE sound development [wʌn] be explained? Dobson9 (his explanation is also accepted by Berndt,10 Faiß11 and the OED) explains the development as follows: OE ān > ME ōn > ōn (ō as raised variant of ō, especially in front of dentals and especially in eastern dialects—neither he nor Jordan12 give any chronological information on this development, Jordan claims that the development is only verifiable for Northampton) > 15th c. [uːn] > [wʊn] (with ‘over-rounding of the vowel’; the development of a glide [w] before initial ō can also be observed for oat and oak (cf. Dobson,13 OED; Jordan14 observes an insertion of w- before ō and ō and an insertion of j- before ē and ē already toward 1400, especially in western parts of the south).) > [wʌn]. However, [wʌn] could also be seen in connection with two and with the observation that there are several cases in the IE languages wheresome number terms influenced the names for neighboring numbers, the name for 5 on the name for 4 in the Gmc. languages (e.g. OE. feower-fīf instead of *hweower-fīf), the name for 4 on the name for 5 in Latin (quattuor-quinque instead of quattuor-*pinque), the name for 10 on the name for 9 in the Slavic language (e.g. Russ. devjat’-desjat’ instead of *nevjat’-desjat’). The development in English could then be postulated as follows: OE ān, twā > ME ōn, twō > ōn, twō (like hwā > hwō > hwō, around 1320ff.) > regressive ‘assimilation’: wōn, twō (first MED attestation 1426, possibly 1400) > EModE [wuːn, twuː] > [wuːn, tuː] > [wun, tuː] > [wʌn, tuː]. Positing a development of wōn > wōn as development of the vowel after w as in two would be problematic because the raising of ō > ō only occurs after initial consonant plus w. It can be noted that some dialect forms show (1) [Ø-] (in Dorset) or (2) [j-] instead of or beside [w-] (cf. SED VII.1.1; the northern counties): Type 1 reflects a more regular development of the OE form, Type 2 suggests that the additional initials might also have served to avoid hiatus (e.g. in the one .. the other) or a nasal shift in syntagmas such as a(n) one. ME ain (MED, 1325 [in a text which possibly goes even back to 1250] and 1450). The MED classifies this word as an ON loan, but it would be chronologically surprising to have a rare loanword from ON attested that late. The origin of the first document, The Story of Genesis and Exodus, is southern East Midlands, the second document, the Benedictine Rule, is of Yorks origin. Maybe the form is influenced by twain (regressive assimilation). The MED traces the words back to two origins, but in my view the forms can also be seen as morphonetic variants of the same lexeme, similar to the variation of ōn ∼ ō, twayn ∼ tway. ‘10’ Just like OE ān∼ăn yielded ME a(n) and ō(n), OE tēn∼tĕn yielded ME teen ∼ ten. There is a hapax legomenon ME dene, in the Palladius from c1420 (MED, OED). According to the MED this form is from L. dēni ‘ten of each’, but in my view the quotation ‘Whenne the moone is daies dene Of age’ suggests that this might only be a scribal error due to an influence of daies on tene. Decads from ‘70’ to ‘120’ A very interesting phenomenon can be observed for the decads from 70 onwards. While in OE the decads up to 60 are formed on the principle ‘digit + suffix -tig’, all decads from 70 through 120 use both the suffix -tig and a prefix hund-. Sometimes the hund- is missing, but mostly hund- is used. The OE terms for 100 itself are (i) hundred (258 times in the OEC) and (ii) hundteontig (120 times in the OEC). Type 1, with a second element -red, related to Go. raþa ‘number, counting’, can also be found in the other Germanic languages. The other Germanic languages also show the break after 60. How can this specific break after 60 be accounted for, especially if hund- is related to Lat. centum ‘100’? Can hund- in the number terms from 70 to actually 120 be interpreted as representing the notion of 100? Menninger15 says: The change in Indo-European number sequences from 70 on is focused in every case on the syllable hund- […]. And this syllable is the numerical rank ‘hundred’, whose effect extends back as far as 70. [….]. The break in the sequence of ten mirrors a similar break in the sequence of units. The latter can be seen in Latin, for example, in which the words for 7, 8, and 9 are formed with the ending -em that has been taken from decem, 10: novem, octo (a dual form for octem!), septem […]. Whether this conceals an erstwhile counting back from 10, which occurs in other number sequences (such as the Finnish […]) where 9 = 1 substracted from 10, 8 = 2 from 10, and 7 = 3 from 10, is a possibility that may require further study. But is this really a possibility here? If this were the case, shouldn’t we expect the OE term for 90 to be hundantig instead of hundnigontig or the OE term for 70 to be hundþrēotig instead of hundseofontig? So the constructions must be interpreted differently. Brunner16 interprets hund as meaning ‘decad’, not ‘hundred’. This seems semantically more plausible at first sight, but it would not apply to the formation twā hund ‘200’. An alternative interpretation shall be suggested, namely to interpret hund as ‘large amount’. The coinage hund·red, then literally ‘large-amount number’, would subsequently refer to the most typical, or prototypical, ‘large-amount number’. The pattern ‘hund- + digit + -tig’ is then an example of overt marking or tautology, just like a Modern English phrase a large amount of 70 people instead of an amount of 70 people. This is also the reason why hund- could so easily be dropped. That OE hund became more and more associated with ‘hundred’ can be seen in the fact that 120, which was originally expressed by hundtwelftig, could also be referred to in LOE as hundtwentig. But there is a relatively long phase of polysemy of hund, in the senses ‘100’ and ‘large amount’. As a simplex, hund is used for 100 until a1225; hundtenty for 100 is used until c1175; hundseventi is used for 70 until a1300 (cf. MED). ‘106’ and higher The form million is literally ‘big thousand’ in French (including mille ‘thousand’). The coinages billion, trillion, quadrillion are noteworthy. What is the cognitive process behind the formations? Obviously, mill-ion was (folk-etymologically) reanalysed as m-illion, with m- being connected with ‘1’. Was this due to association with mono-? Then it is a bit astonishing, but not fully atypical of Modern Times, that the subsequent numbers were coined with Latin affixes—billion, trillion, quadrillion—and not Greek affixes—dillion, trillion, tetrillion. ‘large number’, ‘infinite number’ According to the OED (s.v. seven A.1.d.), the form sevens denotes a large number. Why seven? Maybe because it is (apart from 12) the magical number in Christian culture. The word umpty, first attested for 1905, is originally the word for the dash in Morse code (OED, Kenkyusha, Weekley, Barnhart, ODEE, Klein; not mentioned in Skeat), and, due to folk-etymological interpretation, ump·ty, ump·teen, first attested for 1918. Why the dash (one dash = the letter T) and not the dot (iddy)? Maybe due to the similarity with n; as there is also the nth time, first recorded in 1873 (OED s.v. nth). The form squillion is first recorded in 1943 and built on the analogy of million, billion, etc. (OED). Why sq-? The OED regards it as arbitrary alteration. However, it is somehow reminiscent of the word square(d) ‘to the power of two’. Finally, zillion is first recorded in 1944, also built on the analogy of million, billion, etc. (OED). Why z-? The OED considers it an arbitrary or humorous alteration. But a possible explanation is that z- the last letter of the alphabet indicating the last item of the row of numerals. Footnotes 1 In this contribution I will use a number of diachronic/etymological and dialectal dictionaries, to wit: AND = William Rothwell, Anglo-Norman Dictionary (London, 1992); Barnhart = Robert K. Barnhart, The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology (New York, 1995); EDD = Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary: Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect Words Still in Use, or Known to Have Been in Use During the Last Two-Hundred Years, 6 vols (Oxford, 1898–1905); FEW = Walther von Wartburg et al., Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern/Nancy, 1922–2002) [https://apps.atilf.fr/lecteurFEW/index.php/site/index]; James Camden Hotten, Illustrations of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (London, 1864); Kenkyusha = Yoshio Terasawa, The Kenkyusha Dictionary of English Etymology (Tokyo, 1997); Klein = Ernst Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols (Amsterdam etc., 1966–1967); MED = Hans Kurath et al., Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1956-) [http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/]; ODEE = C. T. Onions (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford, 1976); OEC = Antonette DiPaolo Healey (ed.), Dictionary of Old English – Old English Corpus (Ann Arbor, 2000). [or: http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec]; OED = James A. H. Murray et al., The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1928-). [http://dictionary.oed.com/]; SED = Harold Orton / Eugen Dieth, Survey of English Dialects, Part A & B, 15 vols (Leeds, 1964–1971); Skeat = Walter Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., rev., enlarged and reset (Oxford, 1978); TLFi = Trésor de la langue française informatisé (Nancy, 1971–1994). [http://www.atilf.fr/tlfi]; ToLo = Adolf Tobler / Erhard Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch (Wiesbaden, 1925–1995); Weekley = Ernest Weekley, An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (London, 1921). 2 Andrew Leibs, Sports and Games of the Renaissance (Westport, 2004), 81. 3 See the three versions by Abel Boyer: The Royal Dictionary, English and French (London, 1702); The Royal Dictionary Abridged in Two Parts: I. French English, II. English and French (London, 1708); The Royal Dictionary, French and English, and English and French (London, 1711). 4 See three analysed versions of Charles Cotton’s book The Compleat Gamester (London, 1684, 1709, and 1725) as well as R[obert] H[owlett], The School of Recreation (London, 1710), and Richard Seymour, The Court-Gamester (London, 1722). 5 Jacob Serenius, Dictionarium anglo-sventhico-latinum (Hamburg, 1734). 6 Randle Cotgrave, A French and English Dictionary (London, 1656). 7 Guy Miège, A New Dictionary French and English, with another English and French (London, 1677). 8 Compare the three anaylsed versions by Edmond Hoyle: A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (Bath/London, 1741); The Polite Gamester (Dublin, 1750); The Polite Gamester (Dublin, 1787). 9 Eric Dobson, English Pronunciation 1500-1700 (Oxford, 1968), section 150 ann. 2 and section 431. 10 Rolf Berndt, Einführung in das Studium des Mittelenglischen – unter Zugrundelegung des Prologs der ‘Canterbury Tales’ (Halle (Saale), 1960). 11 Klaus Faiß, Englische Sprachgeschichte (Tübingen 1989). 12 Richard Jordan, Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology (The Hague, 1974), 75. 13 Eric Dobson, English Pronunciation 1500-1700 (Oxford, 1968), section 431. 14 Richard Jordan, Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology (The Hague, 1974), 242. 15 Karl Menninger, Number Words and Number Symbols (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 169f. 16 Karl Brunner, Die englische Sprache: Ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung (Tübingen, 1960/1962), II, 92. © The Author(s) (2021). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - From Zero to Zillion: Etymological Notes on Some Number Terms
JF - Notes and Queries
DO - 10.1093/notesj/gjab160
DA - 2021-12-21
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/from-zero-to-zillion-etymological-notes-on-some-number-terms-4LB8FqHyni
SP - 383
EP - 387
VL - 68
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -