Ó hAoḋa

The Bifurcation of Hiberno-English Words

Doublets are pairs of words in the same language which, despite often having different meanings, are derived from the same root (or etymon)¹. As you might imagine, they are rather common in any given language, and form an indispensable component of such a language’s vocabulary. Particularly fascinating are doublets for which the divergence occurred long ago: for example, we can approximately date the invention of the wheel by tracing the English-language doublets wheel (of Germanic origin), cycle (from Latin via Greek), and chakra (from Sanskrit) to the Proto-Indo-European root *kʷékʷlo-² — which tells us that the wheels must have been known to the society of that period.

Similarly interesting, however, are the doublets which diverged relatively recently: for example, in Modern English, clew and clue are two distinct words with two distinct meanings, but one needn’t go back far to discover when the words were one and the same. An example of this across which I happened only this can be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall (published 1835)

…not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk — had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery

The meaning of clew as a ball of thread has existed in English since the 12^th century³, and came to have the sense of “a guide” or a “piece of useful information” under the influence of the Greek myth of Theseus in the Labyrinth, which he navigated by unwinding a spool of thread. There is something particularly interesting — I think — in observing such recent divergences; and, I am of the belief that such divergences can be witnessed before our very eyes (probably in a number of circumstances, but notably…) in Hiberno-English.

In Hiberno-English, as in any dialect, there are a number of words which are of standard English origin, but contain in Hiberno-English meanings not found in standard English. For example, the word grand has the standard English meanings of large, or fine (as in “of good quality”), or something small or thin, or (in noun form) a thousand, but also the unique meaning of fine as in “acceptable”.

As Hiberno-English accents become more standardised, or perhaps anglicised, under global media influence of American and British English, certain regional pronunciations of standard English words are becoming increasingly uncommon; for example, one rarely hears chimley instead of chimney or crips instead of crisps anymore, except from the elderly. And as this occurs, the bifurcation of Hiberno-English words with unique Hiberno-English meanings into a standard English variant and a Hiberno-English variant can be observed.

Growing up in rural Ireland, a common insult for a person of miserly disposition was “a maen⁴ bastard”. Clearly, this word maen is identical with the standard English word mean, and was pronounced identically by older individuals; indeed mean in the sense of “miserly” as opposed to “unkind”, while increasingly uncommon (and not to be found at all in America), does exist both historically and regionally in British English. The younger Irish generations, however, with their increasingly globalised accents, would pronounce the word mean in a broadly similar manner to the British and American counterparts — that is, with the exception of the word in the sense of “miserly”. To be understood in Hiberno-English as meaning “miserly”, one must not say mean, but maen. Under the influence of increasingly standardised and globalised English, the word has bifurcated into the standard version, with its standard pronunciation and meaning, and the dialectal version, with its unique pronunciation and meaning from Hiberno-English, but without the standard meaning.

I think that the present moment affords us the possibility to witness doublets being formed before our very eyes (or ears). Further examples of this phenomenon include bold and bauld — formerly pronounced identically in Hiberno-English — taking on distinct meaning: the standard pronunciation taking the standard meaning of “daring” while the dialectal pronunciation takes on the dialectal meaning of “naughty”. Here, the progress is less pronounced, in part — I believe — due to some overlap between the standard version sometimes meaning “impudent” and the dialectal version specifically referring to naughtiness, usually of a child. Therefore, unlike maen and mean, bauld would be more commonly understood as a regional pronunciation of bold (although rarely would one encounter someone who pronounces the standard sense of bold in the dialectal manner, or vice-versa); I have, however, witnessed those who ordinarily use the standard pronunciation using the Hiberno pronunciation to emphasise the Hiberno meaning, and even spelling the word as bauld over text. Further examples can be seen with queer (as in LGBT) and quare (as in unusual, a sense which is becoming increasingly archaic in standard English) or old (as in agèd) and auld (as in “any old thing”).

A recent, yet now completed, example of such bifurcation can be seen in the origin of the word craic: originally the English word crack as in wisecrack, meaning lively conversation or gossip, this meaning was largely forgotten in standard English and preserved in Hiberno-English. Borrowed then into the Irish langauge as craic (pronounced identically), the English origins of the term were largely forgotten, and it was re-borrowed into English with the Gaelic spelling, leaving us with two words: the standard crack and the dialectal craic.

I’m sure there are many more such examples which I have neglected to mention here, and if anyone reading this can think of any themselves, I would encourage them to let me know. It’s quite interesting to be able to witness the evolution of language and the origins of words in real-time, and there’s something particularly intriguing about this kind of doublet-forming, in which both senses form in the same language, under regional influences.