The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language (23 page)

The Human Body

The body, by virtue of proximity, is the source of at least a thousand and one words and phrases. There’s barely a part of you left that hasn’t been made into some sort of verb. Most, like
heading off
, or
stomaching criticism
, are obvious. Some are less so.
Footing the bill
, for example, is a strange phrase until you remember basic arithmetic. You compile a bill by writing down the various charges in a column and then working out the total, which you write at the
foot
of the column. At this point you may find that you are paying
through the nose
, which seems to be a reference to the pain of a nosebleed.

There are phrases based on parts of the body that you probably didn’t know you had. The
heart strings
, for example, upon which people so often play and tug are actual and vital parts of your heart. The medical name for them is the
chordae tendineae
, and if anyone ever actually pulled on them it would at least cause an arrhythmia and probably kill you.

There are words that don’t appear to have anything to do with the body but do, like
window
, which was originally a
wind-eye
, because, though you can look out through it like an eye, in the days before glass the wind could get in.

There’s more in your eye than meets the eye. For a start there are apples. Early anatomists thought that the centre of the eye was a solid that appeared to be shaped like an apple, hence the
apple of your eye
. These days it has an even stranger name. It’s called a
pupil
. And, yes, that’s the same sort of pupil you have in a school.

In Latin a little boy was called a
pupus
and a little girl was called a
pupa
(which is also where we get
pupae
for baby insects). When they went to school they became school
pupils
. Now gaze deeply into somebody’s eyes. Anyone will do. What do you see? You ought to see a tiny reflection of yourself gazing back. This little version of you seems like a child, and that’s why it’s a
pupil
.

But the part of your body that has the most words named after it is the hand.

The Five Fingers

And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number.

2 Samuel XXI, v. 20

Human beings count in tens. We say twenty-one, two, three etc. until we get to twenty-nine, thirty. Then we start again with thirty-one, two, three, four until we get to another multiple of ten and the process repeats. The reason we do this is that we have five fingers on each hand, making ten in total. If the three-fingered sloth could count, he would probably do so in groups of six.

Counting on your fingers is such a natural thing to do that the word
digit
, which originally just meant
finger
, now means
number
as well. This also means that when information is stored in the form of numbers it becomes
digital
.

The Old English names for the fingers were much more fun than our own. The
index finger
was once the
towcher
, or
toucher
, because it was used for
touching
things. We call it the index finger, but not because we use it for running through the index of a book. Both
indexes
come from the Latin word
indicare
because an index, whether it’s in a book or on your hand, can
indicate
or point you in the right direction. It’s the
pointing
finger.

The boringly-named
middle finger
was once called the
fool’s finger
. The Romans called it
digitus infamis
(
infamous
),
obscenus
(
obscene
), and
impudicus
(
rude
). This is because they invented the habit of sticking the middle finger up at people they didn’t like. The Roman poet Martial once wrote an epigram that went:

Rideto multum qui te, Sextille, cinaedum

dixerit et digitum porrigito medium

Which translates
extraordinarily
loosely as:

If you are called a poof don’t pause or linger

But laugh and show the chap your middle finger.

The fourth finger has a strange anatomical property that gives it both its ancient and modern names: the
leech finger
and the
ring finger
.

There is a vein that runs directly from the fourth finger to the heart, or at least that’s what doctors used to believe. Nobody is quite sure why, as there isn’t actually any such thing. Yet it was this belief that made the fourth finger vital in medieval medicine. Doctors reasoned that if this finger connected directly to the heart, then it was probably possible to use it as a proxy. You could cure heart disease and treat heart attacks simply by doing things to the fourth finger of the patient’s hand. The medieval word for a doctor was a
leech
,
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and so this digit used to be known as the
leech finger
.

Who would be so silly as to believe anything like that nowadays? Well, anybody who’s married. You see, we put the wedding ring on that finger precisely because of that non-existent vein. If the finger and the heart are that closely connected, then you can trap your lover’s heart simply by encircling the finger in a gold ring. Hence
ring finger
.

And the little finger? Well the Old English used to use that for scratching their ears, and so they called it the
ear finger
.

16
Contrary to popular belief, this probably has nothing to do with their sticking leeches on their patients.

Hoax Bodies

Let us finish our tour of the human body with the Latin word for the whole thing:
corpus
. It’s pretty obvious how this word gave us
corpse
and
corporal
punishment. It’s a lot less obvious how it gave us words for magic and fraud. To explain that we’ll have to go back to a certain supper that took place in Jerusalem in around 33 AD.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

Matthew XXVI, v. 26

Funny chap, Jesus. First, it’s a little strange to assert that a piece of bread is your body. If you or I tried that we wouldn’t be believed. We certainly wouldn’t be allowed to run a bakery. Yet, given that Jesus was the son of God,
17
we’ll just have to take him at his word.

What’s odd is the cannibalistic non-sequitur. If Jesus had said, ‘Take, eat; this is plain old bread and not human flesh’, then the sentence would make sense. As it is, Jesus tells his disciples, ‘This is not bread, this is human flesh. What’s more, it’s my flesh. Now eat it up like good little cannibals.’

It’s enough to make you curious.

Christianity’s cannibalism is something so central to Western culture that it often escapes our notice. During the crusades, the Muslims got rather worried about it. Nobody was sure how far the Christian’s cannibalism went, and rumours spread around the Near East of Muslims being cooked and eaten. When the Christians tried to explain that they only ate God, they just seemed to be adding blasphemy to their sins.

You were meant to take the cannibalism literally, as well. At the time, a Christian could be burnt at the stake for denying the literal truth of transubstantiation. The communion wafer was
actually
turned into Jesus’ flesh. All that remained of the original wafer were what theologians called the
accidentals
. The accidentals were those qualities that meant that the wafer still looked, smelled, felt and tasted like a wafer. Other than that it was wholly transformed.

This change was effected by the priest taking the wafer and saying the magic words: ‘
Hoc est corpus meum
: this is my body.’

And then in the sixteenth century Protestantism happened. This new form of Christianity asserted, among other things, that the wafer did
not
turn into Jesus’ flesh but merely represented it.

Rather than behaving like gentlemen and agreeing to differ, the Protestants and Catholics got into an awful spat about whether the wafer was or wasn’t the Lord’s flesh, and did all sorts of things like burning each other, attaching each other to racks and making jokes at each other’s expense.

In the court of the Protestant King James I, there was a clown who used to perform comical magic tricks, during which he would intone the cod-magical words:
Hocus Pocus
. Indeed, the clown called himself
His Majesty’s Most Excellent Hocus Pocus
, and the phrase caught on. Where did it come from?

In all probability [says a seventeenth-century sermon] those common juggling words of
hocus pocus
are nothing else but a corruption of
hoc est corpus
, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.

From the body to cannibalism to religion to magic:
corpus
has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go.
Hocus pocus
got shortened to
hoax
.

The words of Jesus had been translated, parodied, shortened, and now they meant an outright, barefaced con. And it didn’t stop there.
Hoax
got changed again: not shortened this time, but lengthened.
Hoax
became
hokum
, an American phrase meaning
nonsense
or
rubbish
or
bunkum
. In fact, it probably gained its –
kum
in order to make it sound more like
bunkum
.

Now, does
bunkum
relate to
bunk beds
,
golfing bunkers
, or
reedy valleys
?

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This point has occasionally been disputed by people who will burn for ever in God’s loving torment.

Bunking and Debunking

It’s awfully tempting to think that
debunking
has something to do with bunk beds. One imagines that a false idea is found snoozing under a duvet, is woken up and thrown out of his bunk bed by big, burly reason. This is, alas, nonsense.

Debunking is the process of getting rid of an idea that is
bunk
or
bunkum
.
Bunkum
, as we all know, is complete and utter nonsense, but it’s also a place in North Carolina. Buncombe County is in the west of the state, a rather pretty and rural area that became a byword for claptrap.

In 1820 the Congress of the United States was debating the Missouri Question. The Missouri Question was to do with slavery and the answer turned out to be the Missouri Compromise. Towards the end of the debate a Congressman called Felix Walker stood up, cleared his throat, began to speak, and wouldn’t stop.

He went on and on until people started to get fidgety, and on and on until people started to get annoyed, and on and on until people started to jeer, and on and on until people started to tap him on the shoulder and tell him to stop, and on and on until there was a small crowd round him demanding to know
why
he wouldn’t stop.