Why 'Pierssene's Word Market' ?

Well, we have to have a name, don't we, and since a lot of this blog is likely to be about words and the English language, we may as well see it as a sort of stall with a variety of goods on offer. Visitors can have a look round, handle the goods, reject anything they don't like, and, if anything takes their fancy, take it home. Or just browse a bit and maybe come again in a week or two's time.

How about a wootz or a slughorn ? They're both displayed in The Merry Pedant*, as it happens, so are not available today. But can I interest you in a scrod or a tret ? Or would you prefer a manticore or a bucrane ?

* See address at bottom of the blog.

This manticore, now. The word actually refers to a beast with the body of a lion, the head of a man, the quills of a porcupine and the stinging tail of a scorpion. There is not much call for the word today, but our ancestors borrowed the word from Latin manticora, which itself came from the Greek mantichoras, which itself was a mis-reading of Greek martichoras which was apparently taken from a Persian term meaning a 'man-eater'. My copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (dated 1955) tells me all this: but I can't remember ever needing to use the word.

Manure, now, is different. It is a variant of the word manoeuvre, but you may well wonder what the connection is. Like so many of our words, we got it from French, whose language evolved from a rather crude form of Latin. The Latin elements in the word are manus (= hand) and operare + (to do or work). The English term 'manure' once implied 'working the land', which included digging and forking in muck. But chalk stone and sprats and seaweed have often been used as 'manures' - it's not all four-letter-word stuff.

Manoeuvre (basically the same word) started as a term for manual labour. But it came to suggest 'manipulation', crafty management; and from that it came to imply clever military tactics, outwitting the enemy on the battlefield. Then it came to mean just 'military exercises'.

Incidentally, manage, manual and manipulation are all derived from Latin manus too.

Why Pierssene's Word Market ?