I don't have my references handy for this, but I believe that
the term 'cat-gut' grew out of
a commercial marque in Germany. 'Kaet' was a trade name,
apparently a successful one,
and the term 'cat gut' derives from this in the same way as
'kleenex' has.
Damian
Dear Alexander and all
As I have not quite had time to write up a description
of
Charles Besnainou's "Spiramid" strings (I should be able to
do so
soon). I would just like to return briefly to the etymology
question,
and explain what I mean by safer or unsafe etymology:
I must insist that I was not saying that the 'caterpillar-gut"
etymology was necessarily any worse than any of the others
that have
been cited recently. However, there are many chance
similarities
between words that are not in fact related in any way, and
sometimes
they just happe to have some meaning in common, without in
fact being
related. Such cases, cannot be used as evidence in favour of a
string
hypothesis, they must be considered anecdotal (although again
that in
no way disproves the hypothesis).
A famous case of ideological etymology was the imagined
relation
between the name Brutus and the name Britain and British.
"Brute of Troy is a legendary descendant of the Trojan hero
Aeneas,
was known in medieval British legend as the eponymous founder
and
first king of Britain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy
If one simply relies on a similarity between words, there is a
risk
of circularity: you find what you look for. As to "catgut" and
"catline", there are at least three hypotheses that are not
soundly
based on linguistic arguments: "caterpillar-gut",
"cattle-gut",
"catapult-gut", alongside simple "cat-gut" (I will suggest
another
one later). Both caterpillar-gut and catapult-gut are an
attempt to
support a theory of an original string type. Can we be sure
that
either is safer than the "Brute" = "British" hypothesis.
(note that the cat in caterpillar (= feline), the cat in
cattle
(derived from capital) and the cat in catapult (Greek Kata
'against')
are all of different origin, and have a chance first syllable
in
common. This shows exactly how careful you need to be).
It is notoriously difficult to prove or disprove such
analyses,
unless you can find some intermediary from, or an interesting
variant
in some dialect.
For example, "cater" is in fact a "tom-cat", if we found an
intermediary form that was "cater-gut" the theory would be
home and
dry. In French there is another form for caterpillar which is
chenille (or little dog), now if in some dialect of French we
found
the expression, "boyau de chenille", again we could be pretty
happy
for that hypothesis. Don't forget that the French expression
is
"boyau de chat".
In English, the word for caterpillar could also have been
"catkin" (that is quite plausible, as a "catkin" is very much
like a
hairy caterpillar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Ament_inflorescence.jpg
Now it would be easy to derive the English "cat-gut" from
"cat-kin
gut", as in English very generally the unstressed element of
such
forms can drop, so we might lose the intermediary "kin".
Nevertheless, if we could find just one example of "cat-kin
gut" the
analysis would be safer.
Furthermore, how do we get the French form "boyau de chat".?
Let us
suppose that in French, we also had the from "chaton" (small
cat),
for caterpillar, so we would have "boyau de chaton". There is
no
obvious reason why the last syllable would be lost, unless of
course,
the caterpillar origin was forgotten, and French people just
couldn't
believe that the gut came from a small cat, and so they just
called
it "boyau de chat" (but we would prefer it to have been a
typical
French phonetic process, loss of the final unstressed
syllable. That
is common in English, but not quite so in French, although we
do have
"chef" derived from "caput" so it remains a possibility).
I agree with Alexander that "cattle-gut" is no safer (remember
that
cattle comes from "capital"). It is easy to obtain "cat-gut"
by the
loss of the weak syllable in English, but it is a pity we have
no
example of the full item, "cattle-gut".
Now how do we get "boyau de chat" from this. In Modern French
the
equivalent word is "cheptel", but through English we know that
there
was also an old form "chattel" (which we still have with a
slightly
different meaning in English"). So now how do we get "boyau de
chat"
from ""boyau de chattel"?, Why don't we have a variant that is
"boyau
de cheptel"?
One might just as well suppose that "catgut" and "boyau de
chat" were
ironical remarks about the way most musicians played on the
things,
"catawailing". I don't actually, think this is so.
Now I am not saying that any of the above etymologies are
mistaken,
they are just not sound. Perhaps, new discoveries may make
them sound.
Just to mention two safer etymologies, relating to strings:
"Minikin" is now believed to mean from Munich. This is not
just
because Mace mentions Minikin alongside Venice and Pistoy, and
that
"minikin" vaguely resembles Munchen. There are two other
almost
identical forms in English but of completely diferent orin,
one from
Latin Mini+kin, and one from Dutch. This is the more
interesting :
mini·kin noun, 1. Obsolete a darling, 2. Rare anything very
small
and delicate Etymology: MDu minneken, dim. of minne, love: see
minnesinger
Of course, one could easily suppose a minikin string meant
"something
small and delicate" and so from the Dutch origin.
However, fortunately, Dowland's use of the from "monikin" ,
allows us
to see how this form could have been derived from "monachen"
(the
origin of Munchen, meaning monastery, and related to the word
monachus, "monk"). It is due to the "o" vowel that the
analysis is
fairly safe.
Note that we do have an old process in English of umlaut:
monastery,
is the origin of Minster.
However, it may be that the two words "sort of merged" and
that by
the time of Mace the string could have been from Munchen, but
also
"small and delicate". Yet Mace himself says this was not so.
They are
so strong they cut into your hand, so we can be fairly sure of
the
munchen origin.
Nevertheless, we should beware even here about taking the
etymology
too literally. The origin is form Munich, but does that mean
the
string was actually from Munich. It could be that all samll
strings
were called Munichs, just as at one time all vacuum cleaners
were
called hoovers.
Just notice what Americans call a robbin. The origin is
clearly the
word we find in UK English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turdus-migratorius-002.jpg
So we must not read too much even into a "safe etymology".
While talking about strings and rope, for a layman deriving
English
"Hemp" and French "chanvre" from a Greek form for Cannabis,
must seem
much more exotic than the caterpilar-gut hypothesis, but not
so for a
linguist. This is considered a very safe etymology, just
because of
the number of phonetic processes involved, all backed up by
similar
changes in other words: For the English, Kanabis > hemp, we
see the
regular "First Germanic consonant shift" : kanabis > hanapis
(just
like Kardia > heart), hanapis > henep through Anglo-saxo
i/j-umlaut
(just like manniz gives men), henep: giving "henep", and
unstressed
vowel dropping gives "hemp" (just like OE emmet gave ant).
French in
the south of France we have the older form Canebière which
gives
central French "Chanvre " by regular palatalization of K
before /a/
(just as in chateau, etc.)
An excellent text book relating to this, is Historical
Linguistics
and Language Change by Roger Lass, CUP.
Regards
Anthony
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