wherein Liz is a dilettante linguistics geek

[edenfalling]

I have a subscription to A Word a Day, which is a newsletter thing that, Monday through Friday, sends an email containing a word, its definition, and an example of that word used in a real life publication. Sometimes there is a theme for the week; sometimes the words are chosen at random. On weekends, the man who runs the list (Anu Garg) sends a compilation of various linguistics-related articles published online that week, as well as interesting feedback emails they received in relation to that week's words.

For the week of 5/4-5/8, the theme was forgotten positives: the chosen words were 'evitable,' 'wieldy,' 'exorable,' 'gainly,' and 'corrigible.'

One email in the weekly roundup caught my attention. M. Schueler writes:

During my years working for a beloved charity, one of the jobs concerned working with unhappy sponsors. I considered that responsibility to be the task of re-gruntling the disgruntled. It required a special type of personality, a person gifted with a great amount of ruth (it always bothered me that we use the word mercy as well as merciless, but we note ruth only in its absence).

This talk of 'ruth,' you see, is based on a faulty assumption. There is a pattern to these words that goes as follows: mercy, merciless, merciful; thought, thoughtless, thoughtful; faith, faithless, faithful; truth, truthless, truthful; help, helpless, helpful; etc.

According to that pattern, ruthless should be part of a sequence as follows: ruth, ruthless, ruthful. Unfortunately for Schueler's quip about 'ruth' being a useful quality, 'ruth' and 'ruthful' are not words in English.* But! Rue and rueful are.

I theorize, therefore, that the pattern originally went rue, rueless, rueful, but at some point before spellings were standardized, the pronunciation of 'rueless' shifted and acquired a 'th' before the 'less.' So 'ruthless' would originally have meant 'lacking the quality of rue or regret,' but its meaning has shifted slightly and become a closer synonym to 'merciless,' or to 'harsh.'

...

That has nothing to do with anything, really; it just amuses me.

*I grant you, 'Ruth' is a name, and one could have a lot of fun inventing etymologies of 'ruthless' based on the idea of a ruthless person being someone without the qualities of Ruth from the biblical Book of Ruth -- namely, love, compassion, and steadfast personal loyalty -- but that would be very silly. :-)

Comments

[gramina]

FWIW, here's what Etymology On Line has to say about it:

"ruthless: c.1327, from reuthe "pity, compassion" (c.1175), formed from reuwen "to rue" (see rue (v.)) on the model of true/truth, etc. Ruthful (c.1225) has fallen from use since late 17c. except as a deliberate archaism."

So it's sort of both!

[edenfalling]

Nifty!

I am informed by alchymie that:

Actually, the venerable OED cites both ruth and ruthful as honest-to-God English words. Ruth is "the quality of being compassionate; the feeling of sorrow for another; compassion, pity." Citations of use date as early as 1175 and as recently as 1878 (i.e. it was current when the OED was first compiled). Granted, they're now deemed "archaic", but that just enhances their charm in my eyes.

*crosses fingers against borked html*

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

I cannot tell you how many times, when I've had to leave a group of chatting friends (b/c I have something I have to go and do before the next day, or if its my bedtime or whatever), I hear some variation of, "Oh, no! Now we'll be Ruth-less!" *eyeroll*

OTOH, I guess it implies that my presence makes the world a kinder and better place (bwuh?), so I'm not really insulted . . . it's just more of a "if I had a dime for every time someone said that" reaction. ;)

[alchymie.livejournal.com]

It could be worse: you could be named Hope. :)

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You could always go the Swallows & Amazons way and call yourself Nancy, declaring "Pirates have to be ruthless."

[edenfalling]

I am beginning to think I really need to find and read this book/series/whatever. Who wrote it, and if it's a series, what are the titles and order of the books?

[edenfalling]

Yes, name jokes get old very fast. *sigh*

[alchymie.livejournal.com]

Actually, the venerable OED cites both ruth and ruthful as honest-to-God English words. Ruth is "the quality of being compassionate; the feeling of sorrow for another; compassion, pity." Citations of use date as early as 1175 and as recently as 1878 (i.e. it was current when the OED was first compiled). Granted, they're now deemed "archaic", but that just enhances their charm in my eyes.

[edenfalling]

Interesting! Along those lines, I am informed by gramina (over at Dreamwidth) that:

FWIW, here's what Etymology On Line has to say about it:

"ruthless: c.1327, from reuthe "pity, compassion" (c.1175), formed from reuwen "to rue" (see rue (v.)) on the model of true/truth, etc. Ruthful (c.1225) has fallen from use since late 17c. except as a deliberate archaism."

So rue and ruth come from the same root, which means that, in effect, the parallel patterns of 'rue, rueful, rueless' and 'ruth, ruthful, ruthless' have collapsed back into a single pattern of 'rue, rueful, ruthless' that reflects their common origin.

Language would not be half so fun if it weren't so convoluted!

This comment reposted to fix borked html.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I've seen 'ruth' used quite a few times in English.

Backformations* are of course nothing unusual - observe the verb 'edit'.
Old English method of turning verbs into agents: add - er.
Latin method of turning verbs into agents: add -tor.

Be just a little bit careless with your spelling and... whoops! You've just invented editing!

Which is a beautiful piece of irony.

*The above commenter tells me that this isn't actually a backformation. But they are fun!

[alchymie.livejournal.com]

Backformations are fun! Like the verb "to lase", backformed from the noun "laser" -- which was originally an acronym.

[edenfalling]

gramina at Dreamwidth has linked me to an online etymological dictionary, which has the following to say about 'edit':

edition: 1551, "act of publishing," from L. editionem (nom. editio) "a bringing forth, producing," from stem of edere "bring forth, produce," from ex- "out" + -dere, comb. form of dare "to give" (see date (1)). Meaning "form of a literary work" is from 1570. "It is awkward to speak of, e.g. 'The second edition of Campbell's edition of Plato's "Theætetus"'; but existing usage affords no satisfactory substitute for this inconvenient mode of expression" [OED]. Edit is 1791, probably as a back-formation of editor (1649), which, from its original meaning "publisher" had evolved by 1712 a sense of "person who prepares written matter for publication;" specific sense in newspapers is from 1803. Editorial "newspaper article by an editor" is Amer.Eng. 1830. Hence, editorialize (1856), "introduce opinions into factual accounts."

I think I am in love with this website. *sparkles*

Reposted to fix my html. I really should not hand code when I am half asleep. *headdesk*

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

D: Why are languages so confusing