DOUBLE MEANINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1939, Page 6

DOUBLE MEANINGS

SOME INTERESTING EXAMPLES. Have you ever thought how odd it is that one word may have far more than one meaning? Queen Elizabeth used to repay services of a noble nr preat soldier by granting him rights or exploitation over certain commodities or luxuries —which would make him rich without any expense to her. The Stuarts started to do the same thing. Hence a royalty, now arranged by a publisher—or the Government in the case of a mine-owner—once was a royal gift only. March is not only a month of the year (from the Roman war-god Mars), but a military walk, or tune, or a distance covered by marching, or a frontier —a region patrolled by marching guards—or in medieval England large tracts of land guarded for the King by Lords of the Marches. The connection between all these words is clear to follow.

But what about sack? It used to be a name for a sweet wine—Falstaff’s favourite—also a bag, to pillage, and cloth-material for men’s suits. The latter comes from saque, French for an old-fashioned, loose-fitting gown or cloak. Fine (from a Latin word meaning “finished") has broadened its meanings to include thin, like a needle, showy, splendid, refined—along with a noun from another root-word meaning a money penalty. A cipher, usually meaning some sort of secret writing, originally meant the letter o, and so to call a man a cipher means that he is a nonentity, a mere nothing. And oak does not only mean the wood and tree —it means the outer door of a London barrister’s rooms, or the room of a university student. If a student “sported his oak” it meant that he was shut up inside and did not want to be disturbed. Once most of these doors were made of oak. but other woods are now used frequently. Sometimes, you see, words have widened from their original meanings until you can barely recognise them. Often they look alike because they came from unrelated root-words, but the old spellings have been near enough for them to live together in these modern times.