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Topic: Silly

A correspondent passed along some information on the history of silly that she thought might be of interest: in brief, silly has neither always nor only meant "foolish; inane; vacuous;" its linguistic ancestors had such various meanings as "happy; blessed; innocent; pitiable; feeble" and "silly." Many of those senses were used in the English spoken from the 12th century on. In fact, it wasn't until the 16th century that the foolish sense of silly appeared, and, as modern usage shows, became well-established.

The history of silly reminds of us of other synonyms for the modern sense of silly. The collection ranges from the now-obsolete maggot-pated to the now-archaic sheepshead. Still current silly words include the lofty-sounding anserine and anserous (both from the Latin anser meaning "goose"); the dialectal goosecap, shanny, and cranky; and the dismissive idleheaded and nitwitted.

Idleheaded and nitwitted are easily understood, but let's check out the stories behind the intriguing shanny and cranky. The crank in cranky comes from the crank naming a "person with a fanciful, impractical, or crackbrained obsession or project;" shanny, which is a dialectal term used in England, is believed to have originated in shandy (as in Lawrence Sterne's 18th century comic novel, Tristram Shandy). The origin of shandy remains unknown, but that term has long been used in the sense "wild and inclined to irresponsible ideas."

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

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