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February 22, 2005

Obeisance

Abased by curiosity, brought back by satisfaction

 

 

 

 

-Martin Kite-Powell

 

 

Warning: What follows is an exaustoblog and is not for the faint of heart.

 

Please don’t call me crazy, sometimes things are just weird and true. If this post seems a little strange, there is good reason. It is!  …But don’t shoot the messenger. Those who love the English language will enjoy this post. Đose who love Icelandic may not.

 

I have a confession to make. I just learned a fairly inobscure word today. To the best of my knowledge at least, we have met for the first time. I know it is such a sad thing to admit, given the fact I think myself at least somewhat acquainted with English vocabulary and at least reasonably-well educated and read therein. In actuality, the rendezvous occurred last month; I “just” learned the word “obeisance” sometime the morning of the 6th of January. But it was not until today that I had formally come to know its meaning. You see, that morning I dreamt a peculiar dream. A dream in which I heard both word and definition, set in the neighborhood of 17th Century England, and not sparing the least detail. I was in the royal court and we were discussing protocol. The word came to play as one was explaining the royal subject’s formal first duties before the king.

 

The “slumbering” definition of the word was discovered today to be the actual definition as well, after a month or so of having put aside its quest. My strongest theory for their congruence is that my past acquaintance with this word has simply slipped my retention.

 

In reality, obeisance has been a word not altogether uncommon for the past 700 years except for some reason to my eyes and ears. The earliest form of the word appears to have entered the English language around 1374 (probably care of the Normans who brought with them to the Germanic Saxons the French language, from which the word was borrowed, though related words existed in the Germanic languages as loanwords from Latin long before this.)

 

 

Obeisance has at least two definitions:

 

1. A gesture or movement of the body, such as a curtsy, that expresses deference or homage.

 

2. An attitude of deference or homage.

 

(It also manifests in the adjectival form, obeisant)

 

However, its use during the Middle English period indicates that the word additionally carried the meaning, to be under the rule of, or at the service of another.

 

To wit:

 

…the people also born in youre Duchies of Gascoign, Guyen and Normandie, nowe being and that herafter shal be under youre obeisaunce…

 

-Grant of alien subsidy to Edward IV, 1483

Catalogue reference: C 65/113, no. 9

 

 

This makes sense since it shares its root and meaning with “obey”. Its lineage is as follows:

 

Middle English obeisaunce, from Old French obeissance, from obeissant, present participle of obeir, to obey.

 

 

To the best of my memory this is the first period-piece dream I have entertained. The dream was so strikingly real and the specifics such as the strange word which was defined in the dream itself so odd, that upon my awaking I decided immediately to see just how crazy I might be for making up words in my sleep, and then looking them up. To my surprise today, as I have mentioned, the research did not disappoint, rather instead it raised an eyebrow. The reason it was not until today I found its rather stunning meaning was partially also due to my choice of spelling. I had failed to take into consideration the matter of dialect in the pronunciation (the players in the dream were all heavily accented – I favor realism, it seems), ergo the likely spelling of the word, which I had guessed began with either an “a” or an “o”, but only searched for words beginning with “a”. (By the way, there is an obsolete -since at least 1913- alternate spelling of the word beginning with an “a”: abeisance. However, I could not find any literary examples of its use in this format from any period.) In the dream I had imagined what I heard as spelled “appeisence” or “oppeisence”, due to its manner of pronunciation”.*

 

So alas, I have not only learned finally this word, but began even to enjoy the entomology of this word’s etymology. Or in other words, become rather fond of what has for the past month or so been bugging me.

 

 

 

 

 

For fun here are some related links:

 

Free Republic’s Word of the Day: Please be sure to read posts 32, 47, 69, 145 (most of these are Old English from around the 15th Century (or OE constructions in which rather humorously the posters forgot to use obeisance’s period spelling).

 

Myn Englissh eek is insufficient: Chaucer feels my pain, I suppose. Here’s his use of the word in “Heere Bigynneth the Squieres Tale”

 

This strange knyght, that cam thus sodeynly,

Al armed, save his heed, ful richely,

Saleweth kyng and queene and lordes alle,

By ordre, as they seten in the halle,

With so heigh reverence and obeisaunce,

As wel in speche as in countenaunce,

That Gawayn, with his olde curteisye,

Though he were comen ayeyn out of Fairye,

Ne koude hym nat amende with a word.

 

(A passing attempt for modern English without aid of lexicon or desire to find one:

 

This strange knight, that came thus suddenly,

All armored, save his head, full richly,

Sail with king and queen and lords all,

By order, as they sit in the hall

With so high reverence and obeisance,

As well in speech as in countenance,

That Gawayn, with his old courtesy,

Though he had come again from Fairye

Nor could him not amend with a word.)

 

 

 

 

* A few facts useless to all but to the most energized linguists:

 

According to most dictionaries, “abeisance” is a variant of obeisance. Ironically, it is often confused with the French word, “abaisser”, meaning in English “to abase”, or to be brought low or to be humbled, of seemingly similar etymological origin as “obey” particularly when you return to the modern definition of obeisance, which is to bow, to present oneself subjugate, to genuflect, etc or to be of such a mindset. However, the Latin roots of both words more likely paint a different picture, though there always could be a reconvergence at an earlier point in Latin. But the earliest-known Indo-European roots suggest otherwise. The word abase comes from vulgar Latin, “bassiare”, (relating to something that is low) whereas to obey stems from the Latin, “oboedire” (to listen to –still at least somewhat connected in idea if not in origin) – incidentally, they also possibly share a more ancient root with “bid” (as in to do the bidding) from Middle English “bidden” [to ask, (also beseech, pray) command] or the German “bitte” [to ask, insist or thank (by insisting)], Middle English “beden” (to offer, proclaim) or the German “beten” (to offer, proclaim or to pray), all of which derive from the Indo-European “bheudh”. Even with the different roots of “oboedire” and “bassiare” one could imagine similarities between them given the shifts of t’s, d’s and s’s and in some cases b’s, as well as prefixal additions and removals. But at the end of the day “oboedire” resolves into “audire” (to listen) but “bassiare” is of unknown origin beyond “bassus” (low). As such, any relation is long at the tooth to say the least. Still, clearly even with the root of obeisance solidly in “obey”, at least the Middle English meaning included modern definitions of “abase” which might have explained some of the confusion in more modern times, as mentioned at the introduction to this aside, and today the words “obey” and “abase” also share some crossover and by their sheer phonetics tempt one to draw conclusions.

 

Posted by Martin at February 22, 2005 02:20 AM

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