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Cow words #3: Vaccine & Pecuniary Vaccine appears first in English as an adjective in 1798, perhaps coined by Doctor Edward Jenner, inventor of vaccination. Jenner seems to have adapted it from the eighteenth-century medical name for cow-pox, variolae vaccinae where vaccinus is a Late Latin adjective ‘pertaining to cows’ from Latin vacca ‘cow.’ In last week’s column I wrote extensively about the Variola appears in English pathology texts by 1771 as the medical Latin name for smallpox. Variolae vaccinae is cow-pox. Variola means pustule, that which causes the ‘pock’ marks of ‘pox.’ Variola is a Late Latin diminutive form of varius, a Latin adjective meaning spotted and ‘of several colours.’ Soon after its adjectival debut, the word vaccine also becomes a noun (1803) meaning ‘the matter used in vaccination’ and injected into humans by means of a hypodermic needle (hypo Greek ‘under’ + derma Greek ‘skin.’ By 1803 the verb vaccinate has poked its way into English medical parlance. Its prime and sensuous meaning was “to inoculate a person with a small sample of the virus of cow-pox as a protection against smallpox.” For the story of how Edward Jenner happened upon vaccination technique, visit Charles Hodgson’s Podictionary by clicking the link below. It is a fascinating medical story well-told. http://www.podictionary.com/?p=573
Early 19th-century caricature of infant vaccination
Pecu & Pecus We now tiptoe to another stall in the cowshed of words to look at English derivatives of two Latin cow words: pecu and pecus, both meaning ‘flock (of sheep) or herd (of cattle). Pecunia A Latin word for money, pecunia, evolved from pecus. Some believe that cattle herds represented a very early form of Roman wealth. Others go farther to posit that Roman coins first represented “tokens” for cattle traded. I can find not a jot or tittle of proof for this in any extant Latin text. Perhaps a reader can email me such a citation? What is true is that our English adjective pecuniary pertains to money. Money matters may be called pecuniary matters. An oft-quoted bit of Latin mirth was spoken by the Roman emperor Vespasian when he was told that the treasury of the state was emptying quickly. In order to raise new sources of money, Vespasian ordered a tax on public urinals. Some of the Roman senators were aghast. How vulgar to demean the majesty of Rome by taxing urination! Vespasian listened calmly to the senatorial splutterings of outrage and then said simply, “Pecuna non olet.” ‘The money doesn’t smell.’ How widespread was the emperor’s little joke? Well, even today, the literary word for ‘street urinal’ in French is la vespasienne. The commoner term is pissoir. What a Servile Herd! The best known Latin phrase containing the word pecus is a tag from a poem (Horace, Epistles 1, xix, 1) in the form of a letter written by theRoman poet Horace: “O imitatores, servum pecus!” the gist of which is―‘O (you) imitators (of my poems, what a ) slavish herd of cows (you are)!’ Peculiar Peculiar also harks back to pecu Latin ‘herd.’ Nowadays we possess one extant text of actual Roman etymology, an error-filled but invaluable book entitled De Lingua Latina (‘Concerning the Latin Language’) by Varro. It states that in early Latin peculium referred to a person’s private wealth as expressed in herds of livestock. By the time of the Roman empire, peculium had developed several special legal senses in Roman law. Peculium was your private property. Its adjective, peculiaris, meant therefore ‘pertaining to a goods and properties, then personal material, personal traits, exceptional talents, in short, anything peculiar to one person. The leap from that meaning of the word to today’s English sense where peculiar usually means ‘odd’ or ‘strange’ is not great.
Sacred Cow The phrase ‘sacred cow’ first appears in English in a book titled Beast & Man in India written by John Lockwood Kipling, father of a much more famous son, the English author Rudyard Kipling. It refers to the reverence in which Hindus hold the cow and Muslims don’t. This is an Indian anti-Muslim poster showing an evil, pig-headed divinity hoisting a sword to slaughter a sacred cow. And so, with this bouoctony averted, we shall take our leave. Bouoctony (pronounced boo-OC-tuny) is a Greek word referring to the ceremonial slaughter of cows. Seek it not in the staid pages of dictionaries, for I made it up out of two good, solid Greek roots, namely bou- Greek ‘cow’ + octonia ‘slaughter, killing.’
© 2007 William Gordon Casselman
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