Interesting for Word Nerds.

One of the factoids I've collected about the English language is that it's mostly not English. I've been told - OK, it was my college linguistics professor - that English is about 40% Norman French, 40% foreign borrowings, and 20% Anglo-Saxon.

On the other hand, this Ideas Illustrated post suggests that there is an 80/20 rule in effect, and the 20% of the language that is native gets the most use.

Another well-established factoid that may be wrong.

I've frequently heard that the magician's incantation of "hocus pocus" derives from the Catholic words of instantiation, i.e, "hoc est enim corpus."  But that well-established fact seems to be on shaky grounds:

Thomas Ady’s 1656 A Candle In The Dark identifies a particular juggler who used that name and the word in his patter:

I will speak of one man...that went about in King James his time...who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery.

The use of hocus-pocus as part of an incantation dates to 1632. From Thomas Randolph’s The Jealous Lovers of that year:

Hocus-pocus, here you shall have me, and there you shall have me!

Some contend that hocus-pocus is a play on the words in the Latin mass hoc est corpus. While this seems very plausible, there is no evidence to support it and the other Latin words in the mass do not match with those given in Ady’s 1656 account of the juggler’s patter

Check here at "EverythingyouknowaboutEnglishiswrong" for a further discussion of this issue.

The Word Nerd Cometh.

In legal practice, "tax" can be a confusing word. As applied to the costs that are recoverable after a party wins a lawsuit, to "tax costs" means either the amount that a prevailing party is permitted to recover from the losing party or it means the amount that the losing party can subtract from the prevailing party's cost bill.  For example, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule 54(d)(1) provides:

"(1) Costs Other Than Attorney's Fees. Unless a federal statute, these rules, or a court order provides otherwise, costs--other than attorney's fees--should be allowed to the prevailing party. But costs against the United States, its officers, and its agencies may be imposed only to the extent allowed by law. The clerk may tax costs on 14 days' notice. On motion served within the next 7 days, the court may review the clerk's action."

On the other hand, California law recognizes that the losing party can file a motion to "tax costs", i.e., challenging particular items in the prevailing party's cost bill.

Undoubtedly, this confusion has something to do with semantics of taxation as it is experienced in regular life; taxes take things away from us; they do not give us anything.  So, to "tax costs" seems to mean that something is being deducted or taken away from costs.

On the other hand, the etymological roots of "tax" include things like "enroll" or "enlist."  The Online Etymological Dictionary advises:

tax (v.)


late 13c., from O.Fr. taxer "impose a tax" (13c.), from L. taxare "evaluate, estimate, assess, handle," also "censure, charge," probably a frequentative form of tangere "to touch" (see tangent). Sense of "burden, put a strain on" first recorded 1670s; that of "censure, reprove" is from 1560s. Use in Luke ii for Gk. apographein "to enter on a list, enroll" is due to Tyndale. The noun is recorded from early 14c. Tax shelter is attested from 1961; taxpayer from 1816.

Wordorigins.com supports the notion that "to tax costs" is to add costs to the amount levied on the losing party:

tax


Word History

Date of Origin 13th c.

Tax originally denoted ‘assess an amount to be levied’; the notion of ‘imposing such a levy’ is a secondary development. The word comes via Old French taxer from Latin taxāre ‘touch, assess, appraise’, a derivative of tangere ‘touch’ (source of English contact, tangible, etc). From taxāre was derived the medieval Latin noun taxa ‘tax, piece of work imposed’, which passed into English via Anglo-Norman tasque as task (13th c.).

However, given the confusion of the word "tax," it might be better to avoid it entirely and use the word "recover" in the former situation and "object" in the latter.

An interesting sidenote is that the name of the vehical that takes us to the airport is derived from the word that signifies government oppression:

Etymology of taxi, tax.


The word taxi is shortening of the taximeter cab (introduced in London in March 1907), from taximeter (automatic meter to record the distance and fare) [1898] from the French taximetre, from the German Taxameter (1890), which was coined from the Latin taxa (tax, charge) from taxo (to evaluate, to put in an order, to fix the value of a thing, to rate, to tax, to touch), from the Greek verb tasso (to put in an order, to fix the value of a thing; τάσσω).

From the same root:

English: taximeter, taxation, tax- (-collector, -free, -payer etc), taxis, taxology, taxonomy, task.
French: taxer, taxation, taxe, taxi, taximetre, taxiphone, tache
Italian: tassare, tassazione, tasso, tassi
Spanish: tasar, tasacion, tasa, taxi, taximetro
German: taxieren, Taxierung, Taxe, Taxi, Taxameter

This makes some sense in light of the notion that "taxing" signifies "adding up," and not, as we normally think, "taking away."