imp

We all know that an imp is a small devil or demon, or somewhat more playfully, a mischievous child. But it was not always so. Would you believe that imp originally meant a shoot of a plant, a sapling?

Imp is an old word, dating to Old English, and back then an impe was a small plant. Although the noun only appears once in the extant Old English corpus, in the late ninth-century translation of Pope Gregory the Great’s Cura pastoralis (Pastoral Care). The translation is generally credited to King Alfred the Great (reigned 871–99), although the degree of Alfred’s participation in the project is uncertain, and he certainly did not accomplish it without the aid of his tutors. The following passage is commentary on the biblical Song of Songs that uses imp to mean a shoot or graft of a plant:

Geheirað hwæt on Cantica Canitcorum is awriten, ðæt se brydguma scolde sprecan to ðære bryde: he cwæð, “Hlyst hider, ðu ðe eardasð on freondes orcgearde, ond gedoo ðæt ic mæge gehiran ðine stemne.” Ðæt is sio halige gesomnung Godes folces, ðæt eardað on æppeltunum, ðonne hie wel begað hira plantan & hiera impan, oð hie fulweaxne beoð.

(Hear what is written in the Song of Songs, that which the bridegroom should say to the bride: he says, “Listen here, you dwell in a friend’s garden, and make it so that I may hear your voice.” That is the holy congregation of God’s people, which dwells in the apple orchards, when they cultivate well their plants & their imps, until they are full grown.)

This is commentary on the Song of Songs 8:13, which reads in the Vulgate (the version that both Gregory and Alfred would have used):

quae habitas in hortis amici auscultant fac me audire vocem tuam

(You who dwell in the gardens, my friends are listening: make me hear thy voice.)

While the noun impe only appears once, it appears several more times as an element in place names, where it probably means sapling. There is also a verb form, impian, meaning to implant or graft the shoot of a plant, which also only appears once. These botanic senses are now obsolete.

By the late fourteenth century, imp had made the jump from flora to people and was being used to mean a child, especially the scion of a noble house. This transition can be readily seen in two examples, a few decades apart. The first, uses an extended metaphor of plant growth in reference to a prince. The poem, Seldom Seen Is Soon Forgot, was written c. 1377, on the occasion of the death of King Edward III. It says of Edward’s grandson, Richard II, who succeeded his grandfather when he was just ten years old:

Weor þat Impe ffully growe,
Þat he had sarri sap and piþ,
I hope he schulde be kud and knowe
ffor Conquerour of moni a kiþ.

(Were that imp fully grown,
so that he had pleasing sap and pith,
I hope he should be famous and known
as conqueror of many a nation.)

The anonymous poet’s hopes were not to be realized, as Richard II was a rather weak king. Compare that to this line about another prince written by Thomas Hoccleve c. 1411 in the envoy to his Regement of Princes, which lacks any overt botanical references:

O litell booke, who yafe the hardynesse
Thy wordës to pronounce in the presence
Of kyngës Impe and princes worthynesse
Syn thou all naked art of eloquence?

(Oh little book, who gave [you] the courage to pronounce your words in the presence of the king’s imp and the excellence of princes since you are all naked of eloquence?)

Hoccleve’s poem was written for the prince who would become Henry V, who as an adult would fulfill the earlier, anonymous poet’s hopes for a conqueror-prince.

It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that the word acquired its devilish connotation. It started to be used in phrases like imp of a serpent or imp of the devil. For example, a line in William Bonde’s 1526 Pylgrimage of Perfection reads:

Suche appereth as angelles, but in very dede they be ymps of serpentes, fayre in face, and their hertes full of poyson, flateryng with their tonges and syngyng with their tayles.

(Such appear as angels, but in very deed they are imps of serpents, fair of face, and their hearts full of poison, flattering with their tongues and singing with their tales.)

Such uses became so common that by the century’s end the qualifying phrase could be dropped and use of imp alone connoted demonic heritage. Reginald Scot’s 1584 The Discoverie of Witchcraft reads:

They haue so fraied vs with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elues, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars […]

(They have so frightened us with bull-beggars, spirits, witches, hunchbacks, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, silens, jack o’ lanterns, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps, conjurors […])

That’s how a budding plant became a little demon.

Sources:

Alfred. The Old English Pastoral Care. R. D. Fulk, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 72. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2021, 3.49, 404.

Bonde, William. Here Begynneth a Deuout Treatysse in Englysshe, Called the Pylgrimage of Perfection. London: Richard Pynson, 1526, 2.26, sig R1r–v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. ? impe, ? impa, n., impian, v.

Hoccleve, Thomas. Hoccleve’s Works. III. The Regement of Princes. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. Early English Text Society Extra Series 72. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1897, lines 5440–43, 196. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1899, s.v. imp, n.1.

Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s.v. impe, n.

Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. London: William Brome, 1584, 153. Archive.org.

“Seldom Seen Is Soon Forgot.” The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS, part 2. F. J. Furnivall, ed. Early English Text Society O.S. 117. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1901, lines 89–92, 718. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Hongking, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.