Shoddy Scholarship by Those Who Should Know Better

Last week the website Medievalists.net published a listicle titled, 12 Expressions that We Got from the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, only four of the twelve are actually medieval phrases, and two others, while modern formulations, come from metaphors that are rooted in medieval thought. The other six either predate the medieval period or are thoroughly modern in origin. Given that it’s ridiculously easy to check such things with the Oxford English Dictionary Online, 50% is a failing grade. I expect this quality of research in a newspaper style section puff piece, not from a website by actual medievalists.

The website pulled the phrases from Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s 1996 Medieval Wordbook. I’m not familiar with the book, and I don’t know if the chosen phrases are representative of the scholarship of that book, or if the website’s editors were just spectacularly unlucky in their choices.

Scholars need to do better when writing popular pieces. Writing for the masses should not entail a reduction in scholarly rigor.

The twelve phrases are:

crocodile tears

Claim: The phrase meaning feigned sadness, comes from a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears while eating their victims.

Accuracy: Not particularly medieval. While the myth was widely known in medieval Europe, it dates to antiquity; Plutarch says the belief was widespread in the first century CE. And according to the OED, the phrase itself dates to the early modern period.

bring home the bacon

Claim: The phrase, meaning to earn a living, dates to an event in 1104 when a nobleman and his wife asked a prior for a blessing after not having argued for a year. The prior gave them a side of bacon as a reward, and afterward the nobleman donated land to the monastery on the condition that other couples were similarly rewarded.

Accuracy: False. Insufficient details are supplied to enable checking to see if anything like this ever happened, but the phrase has absolutely nothing to do with anything medieval. According to the OED, its first recorded use was in 1906 by African-American boxer Joe Gans who had just won a title bout in Nevada.

Correction: the story about the prior awarding the side of bacon in 1104 is true (at least as true as any historical event from that era is). It’s mentioned in both Langland’s Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. (My expertise on Piers is a bit sketchy, but I should have recalled the Chaucer reference.) But the present-day phrase still has nothing to do with this event.

hocus pocus

Claim: The phrase, part of a supposed magical incantation, is a variation on the words of the Latin mass, “hoc est enim corpus domini” (this is the body of our Lord).

Accuracy: Probably false and definitely not medieval. The phrase dates to the seventeenth century, with the first known use in Ben Jonson’s 1621 Masque of Augures. There was also a stage magician from that period who went by the name Hocus Pocus. The idea that it is a variation on the Latin mass is possible, but linguistically unlikely as it doesn’t explain how the “enim” was omitted. This supposed origin is first surfaced in an anti-Catholic tract in 1684 that compared transubstantiation to an illusionist’s trick. See the entry on Wordorigins.org.

lick into shape

Claim: Medieval bestiaries claimed that bear cubs were born as shapeless lumps of flesh which the mother would shape them into bear-form with her tongue.

Accuracy: Correct as far as it goes, but false in its implication. The statement regarding medieval bestiaries is correct, but the myth dates to second-century Rome, and the phrase doesn’t appear until the seventeenth century.

on the carpet

Claim: The phrase, meaning to reprimand someone, is a calque of the French “sur le tapis.” It comes from a medieval practice of putting a carpet on a banquet table, which would frequently be the topic of conversation.

Accuracy: Partially true, but not medieval. The phrase is indeed a calque of the French, although in this case it is better translated as “on the tablecloth,” where tablecloth is a metonym for the table and therefore the agenda of a meeting. It dates to the eighteenth century. In later American usage the meaning specialized from any agenda item to one of disciplining someone.

buckle down

Claim: The phrase, meaning to set to work, comes from medieval knights fastening their armor before battle.

Accuracy: Right metaphor, wrong period. The underlying metaphor and various uses of the word buckle do indeed refer to knights in armor, but the sense of the phrase as we use it today is an eighteenth-century Americanism.

out-Herod Herod

Claim: The phrase, meaning to exhibit extreme cruelty, while made famous by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, comes from medieval mystery plays where Herod was portrayed as the bad guy.

Accuracy: Partially true. The metaphor is indeed from the depiction of Herod in medieval dramas, although as far as I know, Shakespeare was the first to use the phrase as such. The piece on Medivalists.net doesn’t cite any specific medieval plays in which it appears.

a long spoon

Claim: The phrase meaning to keep a safe distance from danger is medieval.

Accuracy: True. Chaucer’s The Squire’s Tale has this line: “‘Therefore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon / That shal ete with a feend,’ thus herde I seye.” (Therefore it behooves them to have a very long spoon / who would eat with a fiend, thus I have heard said.)

goose is cooked

Claim: The phrase meaning someone is in trouble has two medieval origins. The first is that it refers to the church reformer Jan Hus who was burned at the stake in 1415. The second is that it refers to Eric XIV of Sweden in reference to a town he sacked and burned after they townspeople had mocked him by hanging a goose from the town wall.

Accuracy: False. The fact that two different origins tells us that at least one is wrong. Both are. The phrase dates to nineteenth-century England.

crow’s feet

Claim: The phrase referring to lines or wrinkles around one’s eyes comes from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

Accuracy: True.

food for worms

Claim: The phrase referring to a person’s death is medieval in origin.

Accuracy: True. The Medievalists.net piece cites the thirteenth century Ancrene Wisse; the phrase is even older, also found in the Old English poem Body and Soul.