h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having made a mental note to look at the front page, I will leave you with the question that invaded my thoughts upon waking this morning. Where do the words "hearse" and "rehearse" originate, and do they have anything to do with each other and if so, how, for heaven's sake?

Actually I was thinking about choir rehearsals and how the French have the surprisingly unimaginative word "répetitions" for rehearsals. That's the way my mind works. On waking at least. Later on it gets a bit confusing. Too many s

TC, hearses and rehearsals are very much related (and through French, no less), but you're not gonna believe it...

Hearse comes from the the dead Italian language Oscan's hirpus, meaning wolf. This word was adapted by the Romans into hirpex and bestowed upon a sort of over-sized rake which they used to break up the soil in honour of their big teeth. Hirpex became herce in Old French, and because the rake-type things (I forget the modern English name) at the time featured a triangular frame, the similar-looking church candle-holders also earnt themselves the name herse, as did the triangular support for the canopy placed over a coffin. It was this meaning that made its way into English, and over time hearse evolved from being just a bit of the funerary apparatus, firstly to be synonymous with bier (a corpse-carrying trolley), and finally in the 1600s ended up as the entire funerary vehicle.

Rehearse literally means to re-rake. The Old French herce became the verb hercer, and rehercer seems to have existed in a purely figurative sense meaning to repeat, almost exactly analogous to the English 'go over old ground'. In English, rehearse also meant to repeat or recite, and only evolved into its more theatrical form in Shakespeare's time, although I don't know whether there's a connection there or not.

Blimey!

Tacky is when an old horse is overdressed. Let's face it, you could put a cheap saddle, or the finest golden one, on a young thoroughbred stallion, and no one would ever notice, because they're looking at the horse. You only notice the tack on horses that would rather you not look directly at them. That's tacky.

Hirsute may or may not be associated with rehearse in the matter of bone densities in hirsute women like Hamlet's mother.

Well, I thought Mycroft was having us on this time but I took time to check it out and he appears to be correct - at least in the main.

As for the horses, there are three of them in my town and none of them tacky. The oxen however are generally overdressed but as they are not something you come accross everywhere, they do not seem tacky.

Beth

What do you take issue with outside of the main then?

Because I didn't take time to check ALL the details.

Sorry - I meant I don't take issue with anything but I did not check all the details - the rakes for example.

Your explanation of the words is the best I've come accross in a while - so good that I thought you had to be wrong. As far as I can see you are right.

Beth

Harrow is the word in English for that rake that Mycroft was talking about, so rehearse literally means re-harrow. Can we plough through this again please, Bob?

But don't you think that'd be a rather harrowing experience?

*...follows conversation with furrowed brow..................*

Leaving aside the meaning linked to behaviour, I'm interested to know why the fruity filling in seasonal mince pies is known as mincemeat, or mince for short. It doesn't half cause confusion with people familiar only with the meaning that refers to the ground-up stuff you get from the butcher.

I've just polished off three boxes of cut-price mince pies all by myself, only to discover that my friend wasn't interested because he thought it meant a filling of minced-up meat.

Originally mincemeat had meat in it. Because the meat was usually fairly high (that is, it had gone bad to the extent that it stank), large amounts of spices were added to disguise the flavour. Gradually over the years the amount of minced meat in mincemeat was reduced until eventually there was none at all (homeopathic minced meat?). The word "mincemeat" now means that mixture of fruit and spices which you get in those little pies and nowhere else. Minced meat is called "mince" so that you don't confuse it with mincemeat. But mincemeat pies have been shortened to mince pies so the confusion still exists.

So how did mince become a verb?

Perhaps I should say that I mean not in the context 'He minced the beef'

You can mince your words, meaning to restrain your words within the bounds of decorum, or you can mince as a manner of walking, with short restrained steps. Both these refer to restraint, and seem to come from the word "minutia", which is smallness in Latin. In mediaeval Latin, this would be pronounced min-oots-eeya. Strangely, the only place in which mincing words has survived is in the phrase "he didn't mince his words". You never hear of anybody actually doing it.

I think mince is from the French - "mince" meaning small.
(Have we mentioned that minces, or mince pies, is cockney rhyming slang for eyes?)

Fair enough, I forgot about mincing one's words.

Can a female mince (as in the walking)?

Sorry to barge in on all this mincing

Just been asked a question here and I am not sure of the answer.

Is it 'dependant on' or 'dependant upon'?

The phrase was
"the ability to provide.... is dependant on the provision of..."

Since, in this case the link is such that without the delivery we cannot do that which we need to, I suggested 'reliant on' instead, as this seems to imply a much more important relationship between the two items, although that doesn't sound right either.

*confoosed again*