This is not the place for intuition

[oloriel]

Dear self,

Please not to get into etymological discussions with the only exam professor you actually know reasonably well. Especially not if everything you say is based on linguistic intuition, not on any factual knowledge, and he's the sort of professor who actually possesses a lot of factual knowledge. Ponderings are for livejournal, not for mock exams. 'k? K. Thanks.

Yours,
Self

- - -
Backstory:
We had a presentation about Early Modern English lexis today, and among other thing the process of word formation by suffixation, and it was mentioned that the most productive suffixes in the EModE period were still native, not loaned, and that said most productive suffixes were -ness, -er, -ed and -y, and the prof asked for examples, and the presenter said "Well, 'city' for example."
Which is of course nonsense, because 'city' comes from cité, which is very much French, and in fact most if not all words in English that end in -ty are anglicisations of French words that end in -té, which French in turn francified from Latin -tas.
'City' being wrong, the prof asked for correct examples, which the presenters didn't know, so he turned to the plenum, which usually means that for some reason he looks at me and goes "Hm?".
Pffff.
"'Happy' and 'lucky' and such, I guess," says I.
"Yes," says he, "luck and lucky, exactly. Happy, I don't know. Hap. I don't think there's hap."
Here I should have shrugged, because who cares. But of course my inner Fëanorian had to speak up.
"Well, there's 'hapless' and 'mishap', so perhaps --- 'perhaps' too, come to think of it - so there might have been a word 'hap', right?"
"Well, maybe," he says, sounding unconvinced, and after that my inner Fëanorian fortunately kept quiet.

As it happens I was actually right - and I bet that's where happen and all its derivatives come from, too. But dude. SHUT UP. Unless you are absolutely certain. I mean, these colloquium presentations are mock exams. You don't randomly throw around information you aren't certain about in an oral exam, unless pressed to do so. There are surely a dozen examples safer than 'happy'.
Augh.

And because that's the kind of thing he does, he'll probably have looked it up as well, and now I'll get even more questioning looks and friendly "Hm?"s because now I'm the neighbourhood etymology specialist on top of everything, too. Great. Just what I need. Yet higher expectations. >.

Comments

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

That makes sense - I'm fairly sure there's a quote from Elizabeth I back when she was still a child princess in the 1500s that goes something along the lines of, "How haps it? Yesterday twas 'My Lady Princess' yet today but 'My Lady Elizabeth'?" (I think it was when Henry VIII married Jane Seymour and he got a son out of her, so Elizabeth was disinherited...)

[conuly]

You didn't know about hap?

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Not for certain. I was assuming that it existed at some point, but I never actually looked it up until now *g*

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It continues in more or less that usage in the current question "what's the haps," though that could be back-formation from the more common "happening" of modern times.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, probably is... and of course it's not exactly a standard phrase, so us non-native speakers over here may never have heard it. ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I rarely recall that you're not a native speaker. And, of course, I also presume that everyone has seen Gilmore Girls, which is one place I can point to having heard the phrase. Both of these things are, of course, wrong-headed and stupid, but then... there you go.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Actually I suspect everyone but me has seen Gilmore Girls... but of course that's dubbed here, so it wouldn't help with the phrase ;)

[arwensommer.livejournal.com]

Does it help that I haven't seen GG and it's NOT dubbed here? ;)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, that depends on whether or not you heard the phrase "What's the haps?" elsewhere ;)

[arwensommer.livejournal.com]

Can you come explain to my students that behavior like this is a GOOD thing? Hmmm? ;)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

'fraid not. I'm normally one of those students who don't open their mouths either. >_>