It is always healthy and interesting to stop for a second and look at a word. On this blog there are several posts on words (if you look at the categories on the left), on their origins, their etymology. When you start looking, you can see how each word is special, whereas before, probably, we just skimmed over it (as we only can most of the time). But each word is exciting, even the most apparently ordinary, and contains a whole history.
In the post below I mentioned the 'fells' of Cumbria, a beautiful part of North West England which I recommend for anyone who likes walking, hiking and the great outdoors.
So, apart from being the preterit of the verb to fall, what does fell mean, and where does today's word come from if it's a noun?
This is what an etymological dictionary tells us, as we peer through the mists of time...:
"rocky hill," c. 1300, from Old Norse fiall "mountain," from Proto-Germanic *felzam- "rock" (source also of Old High German felisa, German Fels "stone, rock"), from PIE root *pel(i)s- "rock, cliff." Old High German felisa "a rock" is the source of French falaise (formerly falize) "cliff." Now mostly in place-names, such as Scafell Pike, highest mountain in England.
Interestingly, the French word 'falaise' is related, which turns out to be of Germanic origin!
"Fell" is also one of my favourite adjectives; a powerful word indeed, from which Shakespeare coined what is still an expression today, at one fell swoop (to express a sudden powerful action:'d'un seul coup'):
fell (adj.): (fierce, cruel, terrible)
late 13c., possibly late Old English, perhaps from Old French fel "cruel, fierce, vicious," from Medieval Latin fello "villain" (see felon). Phrase at one fell swoop is from "Macbeth."
The Lake District, famous for its magnificent landscapes of mountains and lakes in North West England, and of course the Romantic poets, notably Wordsworth and Coleridge, includes a mountain whose evocative nordic-sounding name contains this word: Skarfell Pike. Here is the National Trust page dedicated to this wonderful natural phenomenon:
Reaching the top of Scafell Pike (which many English people spell “Scarfell Pike” because most modern varieties of the English spoken in England are non-rhotic and because one of the phonetic variants of Scafell has the BATH vowel in it) is indeed a serious challenge. It takes about seven hours of strenuous walking to get there and back from Seathwaite in Borrowdale. The view from the highest mountain in England is *unforgettable*.
ReplyDeleteI once saw a rambler carry his dog - who had hurt his paw - all the way down from the top of Scafell Pike to Borrowdale.