Etymon #35
Sorcery reached stars
The word began in Scotland, first recorded in 1715. Its earliest Scottish sense was magic or enchantment, the kind of spell that could make a person see things that were not there. Robert Burns used it in 1793. It entered English when Walter Scott used it in Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805.
It grew from an older English word, one that had travelled from Greek through Latin and Old French before settling in English. In Old French that word had two meanings, one scholarly, one magical. In Scotland the magical meaning took hold, and became something new.
The older English word meant the rules of language, specifically the rules of Latin taught in medieval schools. Latin literacy was rare among the general population and those who knew it seemed mysterious. The word for scholarship and the word for sorcery, for a time, were the same.
GRIMOIRE and GRAMMAR share the same root. GRIMOIRE came from the same Old French source, a textbook of magic and witchcraft, containing instructions on how to perform spells, cast charms, create magical objects, and summon supernatural entities. GRAMMAR came from it too, the set of structural rules that govern how a language is formed and understood. This word took the same root in a third direction.
By 1840 the word had moved beyond Scotland and magic. It had come to mean a quality that makes a person or thing seem desirable, suggestive of a more colourful life. In 1939 Condé Nast launched a publication using it, which promised readers the Hollywood style of its leading stars and fixed the word’s modern meaning. Within a decade it had outgrown Hollywood.
