Etymon #37
Double edged charm
The word entered Middle English from Old French in the thirteenth century. Its earliest sense was double-edged, clever and wise, but also cunning and crafty. Chaucer used it in this sense in the Canterbury Tales, composed in the 1390s.
Its Old French form was cointe, but the word's more elegant, fashionable sense had travelled from further south. It came from Old Occitan, the language of the troubadours, the medieval poet-composers from southern France, recorded around 1126. Behind this lay Latin cognoscere, to come to know, to ascertain.
The Latin root meant known. It was built from two pieces, co-, together, and gnoscere, to know, the same verb root behind English recognise. The compound named a fact fully grasped, nothing left in doubt.
COGNITION and INCOGNITO both come from the same Latin family. COGNITION is the act of knowing itself, thought, awareness, understanding. INCOGNITO is its opposite, built from the same root with a negative attached, meaning not known, disguised, hidden. This word takes the same root in a different direction.
By the late eighteenth century the meaning had shifted entirely. The clever, fashionable sense faded, and a different one took its place. Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat, used the word this way to describe the back streets of Kingston upon Thames, from where he and his two companions set off on their celebrated river journey.
Six letters.
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