Words We Use

I was surprised to find that the verb defalcate is still in use; I thought it had died out years ago. I saw the word in an old physics text-book I came upon when attempting to clear up the shambles that is my study.

In the sense "to lessen or diminish in heat, luminosity, etc.", it was used in this schoolbook, which belonged to my father, but a solicitor friend of mine told me the other night that it had not yet been totally banished from the jargon of his tribe; it is still used occasionally in the sense "to misappropriate money or property left in one's charge". Originally, to defalcate meant to cut or lop off a portion from the whole; to retrench, deduct, subtract. The first appearance of the verb in English was in a philosophical tract on government by Elyot, published in 1549: "He shall defalcate that thyng that semeth superfluous . . ." The origin of the verb is the medieval Latin defalcare, to cut off with a scythe or sickle, from the preposition de, off, plus falx, sickle; but the word may have been adopted into English not directly from the Latin, but from the Medieval French défalquer, common in law tracts before 1400.

Ivor Brown, the Scottish lexicographer, was one who lamented the falling from grace of defalcate, and he came to the conclusion that this may have been due to a confusion in the public mind with defecate, which is from Latin defæcare, to cleanse from dregs, to purify, itself from de, plus fæx, plural fæces, dregs. To defecate has long meant to purify from pollution of any kind; it was used figuratively by many writers, including Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621: "Till Luther's time . . . who began upon a sudden to defecate, and as another sun to drive away those foggy mists of superstition."

I was sent a few good words the other day by a friend from Dungannon, Co Tyrone. One of them is jundy, a push. This is Scots in origin. Ramsay has it in his Scottish Proverbs (1750): "If a man's gawn down the brae ilk ane gies him a jundie." Figuratively, it means a steady course. "He's off on the jundy again," might be said of a thirsty man making towards the pub; while this was recorded in Scotland: "It wad tak a chairge o' gunpooder tae pit Leezbeth aff her jundy." I note that Wilson Guy, "The oul' besom man from Tyrone", has the word in his entertaining Ballymulcaghey (1928).