How often do people reading the
Book of Mormon consider what words meant to Joseph Smith that he used in
translation. If you were to translate something, what words would you use?
Would you know how a work might change over time in the future?
If you have been translating
English in the past, would you have known that the word “nice,” which meant
“silly, foolish, simple,” would be so far different in the future? And what
about the word “silly” of the past, would you know the word, which meant things
worthy or blessed, would later mean weak and vulnerable, and finally, as in our
day, meaning those who are foolish?
In
that distant past, when you wrote “something was awful,” such as “the awful
majesty of God,” meaning it was worthy of “awe,” would you know the word would eventually
come to mean what it does today, just the opposite? And centuries ago, the word
“clue” meant a ball of yarn, “naughty” meant “naught” or “nothing,” a
“spinster” was merely a woman who spun, the word “merry” meant “short,” and the
word “fine” meant being at the end, while “merry” meant “short.”
For those who wonder how such
opposite meanings came about, think of teenagers today using words like “that’s
sick,” meaning excellent, outstanding; “bad” “wicked” and “nasty,” meaning awesome;
“snatched” meaning looking good; “thirsty,” meaning needs attention, etc.
Words in general change over
time, such as “afford” once meaning to move forward, or “artificial” once
meaning a messenger, or “desire” which once meant a person who studied the
stars. Thus, an American dialect will therefore be formed."
As the settlers (including a good proportion of Irish and Scots, with their own
distinctive accents and usages of English) pushed westward, new terms were
indeed introduced, and these pioneers were much less reticent to adopt native
words or, indeed, to make up their own. The journals of Lewis and Clark,
written as they explored routes to the west coast in 1804-6, contain over 500
native words (mainly animals, plants and food). The wild “outlands” west of the
Mississippi River gave us the word outlandish to describe its
idiosyncratic characters.
John Adams’ much-vaunted “plain English” took a back seat in the hands
of colorful characters like Davy Crockett (who was himself of Scots-Irish
decent) and others, who saw western expansion as an excuse to expand the
language with new words and quirky Americanisms like skedaddle, bamboozle,
shebang, riff-raff, hunky-dory, lickety-split, rambunctious,
ripsnorter, humdinger, doozy, shenanigan, discombobulate,
absquatulate, splendiferous, etc., not to mention evocative
phrases like fly off the handle, a chip on the shoulder, no
axe to grind, sitting on the fence, dodge the issue, knuckle
down, make the fur fly, go the whole hog, kick the bucket,
face the music, bite the dust, barking up the wrong tree, pass
the buck, stack the deck, poker face, in cahoots, pull
up stakes, horse sense, two cents’ worth, stake a claim,
strike it rich, the real McCoy and even the phrase stiff upper
lip (in regard to their more hidebound British cousins).
From the deliberately misspelled and dialectical works of Artemus Ward
and Josh Billings to popular novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle
Tom's Cabin” (1852) and Mark Twain's “Huckleberry Finn” (1884), this
American vernacular spread rapidly, and became in the process more publicly acceptable
both in everyday speech and in literature.
Many
Spanish words also made their way into American English during the expansion
and settlement of the Spanish-influenced American West, including words like armadillo, alligator, canyon, cannibal, guitar, mosquito, mustang, ranch, rodeo, stampede, tobacco, tornado and
vigilante
(some of which were also originally derived from native languages). To a lesser
extent, French words, from the French presence in the Louisiana area and in
Canada, contributed loanwords like gopher, prairie, depot, cache, cent and dime, as
well as French-derived place names like Detroit, Illinois, Des Moines,
etc.
American
English words made their way to the mother country of England should not be
underestimated. They include commonly used word like commuter, bedrock, sag, snag, soggy, belittle, lengthy, striptease,
gimmick,
jeans,
teenager,
hangover,
teetotal,
fudge,
publicity,
joyride,
blizzard,
showdown,
uplift,
movie,
obligate,
stunt,
notify,
redneck,
businessman,
cocktail,
skyscraper,
bootleg,
highfalutin,
guesstimate,
raincoat,
cloudburst,
nearby,
worthwhile,
smooch,
genocide,
hindsight
and graveyard
among many others.
Even
the word roundabout
originally came from America, even though traffic circles hardly existed then. This
word, by the way is used by Mormon to indicate the boundary of the
Lamanite-occupied West and East wilderness where the Narrow Strip of Wilderness
curved upward along both seashores. In addition, the quintessential Americanism
is perhaps OK
(okay),
which has become one of the best known and most widespread terms throughout the
entire world.
Its
origins are somewhat obscure and still hotly debated, but it seems to have come
into common usage in America in the early 1800s, during President Van Buren’s
re-election campaign of 1840, from orl correct,
then a humorous form of “all correct,” which, along with the initials of Van
Buren’s nickname, Old Kinderhook, provided the initials of OK.
Many
of these Americanisms were met with a certain amount of snobbery in Britain,
and many words thought to be American in origin were vilified as uncouth and
inferior by the British intelligentsia (even though many of those denigrated
actually turned out to be of older English provenance in the first place).
Today,
some 4,000 words are used differently in the USA and Britain (lift/elevator, tap/faucet, bath/tub, curtains/drapes, biscuit/cookie and boot/trunk are
just some of the better known ones) and, increasingly, American usage is
driving out traditional words and phrases back in Britain (e.g. truck for lorry, airplane
for aeroplane,
etc). American spelling is also becoming more commonplace in Britain (e.g. jail for gaol, wagon for waggon, reflection
for reflexion,
etc), although some Americanized spelling changes actually go back centuries
(e.g. words like horror, terror, superior, emperor and governor were originally spelled as horrour, terrour, superiour, emperour
and governour
in Britain, even if other words like colour, humour and honour had
resisted such changes).
Just as important are the words
common to the region in which one lives, for not all American English is the
same any more than American and British English are the same, such as faucet in
the north and spigot in the south; frying pan, north, but skillet in the south;
or such other words as gutter or eves; pit or seed; teeter-totter or seesaw;
firefly or lightning bug; pail or bucket, etc.
Joseph Smith grew up in the New
England area of Vermont, New Hampshire and north-western New York. If you have
never traveled around this country you might not realize the huge difference in
pronunciation from one area to another, though today it is nowhere near as
pronounced as it was in Joseph Smith’s day. And if you are from the West,
regional differences are far less pronounced than in the East and South. The
point is, words meant one thing in New England when Joseph Smith was
translating the plates, and often something entirely different today, 187 years
later.
One of the great advantages we
have, however, is that the Lord saw fit to provide us in order for us to know
what Joseph’s words meant is the 1828 American
Dictionary of the English Language, compiled by Noah Webster, a very
religious man in his time, who claimed to have been inspired or motivated by
the Holy Spirit to compile his dictionary, on which he spent many long years.
That it so happened to be
published, the only American dictionary in the land at the time and for decades
later, at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon should point out to
all of us that the Lord does not leave us without knowledge in regard to
understanding his written word. Some claim Joseph Smith would not have had such
a dictionary, however, when the School of the Prophets was organized in 1833,
records show that among the books used as reference material in the School was
Webster’s 1828 dictionary.
Consequently, it was with some
amazement a local Sunday School teacher recently in teaching the Book of Mormon
went so far to say to begin her class, “We’re going to look at words and their
meanings today in the Book of Mormon, and we’re not going to use some old,
out-of-date Webster dictionary, but a new modern, Oxford English Dictionary.”
Needless to say, it was an astounding show of a lack of understanding about
which she spoke. No doubt, if old Noah Webster, who struggled for years to
bring about a dictionary of the meaning of American English, had been in
earshot of such a remark that this woman was going to use a British-based
dictionary of modern terminology to decide what words meant in 1829 America when
Joseph Smith translated the plates, he probably would have had a few choice
words in response.
(See
the next post, “On the Language of Joseph Smith – Part II,” for more
information on how theorists and others writing or talking about the Book of
Mormon often mistake the meaning of a word or phrase which either clouds the
issue, changes its meaning, or draws inaccurate conclusions)
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