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Against the name of Mary Murry in the calendar of prisoners for the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions held in January 1698 is the note that she be ‘inlarged’. Was this a cruel punishment in the torturer’s armoury, the direct opposite of peine forte et dure, whereby a prisoner was pressed under a heavy weight until he pleaded or died? Fortunately not for Mary: The answer is provided in Sessions order book for Easter 1704 in which two other prisoners were to be forthwith enlarged and set at liberty. This is an unusual meaning of the word although familiar to those who remember news reports from the not too distant past in which escaped prisoners were described as being still at large.
The point is that the English language is constantly evolving and developing, with words acquiring new meanings or even dropping out of use altogether. Stephen Fry has likened this process ‘to a long sticky flypaper to which influences of church, aristocracy, industry, commerce and international entertainment have accreted themselves. Add to this mix Latin, Norse, French, and more recently the indigenous languages countries of the British Empire and we have a tongue that has spread and blossomed across the globe. In celebrating the evolution and democratizing of English he takes issue with pedants like Lynne Truss and argues that there is no correct or received language, and that as long as we understand it is acceptable.
This has important implications for the historian who is unlikely to be instinctively attuned to the linguistic subtleties of his chosen period of study, and must immerse himself in contemporary sources and rely on the Oxford English Dictionary to be able to understand and thus interpret his material. Historians of our own era will need assistance and guidance through the minefields of 21st century colloquialisms and linguistic anarchy celebrated by Stephen Fry.
We take amusement at the language of what is called management speak. Blue sky thinking, the helicopter view, paradigm shift, product evangelist, forward planning and strategic staircase, are all examples of the tautological pomposities that epitomise this style of communication. Yet these suffuse the records of government, both national and local, and business, that will be the raw material for future historical research. There will be a real need for a phrase book to sit on reference library bookshelves alongside Medieval Latin Wordlist.
They will need to tackle the proliferation of the verbing of nouns (it is acceptable to medal at the Olympics, but not to meddle), and the use of words and phrases that may have an intense but short currency; ‘It’s not rocket science’, ‘basically’, and ‘at this point in time’, all deserve to be sent to the waste bin of cliché and tautology, but not before they have been recorded by the lexicographer.
Linguistic style is clearly important in infusing archives with vitality and realism; pithy and fresh phrases make them memorable and engage us as we sit metaphorically at the shoulder of the person creating the record. The following examples from the 17th century, which have all stood the test of time, illustrate this point.
Writing to the registrar about the number of local nonconformists in 1674 Edward Wells, vicar of Corsham, sent ‘the best account I could get of our squadron of irregulars: you may imagine what encouragement a minister is like to find, who lives amidst such a nest of wasps.’
Asked in a case of sexual misconduct heard in 1636 why she ‘lay without her husband so long’ Christian Barret, probably of Lyme Regis, replied ‘that seeing that they could frame no better together it was not amise to them to live asunder’
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