Linguistic Society of America

On the Etymology of pet

Author(s): Leo Spitzer
Source: Language, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1950), pp. 533-538
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410403 .
Accessed: 25/11/2014 22:37
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Linguistic Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Language.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MISCELLANEA

533

*-md-n-, the -n- being part of a suffix -no- (perhaps with a passive meaning, as
in TfKVoo?). The second explanation seems preferable.
(3) In pipyva, pEpLE~laV(cf. Boisacq 627 f.; Ernout-Meillet 605), it seems
more probable that the -v- is due to a dissimilatory change *r-r > p-v. Although in Greek the only common dissimilation of *r-r is regressive, resulting
in ---p (cf. Schwyzer 1.259), the comparisonwith pEXL/Eo0aXLpoints to the conclusion that progressive dissimilations do occur in reduplicative formations of
this kind. The interpretation of giptyva etc. as reduplicative is strengthened by
the parallel formations in the epic language: p~p4upa, yeplzplw, etc.
Although it cannot be proved, it seems possible that all these forms had an
intensive quality, which perhaps was originally developed from an iterative
meaning (still partly preserved in l4&ivmos?). Thus the identification with the
Sanskrit type seems fully justified.
The interpretation of Skt. /i as IE i makes it necessary to explain the change
of quantity in the vowel-a very common, though unexplained, phenomenon
when Skt. i derives from IE a. The usual explanation is by 'metrische Dehnung'
(cf. Schwyzer 1.648): the distribution of long and short vowels is determined
by prosody, with i occurring only in syllables that would otherwise be metrically
short; thus bharibharti : bharibhrati.This may be right, at least in part, as far
as the status of the recorded language is concerned. But it is possible to show
another source of the lengthening of the i, which may have favored the development of a lengthened vowel in other cases.
Sturtevant has shown (IlH Laryngeals 68) that the lengthening of the reduplication syllable in the Sanskrit perfect type vdavsa is often caused by the
original presence of an initial laryngeal in the root; I have identified such forms
with the so-called Attic reduplication perfects in Greek (Lg. 26.365 ff.). In the
list of roots forming this lengthened perfect, we find that quite a number have
intensive reduplications of the type bharibharti,e.g. vaiic-, van-, vrj-, vrt-, vrdh-.
We may therefore perhaps draw the conclusion that at least in some forms the
The later distribution may
long i originated from *-iA-, just as in Gk. 6lbriredo.
be merely metrical, but this does not necessarily affect the origin.
ON THE
LEO SPITZER,

ETYMOLOGY

JOHNS

HOPKINS

OF

pet

UNIVERSITY

The NED lists three different nouns of the form pet:

pet, 'a domesticated, fondled young animal' (esp. pet lamb),' 'a spoiled child',
attested from the 16th to the 18th century only as a Northern English (Scottish)
1 Pet lamb is
glossed in 1674-91 'a cade lamb'. As for the word cade itself, the explanation by way of Fr. cadel, attested by Cotgrave in the meaning 'a castling, a starveling, one
that hath need much of cockering and pampering', has been rejected by the NED on the
basis of Paul Meyer's statement that the form cadel cannot be authentic for French (Lat.
catellus would give only chaVl), but only for Provengal. But Meyer was not aware of the
existence of OFr. chadeler'to direct, govern' (from the quite different VL word *capitelldre,
with -p'd- > -t-; cf. Lat. sapidus > OFr. sade), attested in the Roland and found in Cotgrave (with the meaning 'to pamper' and in an obviously Normandian form cadeler; cf.
FEW s.v. capitellum), and indeed still found in modern French dialects (ibid.). On the

basis of a cadeler 'to pamper', a cadel 'one that hath need ... of ... pampering' has been

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

534

MISCELLANEA

word, the first meaningoccurringin 1539 (certanePettis, appliedto parroquets,

monkeys, peacocks, swans), the second in 1508. Of this noun the NED declares the etymon to be unknown,but probablydifferentfrom that of peat, a
noun whichwas in use c. 1570-1640as a term of endearmentfor girls (= 'pet of
a woman')and also in the meaning'merryor spoiledgirl'.
pet2(to be in a pet) 'offenceat being (or feeling) slighted', 'a fit of peevishness', used from the beginningthroughoutEngland, now obsolescent,attested
directly in 1590 in the phraseto takethepet, indirectlyin 1552 by the adjective
pettish (which is glossed by such Latin words as impetuosus, effraenis, iracundus).

This word the NED only tentatively connects with pet1;by this hypothesis
'beingin a pet' wouldbe characteristicof a pet child.
pets'breakingwind,fart', attested only once (in Barclay)in 1515in the phrase
(thoughall their cunning scantly be) worth a pet. This term is correctly traced by

the NED to Fr. pet < Lat. piditum.

It does not seem to have occurredto etymologiststhat all three wordsmight
in reality be one, the originalconceptbeingthat of pet3,whichhas a clearFrench
etymology and whose use in the phrase (not) wortha pet reflects Old French
usage: we are dealing with the realistic medieval expressionof a minimum
quantity (= '[not] an iota'), attested for Old French by Dreyling, Die
Ausdrucksweiseder fibertriebenenVerkleinerung66 note 3 (1888): Je ne ti
mesferai un pet (Rom. de Renard; cf. also MHG umb dich geb ich nit ein farz,

ME bi alle men set I a farte), and survivingin modernFrenchdialects (Rouchi

pete 'peu de chose', H6cart). Skeat was well inspired when he mentioned, in
connectionwith petl, the French phrasemon petonused by Rabelais as a term
of endearmentfor a child-though in translatingthe phrase 'my little foot' he
was led astray2by Cotgrave'sdefinitionof peton:'a little foot, the slenderstalk
of a leafe; monpeton,my pretty spryngall,my gentleimp (anysuchflatteringor
dandlingphrase,bestowedby nurseson their sucklingboies)'. In this entry the
famouslexicographercombinedthe Frenchderivativeof pied, peton'little foot'
(whose existence cannot be denied, and which has survived in many French
dialects along with the derivative verb petonner'pi6tiner'3)with the phrase
coined as a back-formation. The semantic development of cadeler is parallel, according to
FEW, to that of It. governare'to direct' > 'to feed (animals)'. There is then no reason why
cade lamb should not go back to a *cadel-lamb.It must be assumed that pet lamb (attested
1674-91) took the place of cade lamb, the adjectival use of pet echoing that of cade.
[The term cade 'pet lamb' (also used as a call to sheep) is still current throughout Rhode
Island, as well as in isolated communities in southeastern Connecticut and on Cape Cod.
See Linguistic atlas of New England, Map 202.-BB]
1 He further suggests a relationship with Fr. petit. Although it would be tempting to
assume a back-formation petty > pet in Scottish English, after the peculiarly Scottish
pattern seen in Davie : Dave, this connection must be discarded. English petty has a stylistic ring quite different from that of the more popular pet: it belongs to the semantic areas
of administrative and legal language (petty oficer, treason, larceny), of plant names (pettichaps, petty cotton), or French cuisine (pettitoes < Fr. petite oie; the NED's doubts are
unfounded), and of fashions (petticoat).
3 The two stems have sometimes coalesced in popular consciousness. Thus Martellibre
in his Glossaire vend6mois translates peter 'pi6tiner, remuer s'agiter-Les chevaux pbtent
dans l'6curie, c'est-A-dire donnent des coups de pieds'. The idea 'kick of a horse' predominates also in Fr. pitarrade-in spite of the fact that these words originally referred to the
'peditum' of horses as signs of restlessness.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MISCELLANEA

535

found by him in Rabelais-which however may have had a different origin.

For if we study the passage of Rabelais in question (Pantagruel, Ch. 3) more
closely, we shall come to the conclusion that it is rather a derivative of pet
'fart' that must have been meant by the author. The situation is as follows.
Gargantua's wife Badebec, having died in childbirth, is being mourned by her
husband in such comically erotic terms as mon petit con ... ma braguette, ma
savate, ma pantoufle; then, turning to his new-born son, the healthy
child Pantagruel (un si beau filz, tant joyeux, tant riant, tant joly), Gargantua
continues in the same vein to address the baby with the terms mon coillon,
mon peton. It seems clear to me-pace both Plattard (in the Lefranc edition of
Rabelais 3, p. 19 note 12) and Sain6an (La langue de Rabelais 2.170), who
follow Cotgrave in their translation 'little foot'-that peton coupled with coillon
must be a more graphic word. Moreover, as we learn from Plattard (loc.cit.),
the churchman Antoine du Saix in 1532 quoted, among those nursery words
('mignotises') which should be avoided by judicious parents, the phrase mon
petau-obviously synonymous with Rabelais' mon peton, and showing a suffix
(-aud) which we find used with derivatives from Fr. pet (see below), not from
pied. Peton and petau, used as nursery words, contain then the stem pet.4
At this point I may quote from Ivan Pauli's book Enfant, gargon, fille (Lund,
1919), from the chapter Termes scatologiques, in which the Swedish author
lists the Romance words for 'child, boy, girl' traceable to such concepts as
'stercus' and 'peditum' (216-23):
Quand il s'agit des derniers n6s, soit des enfants, soit des animaux, la tendance
cacoph6mique apparatt tres nettement. La piti6 et la tendresse, qu'inspirent ces petits
Atres si faibles et si ch6tifs, sont rendues dans la langage du peuple par les 6pith6tes les
plus crues. Dans le Poitou, on appelle le dernier n6 bouze, dans la Provence: petoun ou
cago-nis. La m~me expression se retrouve dans le Doubs sous la forme de chie-nid (Montb6liard: tchenni). C'est probablement une allusion au plus petit oiseau de la couv6e "qui
n'a pas la force de faire ses excr6ments hors du nid, comme font les autres au bout de quelques jours" (Beauquier). Le sicilien dit caca-nidu. Il est interessant de trouver une expression tout 'i fait correspondante dans les dialectes su6dois, oil, d'apres Rietz, bo-skit (ou
bo-fis) d6signe "den senast f6dde av valpar kattungar, kycklingar m. fl. husdjur."
*One may also consider that for Rabelais the analogy between a healthy new-born
child and a 'peditum' was given by the proverbial phrase glorieux commeun pet (attested
by Gottschalk, Die sprichw6rtlichen Redensarten der frz. Spr. 155, for the 15th century).
Mistral, s.v. pet, explains the phrase very cleverly: 'On dit en frangais "glorieux comme
un pet", qui chante dAs qu'il est ne.'

In the edition of Lyons 1537 (text J according to the Lefranc edition) we find, after
mon coillon, mon peton, the words mon voisson. In this noun, which means 'fitch, polecat

(Putorius foetidus)'-the malodorous animal par excellence, the etymology from vesser
(< Lat. vissire) is still alive. Cf. the coupling of the same two stems pet- and vess- in a
burlesque text of 1644 listed by Littr6 s.v. petaud: 'Mouflarde, petaude, vessue, Retirezvous, le nez vous sue'; and cf. with Rabelais in the description of the island of the 'estranges
alliances' (4.9) the passage: 'vous avez peu de parens telz et tant proches comme sont ce
ped et ceste vesse. Ils sortirent invisiblement tous deux ensemble d'un trou en un instant'.
The addition of mon voisson testifies to the way in which mon peton was understood in
Rabelais' time.
Surely Flaubert, whose inclination toward the scabreux that is likely to shock
the bourgeois is well known, must have understood peton in the same way when,
in a pastiche of Rabelais' style, he writes to Bouilhet (Correspondence 2.191): A Dieu,
mon bon, adieu mon peton, adieu mon couillon (gausche).

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

536

MISCELLANEA

Le mot pet (du lat. peditum) entre dans un grand nombre de d6nominations d'enfants,
d'un caractere plus ou moins p6joratif. - Le provengal offre petoun, petot 'petit enfant',
petota 'petite fille', petoulin 'petit bambin', tir6s de peto 'crotte', ou de pet 'vent', 'pet'.
Dans le Valais, au Val d'Hdrens, patlla est un terme de mbpris pour une fille (petite ou
jeune); le sens propre est 'crotte de chevre', etc. - Nous retrouvons ce mot dans quelques
dialectes de la Haute-Italie, ofi il est toujours un terme de mdpris ou de tendresse. Le mot
simple pitt s'emploie de la derniere fagon dans la Romagne. Morri le traduit par 'cecino',
'fanciullino grazioso e vezzoso'; pitt sale (= 'salato') se dit dans le meme dialecte d'un
enfant qui se fAche facilement. Les diminutifs sont plus fr6quents: v6n. pktolo'bambinello',
'mammolo' (cf. petola 'cacherello'); bresc. pRtol,syn. de diaoll 'frugolo'; mil. petolin, qui
se dit par plaisanterie A un petit enfant; bergam. petal, petal 'ragazzetto', 'fanciulletto'
(avec une nuance d6pr6ciative); com. petal 'fanciullino', terme de tendresse.
Au meme ordre d'iddes se rapportent les termes suivants: prov. petareu (lang. petarel);
auv., alp. petaret 'petite fille' (dim. de petaire 'celui qui pete'); prov. peto-bas 'petite fille',
terme de m6pris et de badinage; trousse-pet-trousse-pkte 'petit gargon, petite fille qui fait
des embarras', mot du langage populaire et qui se dit surtout au f6minin; rouchi piss'pbte
'jeune fille de deux ans'.
Le Dict. gin. voit dans trousse-pet un compos6 de trousse (du verbe trousser) et de pet.
(Cf. H6cart, Dict. rouchi-frangais: "Trousse-pkte:Nom qu'on donne A une petite fille dont
on a retrouss6 le jupon par derriere, pour 1'empicher de faire ses ordures dedans".) - Le
f6minin serait-il peut-6tre le mot primitif, compos6 de trousse (mot trivial pour 'derriere')
et de pbte (du verbe p6ter)?5

Thus we are able to realize that the derivation of English pet (animal, child)
from Fr. (> Eng.) pet 'peditum' is semantically possible. One will notice that
the names of small birds (nestlings) are particularly likely to contain that stem
in Romance, and that in the first attestation of pet, in English the predominant
reference is to the young of birds."aThe animal or child qui pete is the youngest,
the one who has not yet learned to control his muscles; but this very deficiency
is viewed with both love and pity by his guardians. It is true that Pauli has
not listed any Gallo-Romance *pet 'youngest child or animal', which would be
parallel to the Romagnuolo pdtt. I myself have found only a modern Provengal
pet 'personne de trbs petite taille', synonymous with nanet 'dwarf'. But the
existence of a Fr. (mon) pet 'youngest child or animal' can be assumed without
hesitation. It was to be expected that terms underlying moral censure (as we
have seen it practiced by Antoine du Saix in respect to the derivative mon
petau) might easily have escaped mention in literary French texts; in addition,
Fr. pet with mute final -t is one of the 'mutil6s phon6tiques' typical of French
which, as Gilli6ron has shown in many instances, needed re-enforcement by
5 To Pauli's remarks on
cacophemic terms of endearment one should add the early
Christian names, found by Giandomenico Serra in Christian inscriptions and documents,
of the type of Sterculus, Merdulus, Cagatura, Porcella, Babosa, Tineolus. These must have
been originally names of children retained by them as adults. See G6teborgs H6gskolas
Arsskrift 55.13.
6a The Gallo-Romance names of the wren (roi pdtaud, re petaret, petuzo; cf. REW s.v.
padUtum)must go back to the conception 'small noisy bird' (cf. la cour du roi PNtaud,la
pdtaudiBre,etc.); Sain6an, Les sources indigenes de l'6tymologie fr. 3.32, translates roi
pitaud gracefully as 'roi petit pet'. It is not always easy to determine whether the name of
a bird designated by a word of the p6ter family (cf. pet- formations on the maps of the
Atlas linguistique de la France for fauvette, misange, etc.) is due to a comparison of the
particular cry of the bird with the noise implied in peter; cf. Baist on p6trel, ZRPh. 43.91,
and Riegler on dialectal Italian bird names, Arch. rom. 7.8.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MISCELLANEA

537

suffixal derivatives (such as are extant for our word in peton, petau; cf. Fr.
poulet replacing the 'mutil6 phonetique' poul with silent -1), while the English
form pet, a normal noun of three phonemes, was fit for survival. Finally, we
must not exclude the possibility that the semantic differentiation of pet1 from
pets may have taken place in English, quite independently of French and parallel
to the Romagnuolo pett.6
For the form peat, which is not specifically Northern, the NED tentatively
suggests an etymology from MDu. pete, attested in Kilian (1599) in the meaning 'godmother', petken 'goddaughter', both of which go back ultimately to
Lat. pater [spiritualis] (cf. Kluge-G*tze). To this etymology I must object that
a word for 'godmother' cannot easily become a word for 'girl': the diminutive
-ken in petken is essential for the distinction between godchild and godparents
(cf. Germ. Patenkind vs. Pate); and peat shows no trace of a diminutive. My
own preference would be for a French feminine formation from *pet 'little child
or animal': *pete with the meaning 'girl' (long e becoming Eng. ea). Since peat,
unlike peti, was not specifically Scottish in its early use, we must assume that
the feminine form was brought to England by a different cultural wave.
Pet2, generally English, must also be the result of a cultural wave different
from that which gave Scotland its pet1. As to the semantic bridge between 'fit
of peevishness' and 'peditum', I may point to such Romance parallels as Fr.
faire le pet 'faire mauvaise mine' (in Granvals' Cartouche [1727], according to
Larchey), 'unverschdimt sein, ungeduldig werden, brummen' (19th century; cf.
Gottschalk, Die sprichwi5rtlichen Redensarten der frz. Spr. 155); Walloon si
peter 'se fendre, se fcher', pte6 'fAch6, offense' (Grandgagnage); Anjou pete-pete
'mauvaise humeur, rage concentr6e' (Verrier-Onillon); Vaux-en-Bugey (Ain)
petou 'p6teux, qui veut p6ter plus haut que le derriere', 'gamin orgueilleux'
(Duraffour); Prov. (according to Mistral) petarrufo 'fAcherie,mauvaise humeur'
(pren leu la petarrufo 'il s'emporte facilement', faire veni la petarrufo 'faire
prendre la chbvre': this word is a compound of peta 'pedere' and rufd 'retrousser',
semantically equivalent to Fr. trousse-pete),petach 'brusque, emport6, en Guienne', peteja 'p6tiller, temp6ter, 6clater de rage', petenvid adjective (pet + participle envid 'a peditum let loose') 'maussade, refrogn6, rechign6, en parlant
d'un enfant gdit'; Catalan fer el petarrell 'fer una criatura demonstraci6 de posarse a plorar' (Aguil6); Sp. petera 'rifia; obstinaci6n y c61leraen la expresi6n de
algfin deseo y principalmente terquedady rabieta de los nin-os temosos' (Dict. of
the Spanish Academy).7
The last three parallels are close to the English dialectal pet-lip 'a hanging
6 Surely the dialectal English pettle 'to
fondle, to occupy time over trifles' (Wright) is
formed in English from the verb pet, after fondle.
7 From the idea of 'desire (manifested by the peditum)' there develops in Spanish the
meaning 'to like': esto no me peta 'no me place, agrada' (Pequefio Larousse ilustrado erroneously connects this with Lat. appetere), Galician petar 'tener voluntad para hacer
algo' (Alvarello). We must assume an antecedent impersonal construction *peta! = 'cela
phte!', said when something is to the speaker's liking. I suppose that the quite vulgar
modern French expression ga me chante 'cela me parait agr6able' (attested by FEW as
late as 1867) is nothing but a euphemism for *cela me pbte(hitherto unattested), which is
parallel to the Spanish expression.

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

538

MISCELLANEA

sulky lip; a pout such as a child makes beforeit beginsto cry' (Wright, EDD).
They show clearlythat pet2 and pettishmust be traced to the originalmeaning
'peditum';they have theiroriginin the nursery,wherea fit of excitementon the
part of the child can first be inferredfrom his failure to control his muscles.8
As to the verb take in the phrase to take the pet (instead of to have ... , to be in a

pet), this is drawn from such English expressionsas to take offense,umbrage,

exception (to take in high dudgeon); cf. also the verb prendre in Prov. pren la
petarrufo,Fr. prendrela chavre'to become angry', etc.9

The readermay find it repugnantthat words which today have their place
in all varieties of urban English should go back in their origins to the lower
strata of humanexperience;but such phenomenaare not unknownto students
of linguistics,'0least of all to students of English, a languagein which the imported French words, detached as they were from their originalcontext, were
allowed to have a history all their own. (Who would think of Fr. cul in Eng.
coil and recoil?)It is the failure of earlier etymologists to dig systematically
into the subsoil of Anglo-Frenchthat is responsiblefor the verdict 'originunknown'to be foundin so many articlesof the NED.
8 The connotation of sulkiness
(cf. the English dialectal meaning of to pet at 'to scold
in a fretful, peevish manner', Wright) is extant also in French argot pet (potage) 'lawsuit',
pdteur 'plaintiff' (Sain6an, Les sources de l'argot ancien 2.417), Rouchi pdlte 'vive r6primande' (H6cart), and modern Fr. rousplter, whose second part surely contains the verb
peter. Our word family also occurs very frequently in French with the meaning (parallel
to that of vesser and chier) 'to flinch through fear': Prov. petacho, petego 'peur, frayeur,
panique', Savoie patgu 'foireux, poltron', Parisian (foutre le camp commeun) pdteux 'individu m6prisable, poltron' (Bauche).
9 Weekley thought Fr. prendre la chbvreto be parallel to take the pet (chbvreand pet
both = animal), 'though the metaphor is not clear'. What is common to the two phrases
is only the secondary use of prendre,take. As for prendrela chbvre,E. Esnault, M6taphores
occidentales 106, has very aptly explained the appearance of a goat in phrases meaning
'to become furious': the furious person shows a tendency to waggle his chin like that of a
goat when it grazes. The original phrase was devenirchbvre'to become a goat' = 'to become
furious' (also chevroter),later varied by secondary verbs such as avoir, prendre, gober la
chbvre.Surely this explanation is to be preferred to that of Partridge, who, in attempting
to derive the American slang expression to get someone's goat from the French prendre la
chbvre,would explain it as meaning 'to take the milch-goat, often the poor man's sole
source of milk'; but in French one never says prendre la chUvreDE QUELQU'UN!
10 Though it must be said that linguists are in general still too prudish. Thus MeyerLiibke (REW ?6547) chooses to derive a Portuguese peta 'lie' (cf. petar 'dizer p~tas, ser
importuno', petarola 'grande p~ta, mentira evidente; individuo trapaceiro, homem que
diz muitas petas', Figueiredo) from pitta 'cake' (which seems to be reflected in Ptg. peta
'stain in the eye of a horse') by assuming a connecting link peta '*cake' (unattested in
Portuguese), on the basis of the German (!) expression Kuchen (ja Kuchen!) 'fiddlesticks!'
-instead of simply connecting the Portuguese word with such French formations as Rouchi
pdtrole'mensonge, conte frivole, conte en l'air' (H6cart), i.e. *pdt-erolle'a tale that bursts
or evaporates (pkte) in thin air'. Cf. Prov. faire peta uno messorgo 'lAcher un mensonge'
(Mistral); Catalan fer-la petar 'charlar, tenir una llarga estona de conversa, una llarga
enrahonada' (Aguil6).

This content downloaded from 128.135.12.127 on Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:37:06 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions