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Wednesday 8 July 2020

Nuts and Bolts: the glamour of grammar.

Glamour and grammar

No, really, they're the same thing.

Well, in a way they are, anyway.

The word gramarye came into English in the 1300s from the French word gramaire, which meant stuff that learned people knew (so not things like how to fatten a pig, or build a house, or anything useful like that, but Latin and stuff).

In fact, over the years gramarye came to include all sorts of things that weren't known (or needed to be known) by nearly everybody, such as astrology and, um, magic; and of course if you're studying magic then what you're really after is magical power for yourself. This idea evolved in Scotland into the word glamour. If you cast a glamour over someone you weren't giving them a make-over, but enchanting them. 

A related word, grimoire, is a manual for invoking demons (but, hey, with a family like yours who needs to invoke demons?).

Grammar is now to do with the way words are arranged so they mean things, but the connection between written-down words and magic goes right back to the very beginning. 

I wonder, was there always a feeling among the wider populace that the stuff learned people learned wasn't really very useful? Is this why learned people were keen to make an association between writing and supernatural power? 

Was it basically some kind of compensation for an inferiority complex? 

Or, at least, to get themselves a bit of respect?

History would make a bit more sense if that was the case, wouldn't it.

Nuts and Bolts: grammar/glamour. The Greek word gramma means letter, as in a letter of the alphabet.


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