Month: June 2020

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And Now Presenting … THE … A Function Word Takes the Stage

I came across this article today and the title drew me in:  “Is this the most powerful word in the English language?”

When I realized the article was focused on the word ‘the’, I smiled.  Putting aside whether or not it is in fact the most powerful word,  we can all agree that it is certainly common.  While it is not difficult to write a single sentence without this word in it, you’re not likely to find an entire paragraph without its use.  In this article the author makes a great point, “While primary school children are taught to use ‘wow’ words, choosing ‘exclaimed’ rather than ‘said’, he doesn’t think any word has more or less ‘wow’ factor than any other; it all depends on how it’s used.”  The ‘he’ referred to in this quote is Michael Rosen, poet and author.

I’m sharing this particular quote because I couldn’t agree more.  While it feels right to bring to a student’s attention words like benevolent, pterodactyl, photographic, and emancipation, it is also right to bring to their attention words they already know how to spell, pronounce, and use.  But that is less likely, isn’t it?  There seems to be this driving task behind the teaching of reading: Teach all the words.  Once the child “knows” a word, move on to the next. And how do we as teachers quickly judge whether a child “knows” a word or not?  Speaking for myself, I used to question words that they couldn’t pronounce far more often than a word they could pronounce.  I figured that if they couldn’t pronounce it, perhaps they were unfamiliar with it and then also didn’t know its meaning.  And that might well be the case in many situations.  It didn’t mean I shouldn’t question the words they pronounced smoothly, but since students at a fifth grade level can pronounce so many words, it is difficult to wonder which of those they don’t know the meaning of.  (This is one of my personal struggles with frequent fluency tests and phonics teaching outside of the context of a word.  I see where being fluent is needed, but because it is easy to test, we tend to do it a lot.  And that sends the message to the students that speed is a sign of a great reader which we all know is not necessarily true.)  When you pair fluency up with pronunciation before the sense and meaning of the word has been established and understood, we end up with students who read well, but comprehend poorly.  My concern is that we pass along another unintended message about what is important to our students.

It’s probably impossible to rid oneself completely of teaching things you don’t intend.  But if you are constantly aware of what you are teaching and the manner in which you are doing it, if you are constantly reflecting on whether or not that manner is the most effective way, and if you are constantly comparing what the students understand to what you intended them to understand, you stand a better chance of recognizing those unintended messages and doing something about them.  It is another reason I wish we could do away with one-size-fits-all reading/writing/vocabulary programs and instead teach our educators how the English language works.  When a teacher comes to rely on a manual for “right and wrong,” too many stop seeking answers to questions that come up.  The assumption is that if there were answers, they would be in the teacher manual.  But they aren’t.  Imagine having Structured Word Inquiry as a college requirement!  We could then give students the opportunity to address the questions they have about English spelling, and teach them how to go about investigating their questions.

What specifically do most educators teach a child about a specific word?  Well, I think it depends on the word.  With the words ‘benevolent’, ‘pterodactyl’, ‘photographic’, and ’emancipation’, most would teach pronunciation, spelling, and meaning, either generally speaking or in the context of where the word was noticed.  With the words ‘the’, ‘because’, ‘of’, and ‘their’, most would teach pronunciation, spelling, and point out their use in sentences (teaching meaning is not as clear-cut with function words).

The above paragraph describes teachers who are given a program to use and decide what is important for students to know about a word based on what they remember about their own learning of spelling. Teachers who incorporate the Four Questions of Structured Word Inquiry into their word study also bring in awareness of morphology and etymology to explain a word’s story and spelling.  I’m not being judgy here, I just know how ill equipped I was before I found SWI.  I believed I was giving them everything they needed.  Wait.  That’s not true.  I knew I wasn’t helping them understand a word’s spelling, but I didn’t know how to fix that.  I didn’t know where to learn more. When you’re handed a teacher manual, you assume it has everything you need to teach, explain, and understand spelling.  Hardly.

Function and Content/Lexical Words
The list of shorter words I’ve mentioned are called function words.  Few students are taught about function words and lexical/content words.  The more you know about why words are categorized this way, the more sense it makes to share that information with children.  The following video gives you some basic information about these two categories.  I would add that some words (adverbs for example) are less accurately placed specifically in one of these categories and more accurately placed on a spectrum that lists content words at one end and function words at the other.  In other words, depending on context, a word might be functioning more as a content word or more as a function word.   The other great point this video makes is that we reduce the stress on function words far more often than we reduce the stress on content words in speech.  Explaining that to children would help them understand why they misspell those words when writing down sentences instead of words in isolation.  It isn’t that the word is difficult, it’s what happens to the word when we speak as we do in our stress-timed language.

Another recognizable quality of content or lexical words is that they have at least three letters.  That helps you understand the difference between ‘in’ (in the box) and ‘inn’ (a place to stay for the night).  Think of the words ‘be’ and ‘bee.’  Which is easier to define in isolation?  I bet you’ve answered ‘bee.’  That’s because it’s a content or lexical word.  The function word ‘be’ is more difficult to define on its own because we don’t use it that way (on its own).  It has a function in the sentence.  Like the analogy the man used in the video, the function words kind of  “hold up” the content words.  In the sentence, “It’s going to be raining soon,” the word ‘be’ is reduced and is definitely “supporting” the content word ‘raining.’  If you can’t hear yourself put more stress (emphasis) on ‘raining’ than you do on ‘be,’ write down the sentence and ask someone else to read it.  It might be easier to spot that way.  Of course the fun of speaking a stress timed language is that you can move the stress in the sentence to emphasize different words and change the meaning of the sentence.  That sentence could also have the stress on ‘soon’ (but it still wouldn’t be on ‘be.’

Every year, once my students have become familiar with using the Four Questions of Structured Word Inquiry, I ask them to choose any word to investigate.  I’ve had students who chose a favorite food (bacon, cheese), a favorite animal (hippopotamus, octopus), a favorite object (amethyst, tractor), a random word from a book they were reading (perfidiousness, mission), and even their own name (Sawyer, Jade).  But not until this year did I have a student who chose a function word!  And guess which one he chose … you guessed it!  The.

He was so surprised that there was this much information about such a short word!   He and I discussed the Old English letter thorn (þ) that he saw in the Old English spellings in the entry at Etymonline. The chart in the entry is something this student recreated in his poster.  He was a bit familiar with the earlier spellings of se (masculine), seo (feminine), þæt (neutral), and þa (plural) because we had watched the following video in which we learned the Old English names for common animals.

The first thing the author of this video does is explain why we will see different spellings for the early Old English spelling of ‘the.’  Here is a screen shot of that information as the author lays it out:

The spelling of <þe> replaced these forms in late Old English (after c.950).  Old English had ten different words for ‘the’, but since there was no distinction between ‘the’ and ‘that’, both senses were embedded in those ten.

Reading further at Etymonline,  I found out that ‘she’ probably evolved from the feminine form of ‘the’,  sēo.  The Old English word for ‘she’ was heo or hio, but there was a convergence of ‘he‘ and ‘heo‘ in pronunciation, and by 1530 ‘she’ and ‘he’ were separate words.  We still see the original <h> in the word ‘her.’  (As I was checking out other resources for this post, I saw at the Oxford English Dictionary that there is another theory about how ‘she’ got its spelling.  Check it out if you are able.)

Looking back at the boy’s poster, it is interesting to see the consistent <the> spelling of each related word with the exception of ‘thilk.’  This word is interesting because it was a contraction of the words ‘the’ and ‘same.’  So it was þe “the” plus ilce “same.”  Several resources I looked at listed this word as archaic, so I went to the Oxford English Dictionary.  It was first attested in 1225 and the most recent example they had of this word in use was in 1909. It had a sense of “this same one” or “the same.” I also googled the word to see if it would come up in any modern context.  No such luck.  In fact, Google assumed I was spelling the word incorrectly.  That was more evidence that this word is not used much any more.

Because we study grammar in my classroom, the student knew that ‘the’ is an article, a definite article determiner.  That definiteness is important in the comprehension of a thought.  For instance, if I say, “Sing me the song,”  you and I both know what song I am referring to.  There is a definite song I want you to sing.  If instead, I said, “Sing me a song,” I would be using the indefinite article ‘a’ and neither of us would have a specific song in mind.  In fact, you might ask me what I’d like you to sing!

Last fall my students each wrote a sentence so we could investigate and identify the origin language of each word.  We were trying to see if there was one ancestor more common to most of the words we use day to day.  It was the second year I lead the students in this activity.  If you are interested, you can read the blog post about it from  January 2019:  “History Is Who We Are And Why We Are The Way We Are”  — David McCullough    An interesting side piece of data that we collected showed how often we used certain words in common speech.  The students wrote 49 sentences, and then we tallied how often we saw each word in those sentences.  Here are the results for the most commonly used words:

https://mbsteven.edublogs.org/files/2019/01/fullsizeoutput_1c18-1iq34if-2hfpw3z.jpeg

As you can see, ‘the’ was used 22 times!  And of the 16 words that were used more than once, 11 were function words.  I didn’t count ‘like’ as a function word, but depending on its use, it certainly could be.  Remember when I said earlier that function and content words work better on a continuum than on distinct lists?  The word ‘like’ illustrates that beautifully.  Depending on its use, it can be a preposition, conjunction, noun, adjective, or an adverb.  If it is used as a preposition or conjunction, it will be placed on the function word side.  If it is used as a noun or adjective, it will be placed on the content word side.  Here’s another graph of the function words that are specifically determiners:

What we notice here is that the article determiners were more commonly used than the possessive determiners.  That wasn’t surprising considering what we’ve noticed in our study of grammar.  Article determiners are the most common type of determiners.  In case you are not familiar with determiners, they announce nouns.  They are generally found in front of the noun they are announcing, but not necessarily immediately in front of the noun.  In the case of “my shoe,” the possessive determiner is ‘my,’ and is immediately in front of the noun it is modifying.    In the case of “every small chance,” the quantifier determiner is ‘every.’  It determines or announces the noun ‘chance’ and is in front of the adjective that also modifies the noun ‘chance.’

I think the importance of this data collection was the recognition that function words are indeed the foundation in our sentences.  They are there to point our attention to the content words.   The other fascinating thing was what the students noticed about the spelling of the function words.  Words like ‘in’, ‘to’, ‘we’, and ‘an’ have had the same spelling since they were used in Old English.  In looking at so many other words whose spelling changed over the years, it was weird at first to see this.  But then we realized that function words are used constantly and because of that, their spelling didn’t change like that of other words that were used less frequently!  An analogy might be, “If you never get off the train, you never get the opportunity to grab a different jacket!”

I encourage you to read the article that inspired this blog post.  There were other senses of ‘the’ discussed, and they were rather well explained.  It certainly broadens one’s thinking about a word we’ve all known since we were perhaps three years old, and yet haven’t paid much attention to!  Once the reading and spelling of the word was established, attention moved on to other words.  Perhaps it’s time to take a second look at some of our function words and recognize their place in our lexicon, in our sentences, and what happens to them in normal speech.  It’s certainly an important aspect of spelling that was missing from my own education (and perhaps yours too?) and also from any teaching manual out there.  Let’s make sure our students have the advantage of this understanding!

If you are interested in hearing more about stress and how it affects function words in speech, I recommend videos by Rachel’s English.  Here is one that I have found extremely helpful.  This whole idea provides further proof that our language is a stress-timed language and NOT a syllable-timed language.  What that means exactly is another understanding that isn’t found in teaching manuals.  We spend so-o-o much time teaching children about syllables when our language isn’t syllable-timed.  We spend almost no time teaching children about stress even though our language is stress-timed.  We need to stop relying on those programs and those manuals, and start learning about our language for ourselves!

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Rally the Allies!

There was quite a hub-bub about the campaign rally scheduled recently in Oklahoma.  Several current medical and social issues caused this rally to be questioned more than most political rallies in our past.  And of course, the whole event got me thinking about the word ‘rally.’  A political rally is nothing new in this country.  I believe the first political rally was held by George Washington when he was running for his second term!  Prior to his political campaign and the rallies that took place to support that, he often had a need for rallies of a slightly different type.  Accounts of the battles indicate that there were many times during the American Revolution when the soldiers needed to hear words of encouragement from their leader.  They needed to be brought back together and reminded of what was at stake in that war.  They needed a pep talk of sorts.  Other times during the conflict, they needed to be rallied (brought back together) so that they were ready for the next advance.


Washington inspecting the colors after The Battle of Trenton by Edward Percy
Moran [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The idea of pulling a group of people together to encourage them to think in a certain way was what the word ‘rally’ meant then, and it is what the word means now!  You may be familiar with the phrase “Rally ‘Round The Flag.”  That is a line from the Civil War era song, “Battle Cry of Freedom.”  Here is a link to the story of this song.  It was written days before it was played on July 24, 1862 at a huge war rally held by Abraham Lincoln, who was trying to recruit as many as 300,000 volunteers to fight for the Union.  This article includes the words to the song and a version of the song.

Civil War Music:  The Battle Cry of Freedom

Civil War Posters

Of course there are rallies that are not political in their intent.  Most everyone who has attended a secondary school with a sports team has attended a pep rally!  They are especially commonplace in the U.S.  I’m not sure about other countries.  The goal of a pep rally is to stir up some school spirit!  There is music by the school’s pep band, there is chanting by the school’s cheerleaders, and there is lots of encouragement offered to the members of the particular sporting team being featured.

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CC BY-SA 3.0  Pepassemblyatschool.jpg by Jesrapo

What else is there to know about this word?

At Etymonline we see that this word was used as a verb (1600) before it was used as a noun (1650).  The verb meant “bring together.”  Before that it was from French rallier, and before that from Old French ralier “assemble, unite again.”  As you can see the original sense and meaning of this word persists today!  Looking closer at the etymology of this word, we see <re-> “again” and alier “unite.”  At this point in the Etymonline entry we are directed to the related word ‘ally.’  That word is first attested in the late 13c.  Notice that it is older by 300 years!  At that time it meant “to join in marriage.”  Further back it was from Old French alier “combine, unite.”  Notice the spelling difference between Old French ralier and Old French alier!  The only difference is the <r> which represents the <re-> prefix “again.”

Before I go further, I just want to mention how much I love the fact that ‘rally’ and ‘ally’ have a common ancestor!  Think about the word ‘ally’ for a minute.  We think of our allies as those who join us and work with us for the mutual benefit of both.  According to Etymonline, ‘ally’ has had a sense of “form an alliance, join, associate” since the late 14th century.  We saw certain nations become allies in both World War I against the Central Powers and then against Germany, Japan, and Italy in World War II.  It is not a stretch to think that once you form an alliance with someone or some group, the two people or groups are now allies.  And who better to rally with than your allies!

The Oxford English Dictionary lists several variations of this first sense of this word.  The first is “a rapid reassembling of forces for renewed effort or fighting.”  That is certainly the same sense we see in accounts of war.  While reading an account of the Battle of Trenton (American Revolution) at the History Channel site, I came across the following use of this word:

“Rall attempted to rally his troops but was never able to establish a defensive perimeter, and was shot from his horse and fatally wounded.”

A second variation is that of a “signal for rallying.”  In order for the soldiers to know they are to rally, there must be some kind of signal.  A commander might tell someone to sound the rally!  It was no doubt a specific bugle or drum signal.

A third variation would be “a meeting of the supporters of a cause to demonstrate the strength of public feeling or to inspire or foster enthusiasm.”  My New Oxford American Dictionary describes this sense as “assemble in a mass meeting.”  I would venture to say that people the world over have seen or participated in such mass meetings in the last year.  Recently there have been (and continue to be) protests/rallies for causes like Black Lives Matter. Earlier this year there were protests or rallies for Climate Change as well.  I imagine you could name several rallies that you’ve seen in the news with other particular focuses.  I remember participating in a rally myself back in 2011!

A fourth variation would be in the context of boxing.  The word would be used to mean “a sustained exchange of blows.”  I went to Google to find ‘rally’ used in this way in a recent headline or story.  I found, “Boxers Rally to Defeat Willamette” from September, 2018.  But on closer examination, this story is about a volleyball team who rallied (to come together to restore spirits and enthusiasm).  As you no doubt noticed, instead of finding this word used with this sense as a noun, I found it with another sense as a verb.  The next headline I found was, “Boxers Rally for Win in Home Opener.”  Again, this had nothing to do with boxing.  It was about baseball which you may have guessed from the phrase ‘home opener.’  The third headline I found was actually about boxing!  “Boxing World Rallies Against Devin Haney for …”  In this story, one boxer had made a blatantly racist remark against another and a large number of boxing enthusiasts rallied (came together to send a solid message).  So I was unlucky in finding an example of this word used in this sense as a noun at all.  I wonder if it is because there is a more commonly used word for this particular sense.  I’m thinking of the word ‘volley.’  I could easily find reference to a boxer receiving “a volley of well-placed blows.”

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1989-0325-010, Michael Gusnick, Torsten Schmitz.jpg

Michael Gusnick, Torsten Schmitz by Thomas Lehmann
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-0325-010 / Lehmann, Thomas / CC-BY-SA 3.0 /
CC BY-SA 3.0 DE (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)

A fifth variation would be “a concerted effort by a team, player, or competitor, especially one made from a losing position to draw even or take the lead.”  This sense applies to the sporting headlines I found in the previous paragraph!  Many times a team or player rallies with the hopes of  coming from behind to win.  At the site The Bleacher Report, I found this list:  The 20 Most Outstanding Sports Team Rally Songs.     One of my favorites off that list is “New York, New York” which is a rally song for the New York Yankees.  Do you know it?  It became popularized by Frank Sinatra.

Now an obviously different sense of ‘rally’ has to do with car racing.  A rally is “a race for motor vehicles, usually over a long distance on public roads or rough terrain and typically divided into several divisions.”  The Sports Car Club of America describes a RoadRally this way: “Because events do not involve speed, teams do not need specialized equipment for their car. Although there are classes for vehicles with RoadRally-specific equipment on them, often teams will do the events with only pens, paper and a wristwatch. On the rare occasion the RoadRally is held at night, a small flashlight might be needed. Entry fees for the events are typically less than $40, and often events will even have classes for RoadRally novices.”


By oisa – https://www.flickr.com/photos/oisa/763487574/, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2684357
Gumball Rally Start London 2007.jpg
London Maximillion Jaguar XJ220 leaving the start in London in 2007

In referring to a rally, but wanting to switch the word to a verb, one could say, “The driver rallied his car in Italy.”

There are just so many interesting words within our reach every single day.  Even when you think you understand a word, there is always something new to discover.  There is always a deeper understanding to gift to yourself!  I also find that with every investigation I conduct on my own, I become more and more familiar with my resources and what the internet can make available to me.  I prefer to use more than one resource simply because each is written by a different person, and in doing their own digging for the information, may have come across different resources themselves.  More information is always clarifying!  When there are discrepancies, it just means I need to look further and think about what information I need to know in order to reconcile the discrepancies I see.  Sometimes the discrepancy is simply my misunderstanding of linguistics and language.  So I ask questions of knowledgeable people and I reread trusted sources.

Don’t forget to conduct your own investigations.  The more often you do it, the better equipped you are to teach others how to go about an investigation.  I have found that the more discoveries I have made for myself, the less I want to “make things easy” for my students.  If I enjoy the moments of discovery this much, why would I rob my students of the same joy?  I guide them, I lead them, I help them understand the signposts along the way, but I let them see it for themselves!  And everyday we rally around words!

 

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“I’ll retire to Bedlam”

Our school year has ended.  Nobody is going to deny the unusual circumstances that we were all thrown into during the last ten weeks of our school year!  In fact I can never remember a single situation affecting schooling worldwide like this pandemic has!  Teachers and students the world over scrambled for weeks trying to see if any teaching style could match the face to face teaching/learning we are all so used to.  But that burden is done for my school district.  Our school year is over.  Our rooms are ready for summer cleaning, and our fifth grade students are ready to move on to the middle school in the fall.  In the midst of what has not at all felt normal, those simple acts of getting our rooms ready for cleaning and our students ready for the next grade have brought us back to the routine we expect at this time of year.

But there has been one more big change in my building.  Six of my colleagues have retired.  SIX!  If you work in a large district, that probably seems like a pittance.  You probably lose many more than that to retirement each year.  But in my world, we don’t.  I have worked in the same district and at the same grade level for 26 years.  I know each of the six retirees personally.  One of them I knew as a parent when both of our children were in second grade together.  Another of them was our children’s second grade teacher.  One is married to a former pastor of my church down the street from our school.  One has been my 5th grade colleague for all of my 26 years.  Only two of the six began working at our school after me.  So you can see just how unique this retirement situation is, and how odd it will feel to begin a new school year without the personalities that have brought joy and camaraderie for so many years.

I often speak of the staff at our school as one of our strongest assets, and because these six people have been so special, I spent a lot of time thinking of what their retirement means to me.  And then (if you know me at all, you know where this is going), I began to wonder what the word ‘retirement’ means to anyone.  What is its story?  As a kid I used to think it meant that someone was tired of doing their job, so they stopped doing it.  Is it really as simple as that?

Starting at Etymonline with the word ‘retire,’ I found that this word was first attested in the 1530’s.  At that time it was something armies did.  It meant “to retreat.”  It was borrowed from the earlier Middle French word retirer “to withdraw.”  The <re-> had a sense of “back” and the <tirer> had a sense of “draw.” Looking at the Oxford English Dictionary, We get a better idea of how this word was used in French.

  • Middle French, French retirer to pull or draw (something) back (12th cent. in Old French),
  • to remove, withdraw (something from someone) (13th cent.),
  • to remove (someone from a particular place or position),
  • to free (someone from captivity),
  • to keep (something) in reserve,
  • to deter or turn (someone) aside (from a vice, etc.) (all 15th cent.),
  • also (reflexive) to withdraw, go away (end of the 14th cent.),
  • to go off to somewhere peaceful or secluded,
  • to withdraw somewhere for protection,
  • (in military context) to retreat (all 15th cent.),
  • (reflexive, of the sea) to ebb (c1500),
  • (reflexive with de ) to give up (a habit, etc.) (1508),
  • (reflexive with de ) to cease to perform or pursue (a specified activity, mode of employment, post, etc.) (1538),
  • (reflexive with de ) to cease to frequent (someone) (1553)

The OED goes on to say, “French retirer shows a number of senses not paralleled in English, especially senses related to the core meanings ‘to take back, take away, remove’. In modern French the meanings ‘to leave employment’ and ‘to withdraw (something) from service’ are usually expressed by constructions with retraite (retreat), rather than with retirer.”  Isn’t that last bit interesting?  What we in English speaking countries refer to as retiring, the French refer to as retreating.  What is extra interesting is that both of those words come to us from French!

Checking with my Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, I find that ‘retreat’ is first attested (in English) in about 1300 and was a signal for a military withdrawal.  It was borrowed from Old French retret, retrait, and is from Latin retrahere “draw back.”  Since it can be traced back to Latin, it is an older word than ‘retire.’  As I mentioned above, ‘retire’ was first attested in the 1530’s.

Heading back into Etymonline, I find that it wasn’t until the 1640’s that this word was applied to a person withdrawing from an occupation.  Interesting.  Retiring from a job simply meant to withdraw from that job.  The sense and meaning hasn’t changed!  But it has broadened.  By the 1660’s, it was also used to mean “to leave company and go to bed.”  Every once in a while I come across this use in a story.  Perhaps you have too.  Someone might say, “I’m feeling tired.  I’m going to retire for the night.”  As we’ve found out earlier, as this word was associated with the military, it meant “withdraw, lead back,” but by the 1680’s it also meant “to remove from active service”.  That is a very similar sense to retire from one’s occupation, isn’t it?  The final sense listed at Etymonline is from 1874, and it is the baseball sense of “to put out.” So to retire the runner, could mean you threw the runner out at the base.

Two words that I found while making this matrix fascinated me.  The first is ‘retiracy.’  I’ve never heard of it that I can remember.  Etymonline describes it as modeled on ‘piracy’ in 1824 American English.  Sounds like humans playing around with their language again!  I can’t wait to wish my friends fun in their retiracy!

The second fascinating word on this matrix, and the only word here that does not have anything to do with leaving a job, is ‘tirade.’  When I think of a tirade, I think of a long, often angry speech, or perhaps two people bickering back and forth.  The interaction is drawn out, hence the base <tire>!

Have you noticed that so far there’s been no mention of being fatigued, exhausted, or tired?  So if the base of ‘retire’ does not have the same base we see in ‘tired,’ then what’s the story of <tired>?

tired ( #cc ) | creative commons by marfis75 Twitter: @marfi… | Flickr
credit to marfis 75 on flicker

Combining what I found in Chambers and at Etymonline, I read that before 1460, this word was spelled tyren.  It was developed from Old English tēorian at about 1000 and in Kentish tiorian before 800.  It was used to mean “to fail, cease; become weary; make weary, exhaust.”  The fact that the <tire> in ‘retirement’ and the <tire> in ‘tiresome’ come from completely different languages gives us evidence that they are not related etymologically, and most certainly won’t be related morphologically.  They are two completely different words!

Even though most people wouldn’t consider the kind of tire we see on our cars to be confused with either of these other bases, I’d still like to address it.  After all, it is another base that has this same spelling of <tire>.  If you’ve never looked up this word, you are in for a treat!

Tire - Wikipedia

This word dates back to 1485 and was used to mean a band around a wheel.  At that time it was spelled <tyre> and meant the iron rim of a carriage wheel.  What’s fascinating is that it is a shortened form of the word ‘attire.’  The prefix is an assimilated form of <ad-> “to” and the base is <tire> “equipment, dress, covering.”  According to Etymonline, “The notion is of the tire as the dressing of the wheel.”  My Chambers Dictionary gives further information indicating that the band of rubber on the rim of the wheel was first recorded in 1877.  It was first used on bicycles before being used on cars.  I’m sure the iron lengthened the life of a carriage wheel before then, but I can’t imagine what kind of a bumpy ride it provided!  And it’s obvious that improvements have been made on the rubber tire ever since!  Another fascinating thing about this word is its spelling.  When it first appeared, it was spelled <tyre>.  From the 1600’s through the 1700’s, the standard spelling was <tire>.  But then at the beginning of the 1800’s, the British revived the spelling of <tyre> which still remains standard in Britain while in the United States, the spelling remains <tire>.

While we’re on the subject of tires (as in the covering on a wheel) I found an interesting bit on the word ‘tire-iron.’  Originally this was one of the iron plates off of the older fashioned wheels and was used to pry the tire off the wheel.  The name ‘tire-iron’ caught on in 1909.  We still call the tool we use to pry a wheel off of the rim a tire-iron, and now you know why.

Before I retire this topic …

Did you recognize the title of this post?  It is a line from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  In the passage, he has just had an exchange with his nephew and is reflecting on how silly it is to celebrate Christmas when you haven’t any money.  It is the last line in the following excerpt:

“There’s another fellow,” muttered Scrooge, who overheard him:  “my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas.  I’ll retire to Bedlam.”

So now that you know more about the word ‘retire,’ you can understand that Scrooge means to withdraw from this conversation and head straight for the insane asylum in London, (St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, which was commonly referred to as Bedlam at the time).  He can’t understand how people with very little money can be so full of joy, while he who has more than he needs, is miserable. He sees this disconnect as him being surrounded by insanity.  His pursuit of wealth doesn’t just cloud his thinking, it blocks him from pursuing human relationships, where real happiness lies.  I find it remarkable that a look at a word I kind of had a sense about, in a passage I’ve heard many times, suddenly creates a sharper focus on the meaning of that word.  In turn, the deeper understanding of the word shines a brighter light on the overall meaning of the passage, as if being viewed from a wider lens.

Perhaps people associated retired with having something to do with being weary or fatigued, because generally the people who choose to retire are older.  As of November 2019, the most common age for retirement in the U.S. was 62.  Those people have worked at their jobs for many years and it is not a stretch to imagine they might be tired of it or tired because of it.  And that may certainly be the case for some.  But if we look at the words and understand what they mean, we can better understand how to use them!  We can get an orthographical kick out of the fact that we have three bases, all spelled exactly the same (<tire>), but deriving from three different ancestors and with three distinct meanings!  Some of those who are beginning to see the value in teaching children about morphology are still wagging about teaching them etymology. Yet here’s evidence that etymology can hold the key to an understanding that neither morphology nor pronunciation can provide on their own.  That’s why we must teach students to look at all three.

As a farewell to my colleagues I wrote up a shortened form of this post and gave it to each.  I closed with a quote from the Century Dictionary that I particularly love.

“Retirement is comparative solitude, produced by retiring, voluntarily or otherwise, from contact which one has had with others.”

I think of my colleagues, my friends, as withdrawing from employment at our school and enjoying comparative solitude.  They will leave the “noise” of education behind and take with them every laugh between friends, every tender moment, and every triumphant teaching joy.  They will immerse themselves in comparative solitude.  I couldn’t wish for anything better than that!  Congratulations, my dear friends!