The Language Of Confusion: The Giggles

You know I’ve never looked at laughter related words before? Clearly I have to do something about that.
 
To laugh showed up in the late fourteenth century, though weirdly enough, it wasn’t a noun until the late seventeenth century. The word comes from the Old English hlaehhan, to laugh, which could also be spelled hlehhan and hlihhan. And just to make things confusing, that double H was pronounced like a hard ch that people started saying as an F even if they didn’t update the spelling. It’s from the Proto Germanic klakhjan, which, come on, now they’re throwing a K in there? And before that, the Proto Indo European kleg-, which is imitative—that means the word comes from what it sounds like doing. So I guess a laugh sounded like “kleg”.
 
Giggle showed up in the sixteenth century. No one knows where it came from. It’s thought to be another imitative word, although that sounds less like laughter than kleg- does. Similarly, titter showed up in the early seventeenth century, and again, probably imitative. Snicker showed up a little bit later than that, like in the 1690s as opposed to the 1670s. And again, thought to be imitative. These words seem to be unique to English for the most part, so I guess English isn’t entirely other languages stacked on top of each other in a trench coat.
 
Guffaw is even newer, showing up in the early eighteenth century (there was also gawf in the early sixteenth century). This one is actually derived from Scottish, although it’s again thought to be imitative. Weirdly, guff doesn’t seem to be related to that, having shown up in 1825 meaning a puff of air, although it is also imitative. Guff sounds like different things, I guess.
 
Cackle is actually pretty old, showing up in the thirteenth century, but back then it only meant the sound a hen made (and it was imitative!). It didn’t mean to laugh until 1712. But yeah, from the sound a hen makes. Then there’s chuckle, which showed up in the late sixteenth century meaning… to laugh loudly. It didn’t mean to laugh softly until the early nineteenth century! Chuckle is from the Middle English chukken, to make a clucking noise, and once again, that is imitative. It’s also not related to chuck at all, if you were wondering.
 
Tl;dr: laughter words are imitative. All of them, apparently.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary

The Digraph

I think there is no pair of letters more confusing than g and h, though c and h are a close second. But why do we have this pair that can be pronounced “f” as in laugh, or isn’t pronounced at all like in bough or through. And if it’s at the beginning of the word like in ghoul, it’s just a plain g sound (apparently the h is there just because). Seriously, it’s like those two letters combine to cast a spell on pronunciation.

See, back in the old days, gh used to be what’s called a “voiceless velar fricative”. Or in normal terms, it’s a sound you make without the vocal cords (voiceless) with the back of your tongue on the roof of your mouth (velar) using the friction of a forced breath (fricative). The best way to think about it is pronouncing the Scottish word loch. Feel that hardness on the ch? That’s a voiceless velar fricative. However, over the years we softened it and moved from saying it in the back of our mouths to our teeth, making it into an f sound like in rough, laugh, or tough.

The silent pronunciation, where the letters just seem to be there to hang out, has little reasons if you look into etymologies. Though, for example, came from a word that was just “tho”. Similarly if you look at thoughtyou can see that in Old English it was spelled (basically) as “thoht”, with an h to give it breath. Same with fought, where you find that in Old English it was fohten. And if you remember my scare-themed etymology post, the word frightcomes from fryhto, a misspelling of fyrhtu.

That doesn’t explain much, does it? Unfortunately, this is as close to a reason as we get with the whole gh thing. The thing those words have in common is that in Old English, they were pronounced with that guttural, hard H sound. Modern English evolved after the printing press for the first time made grammar and style an issue. In order to get that hard H across, they paired it with G. We may not say it anymore but English is too old to change now. We’d just get confused.

PS. Since tomorrow is the end of the world, I suppose this is my last post ;). We had a good run. If only the Mayans thought to make their calendar longer! Or, you know, roll back to zero. What? That’s actually how it works? I have to think up a post for Saturday? Hm. I wonder why THAT wasn’t posted all over the news.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

Tony Jebson’s page on The Origins of Old English

English Plus+