Seamstress

There are a number of interesting directions here, the word itself, the suffix –ess, and the disappearance of sewing terms, particularly with a supposed association to the female gender.

‘Seamstress’ would indicate that there was a male counterpart, a seamster, but this word seems to have disappeared. It is of course dangerous to say that a word has disappeared – you offer yourself as a hostage to fortune. The words ‘furlough’ and ‘catafalque’ could reasonably have been expected to be lost long ago, but re-emerged in recent years.

 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the frequency of use of 'seamstress' is currently at its highest since 1750, but that may be just because of more documentation, from more printed sources.

 

'Seamster' was around pre Norman Conquest, so it is Old English, but is fading a bit from its highpoint 1860-1880.

 

Both of these are from ‘seam’ meaning the join between two pieces of cloth, two bones in the cranium, or two planks, again used in the Old English period, before 1100, and a common Germanic word – there are similar forms in Danish, Swedish and German – and  a core form can be traced back thousands of years.

 

If 'seamstress' is disappearing it may be to do with two reasons, the general loss of the culture of sewing, and the –ess suffix.

 

Though the word ‘haberdashery’ sounds Victorian and old-fashioned, there is still a haberdashery department at John Lewis stores, where you go to get needles, thread, zips, and so on. There used to be haberdashers and upholsterers and milliners on most high streets, but now they are mostly sewing supply stores, furniture repairers, and hatmakers. Haberdashery is of uncertain origin, upholstery has been to do with the idea of working with cloth since the 16^th century, and a milliner from the 16^th century again sold hats and women’s fancy goods from Milan.

 

These words did not carry female connotations, though some words to do with clothworking and sewing did. ‘On the distaff side’ – a distaff being the stick used for winding newly twisted wool onto – meant on the female line of a family. A fairly recent invention.

 

‘Seamstress’ is clearly declaring its female credentials. The –ess suffix derives from Latin, and is one of the last relics of gender in English nouns. Fifty years ago you would hear women being given the terms authoress, bus conductress, laundress, lecturess, sculptress, even Jewess. Why on earth the selectivity I don’t know. I would say that you didn’t have teacheress or doctoress, but both these forms are documented in the OED, ‘doctoress’ as recently as 2006. Spellcheck balks at only two of the above terms. We still have the term ‘actress’, sometimes used by female actors. There is an absurdity about this. We have a lioness, and a leopardess, and a tigress, but not a pantheress (oh yes we do, says the OED) or a lynxess. We still have hostess and sorceress and heiress and empress. It adds to the wonderful unpredictability of language.

 

As my son pointed out ‘seamstress’ is as daft as calling a female truck-driver in the USA a teamstress. But that would be being a hostage to fortune again.

Joystick and Cockpit

The latest enquiry via BBC local radio in Coventry (28 July 23) concerns two early aviation terms.

The most curious aspect of this is that they come to be used for aviation within a year of each other, according to available documentation. The earliest documented use of ‘joy stick’ is as slang for a baseball bat, in 1908, but according to a diary entry of 1910 (appearing in print in 1935), it is in use for the multidirectional pivoting lever that controls the ailerons and rudder of a plane.

 

The mechanism that the joystick superseded was the ‘cloche’, invented by Bleriot, which had a similar pivoting lever, at the base of which was a metal hemisphere, open side downwards, from the edge of which, at four opposing points, were connected the wires which controlled the movements of the ailerons and rudder. Cloche, being the French for bell – think of a hotel counter bell.

 

Cockpit was a much older word, appearing in 1556 as the arena for cock-fighting (‘arena’ meaning ‘sand’, takes that etymology back to Roman amphitheatres). Within two years it was being used metaphorically, for the site of battles or campaigns; and by the end of the century Shakespeare used it as a metaphor for a theatre, in Henry V, perhaps developing the military connotation.

 

Later metaphorical/physical usages included the business area of Whitehall government and the more crowded part of a ship. By 1904 the word was being applied to the driver’s compartment of a racing car, from which it was an easy progression to the same area on a biplane or monoplane, in 1909.

Neither term seems to have made it into phrasebooks in use in the First World War until 1917, arguing a strong American English influence. The earliest use I have found is in Termes D'Aviation / Glossary of Aviation Terms published in New York in 1917, which gives 'joystick' as 'manche a balai', and 'cockpit' as 'carlingue'.

Of course, both words have slang usages, conveniently apportioned to male and female body parts.

 

All dates from the OED.