Moralization of Status Words

This significant formulation describes the semantic change whereby words that previously denoted rank acquire connotations of moral conduct. Thus terms like knave and villain , which previously denoted people of low social status, undergo semantic deterioration, describing people of low morals, while on the other hand, those that previously denoted people of high social status, like noble and gentle , undergo the opposite semantic trend of amelioration, describing people with good qualities. The process of moralization seems initially to have reflected the difference in status between Norman overlords and Saxon underlings, the assumption being that the ruling class was not only “gentle” or “noble” by birth, but by nature, just as the lower orders were “base” by both criteria. (The criterion of birth is obviously the key to the deterioration of bastard . ) Moralization has now ramified in many social directions. Although many semanticists have sought to establish “laws” of semantic change, they have generally not succeeded. This seminal formulation was set out by the great medievalist and renaissance scholar C.S. Lewis in Studies in Words (1960, 7).

Obviously within the context of swearing, the negative aspect of moralization is most significant. These instances are more numerous than the positive examples and include, in addition to knave and villain , the terms blackguard , rascal, wretch , slave, churl , and the adjectives lewd and uncouth , all of which initially described people of low status. Of these terms only wretch originally carried negative moral implications, since Anglo-Saxon wræcca meant an exile or outcast. However, the ancestor of knave , namely Anglo-Saxon cnafa , meant simply “a male child,” while that of churl (Anglo-Saxon ceorl ) was a general term for a man with a great variety of meanings. Villain , originally a servant at a villa, became in medieval times “a low-born, base-minded rustic” (the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary ), but is now free of class associations; in fact “the villain” in modern times is frequently a personage of wealth or status. Blackguard , a later term historically, originally meant (from the sixteenth century) “one of the lowest menials of the household who had charge of the pots and pans.” A parallel status term, scullion , now obsolete, meant “a domestic servant of the lowest rank” and developed an abusive currency in the late sixteenth century: Hamlet berates himself for cursing “like a scullion” (II ii 616). Other terms originally denoting low status are beggar and rascal , defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in its earliest sense as “the rabble of an army; common soldiers or camp-followers; persons of the lowest class.”

The low status accorded to being a captive is shown in the deterioration of vassal and slave , from Latin Sclavus , a Slav . Similarly Latin captivus , a captive, has generated French chetif , meaning “poor, weak, miserable,” and English caitiff , now obsolete, but which since the Middle English period developed the sense of “a base, mean, despicable wretch, a villain” (Ullmann 1962, 232). Revealingly, all the terms in Ullmann’s own characterization are status words, with the exception of despicable . These lead us back to the fundamental semantic link between status and morality, found in low, base , and mean , contrasted with high and generous .

Less obvious notions of status have come to be attached to the urban environment, originally conceived as “civilized” and “urbane,” as opposed to the country, which was backward. Thus peasant, rustic (noun), bumpkin , and boor are rather old-fashioned prejudicial terms that acquired their negative senses in the sixteenth century. Even clown and lout originally referred to rustics, as did the more obviously condemning dunghill , meaning a grossly immoral person. They have been joined by backwoods, hick, peckerwood , and clodhopper .

Another area of low status derives from lack of education. The prime historical example is lewd , which originally in its Anglo-Saxon form læwed meant “lay,” that is, not of the church, and by Middle English meant simply “uneducated.” In John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible (1382) St. Peter and St. John are “men unlettrid, and lewid men” (Acts 4:13). Clearly no stigma attaches to the word in this context. The term then deteriorated to mean “ignorant,” “stupid,” “foolish,” and “worthless” before shifting to the modern senses of “lascivious,” “indecent,” and “vulgarly sexual.” More recent examples can be seen in the condemning overtones of ignorant and illiterate , as against the laudatory overtones of educated and knowledgeable , and so on, which should logically be simply descriptive terms. Perhaps the most interesting term is ignoramus , deriving from the name of the main character and a popular play by Stephen Ruggle and acted in 1615 before the King at Cambridge “to expose the ignorance and arrogance of the common lawyers.” A related semantic field concerns terms for intelligence: thus dumb, stupid, moron, imbecile , and cretin have come to carry powerfully negative overtones, whereas brilliant has become a general term of praise.

The process of moralization is thus not confined to the distant past, as the examples from feudal times might suggest. The process continues in a whole variety of semantic fields, even in modern supposedly egalitarian and democratic societies. Terms originally denoting low status, which have come to label people as immoral or the undesirable products of low-class locales, are street urchin, guttersnipe, scum, trailer trash , and the less condemning status marker the wrong side of the tracks . The complex term ghetto , rooted in religious persecution and poverty, has now acquired associations of criminality.