Mind your language
`DIDN'T think much of that stuff about gerunds,' said my husband from behind a fascinating new paper on ablation of the hypothalamus, or something. `Better than cutting up brains,' I retorted, but inside I suspected he was right. May we then return for a moment to the lexical test list that was sent to me from Noosa Heads, Queensland (Mind your language, 22 February)? `Improve your word-power' as the Reader's Digest used annoyingly to put it (and still does, for all I know). What, then, does chance-medley mean, and how did Milton get it wrong? It is a pleasant-sounding term, and it comes from the Anglo-French chance medlee 'mixed chance', where medlie is the adjective, of course. In law it meant an accident that was not purely acciden- tal, chiefly applied to manslaughter: 'the casual killing of a man, not altogether without the killer's fault, though without evil intent'.
Since the medley bit looks like a noun in English, the meaning was often taken to be 'fortuitous medley' or `pure chance'. Thus Milton, who had violent enough thoughts about marriage in any case, in his Tetrachordon: exposition upon the foure chief places in scripture which treat of marriage (1645) writes of principles that are 'true in the general right of marriage, but not in the chance- medley of every particular match'. In a spirit of womanly benevolence I offer to Timothy Birch, the wordsmith of Noosa Heads, a pleasing term cif abuse that I stumbled across in AnthonY Wood (1632-95), who uses it of the head of his college (Merton): /o/ -poop. It only means a lazy drone or slug- gard, but it sounds good. I wonder if it could be used in Parliament.
Dot Wordsworth
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