{"id":45846,"date":"2020-01-19T12:30:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T17:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45846"},"modified":"2020-01-19T12:30:25","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T17:30:25","slug":"errant-v-arrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45846","title":{"rendered":"Errant v. Arrant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several people have emailed me to point out an apparent malapropism in a CBS News online headline: Melissa Quinn, \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/trump-impeachment-rep-jerry-nadler-calls-white-house-rebuttal-errant-nonsense-on-face-the-nation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nadler calls White House's impeachment rebuttal 'errant nonsense'<\/a>\", <em>Face the Nation<\/em>, 1\/19\/2020. In current usage, this should probably be \"arrant nonsense\".<\/p>\n<p>But curiously, <em>arrant<\/em> and <em>errant<\/em> are the historically the same word, with an interesting and tangled history.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The OED gives this etymology for<em> arrant<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">A variant of <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">errant<\/span> <em>adj.<\/em>, \u2018wandering, vagrant, vagabond,\u2019 which from its frequent use in such expressions as <em>arrant thief<\/em> , became an intensive, \u2018thorough, notorious, downright,\u2019 especially, from its original associations, with opprobrious names. For the vowel-change compare <em>arrand = errand<\/em> , <em>Harry = Herry<\/em> , <em>Henry<\/em> , <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">far <\/span> <em>n.<\/em> = earlier <em>fer<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n<p>The OED's account of the word's semantic drift:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>1.<\/strong> Wandering, itinerant, vagrant; esp. in <em><strong>knight arrant, bailiff arrant<\/strong><\/em>; in which the etymological <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">errant<\/span> <em>adj.<\/em> is now alone used.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>2<\/strong>. In <em><strong>thief errant, arrant thief<\/strong><\/em> [= robber] <em>originally<\/em> an outlawed robber roving about the country, a freebooter, bandit, highwayman; <em>hence<\/em>, a public, notorious, professed robber, a \u2018common thief,\u2019 an undisguised, manifest, out-and-out thief.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>3.a.<\/strong> Hence: Notorious, manifest, downright, thorough-paced, unmitigated. Extended from <em>thief<\/em> to <em>traitor<\/em>, <em>knave, rebel, coward, usurer<\/em>; after 1575 widely used as an opprobrious intensive, with <em>fool, dunce, ass, idiot, hypocrite, Pharisee, Papist, Puritan, infidel, atheist, blasphemer,<\/em> and so on through the whole vocabulary of abuse.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>b<\/strong>.<em> transferred<\/em> of things, i.e. opprobrious deeds and qualities, theft, presumption, lie, device, etc.<\/p>\n<p>The obligatory screen shot:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/FaceTheErrrantNonsense.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/FaceTheErrrantNonsense.png\" width=\"490\" title=\"Click to embiggen\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several people have emailed me to point out an apparent malapropism in a CBS News online headline: Melissa Quinn, \"Nadler calls White House's impeachment rebuttal 'errant nonsense'\", Face the Nation, 1\/19\/2020. In current usage, this should probably be \"arrant nonsense\". But curiously, arrant and errant are the historically the same word, with an interesting and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-orthography"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45847,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45846\/revisions\/45847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}