- O. Prov. pempinela with -e- (attested along with pimpinela) is borrowed from French just as is Sp. pimpinela with -I- from Ital. (cf. the name pimpinela de Italia). The Italian forms with their hesitation between initial b- and p- make also the impression of a loanword. The indigenous word seems to be salvastrella (REW, s.v. silvestris).
- In the same glossary (Bibl. de l'Ec. des Chartes 1869, pp. 330 seq.) French forms appear sometimes in a Latinized form as lemmata: “Noierium ro. noirs”; “Parvencha, therebintula, ro. vaienche” [sic.]. In our case the gloss indicates the feeling of the glossator that pipinela is closer to the primitive type than piprenelle.
- s.v. pepin: “Après avoir long-temps médité sur l'étymologie de ce mot, voici ce qui m'est venu dans l'esprit. Les Latins ont appellé pipinna la ghighi d'un enfant… Et c'est de pipinna, que nous avons fait pinne, mot de la même signification que ghighi… De pipinnus, nous avons fait pépin, pour signifier une pinne d'enfant. Et de là, vraisemblablement, Pepin, nom propre d'homme. Pepin Maire du Palais; Pepin le Gros; Pepin le Bref. De la ressemblance à une pinne d'enfant, nous avons fait pépin, le noyau d'un raisin; car ce noyau ressemble tout-à-fait à une pinne. J'ajoute… que 𝛄í𝛄α𝛒τоυ qui signifie un pépin de raisin, a signifié aussi pudendum.… Les Bas-Normans appelent répepin, l'oiseau que nous appelions roitelet: ce qui me donne quelque pensée que pépin a signifié petit; que ce mot répepin veut dire petit-roi.” The ghighi mentioned by Ménage as synonym with ‘pinne d'un enfant’ belongs itself to the series *pi-pi, *ti-ti, *ki-ki (FEW, s.v. kik-: guigette, kikette).
- The difference between the first vowel in Fr. pépin and Pépin and our *pīpinella-us may be explained by the well-known dissimilation vīcīnus > Romance *vecinus—and it may be stated that the -m- insertion may have protected the pretonic -i- from dissimilation.
- This is the explanation preferable to the one given by Ménage: = roi petit (with pépin = petit). Cf. Alice Brügger, Les noms du roitelet en France, p. 69.
- This dictionary attests Bippernell, used prejoratively of a woman, already with Hermann von Sachsenheim (15th cent., cf. Koch 1, 106).
- One could also compare here the feminine proper name found by Piel I.c. in late Latin inscriptions Rombella, if indeed from rhombus ‘spinning top’ > ‘restless girl’, and the opposite development of Sp. peón, Port. pião ‘spinning top’ (< pedo ‘foot-soldier)’ [who is made to move around all the time]).
- It is difficult to say whether Douai pimperlaux (-ots) should be connected with pimperneau (‘rascal’). Cf. the two descriptions of the bearers of this name in Hécart, s.v. pimperlaux:
- On donne à Douai ce nom aux garçons brasseurs qui, le jour du mardi gras, parcourent la ville en masque, au son de cornes et d'instruments d'un son lugubre; l'un d'eux, habillé en prêtre, est l'orateur. Cette troupe se présente devant les maisons où la rumeur publique annonce qu'on fait mauvais ménage; les tambours et les cornets à bouquin rassemblent le peuple; alors l'orateur pérore du haut d'une estrade à colonnes garnies de verdure et des attributs de la boisson du pays; il parle des avantages d'un bon ménage, exhorte les époux à bien vivre, proclame les torts de l'un et de l'autre, afin de les corriger and in Vermesse s.v. pimperlot: “Littéralement, pinteur ou buveur de lots” [this is followed by a quotation from a writer concerned with old costumes of Douai: Le divertissement du prince de la rhétorique avait lieu le 2 février de chaque année: le prince était suivi d'un char; il était chargé, ainsi que les acteurs qui le montaient, de parodier les sujets qu'on leur désignait. Après avoir fait leurs exercices pardevant les échevins, ils les réitéraient dans la ville, qu'ils parcouraient… Ce divertissement a depuis été mal-adroitement parodié par les châretiers [sic] de rivage, qui sous le nom de pinperlots…, parcourent la ville le dernier jour du carnaval. On voyait, jadis, à la même époque, ces farceurs promener ce qu'ils appelaient la chârette au lait bouilli.] Of course, the explanation pinteur de lots should be discarded, as Rolland, Faune pop. XI, 199 has seen. But his own hypothesis of a connection with the fish-name pimperneau is not substantiated. The sotie quality of the carnival performances at Douai makes rather likely the assumption of pimperlot = ‘rascal’. But a derivation from dial. Fr. (Guernsey) pimperlotê ‘nuancé de diverses couleurs, taché de points variés’, middle French pimpenauder ‘to prank, trim, tricke up’ (Cotgrave), OF pipel(ot)er, pi(m)poler, pimplocher ‘orner, enjoliver, décorer’, all related to Fr. piper, Prov. pi(m)par ‘to pipe, fowl with a fowler's pipe’ (ultimately derived from the onomatopoea of the chirping sound of the birds, pépi-pipi- which the fowler's pipe imitates) > ‘to deceive, seduce, adorn oneself’ is not excluded (cf. Behrens, Beiträge z. frz. Wortgeschichte 298 and Gamillscheg, s.v. pimpant).—I doubt whether Piel, Misc. Coelho 325 is right in connecting Port, pimpão ‘dandy, bragadoccio’ with pimpolho ‘offshoot’: the affinity to Fr. pimpant seems more convincing to me.
- The name of the Istrian game pimpinèla described above may also be influenced by the name of the glow-worm (as though the stone or ball thrown into the air imitated the flight of the worm). V. Bertoldi, La parola quale mezzo d'espressione (Naples 1946), p. 79 points to the fact that children's names of the coccinella figure usually in “formulette infantili” in which the insect is asked to fly away from the hand in order that the child may presage future events from the way of its flying. The rhymed formula quoted by Garbini for the game pimpinèla may be one adapted from a formula devised for the glow-worm.—It must also be kept in mind that pimpinèla must have reminded Italians of the “vezzeggiativo” or hypocoristic name Pinela (< Filippinella), a reduplicated form of which would doubtless give *pim-Pinella. Similarly the Schweizer Idiotikon points out that the Swiss see the proper name Nëlla (< Ital. [Filippi]nella) in their plant-name Pumpernëllen.
- This is also the reason why the pimpernel is widely believed to have a styptic effect: hence its name in the Latin of botanists sanguisorba, occasionally translated into Fr. hume-sang, cf. Rolland; It. sorbastrella (probably an alteration of salvastrella); German Blutkraut, Blutknopf.
- Post-script: Recently (in Neuphilolog. Mitt. LI [1950], 34) Mr. Reino Hakamies has called attention to the attestation, in A. Souter's “Glossary of Later Latin” (1949), of pimpinella in a 6th cent, herbalist compilation (Dynamidia 2.21) as the name of a plant with medicinal properties. The alteration of the stem xpip- > xpimp is then much older than I have assumed above, but I still maintain my explanation against Mr. Hakamies' attempt to justify the etymology *piperinella (from piper).
- One could, of course, argue that entarier and tary represent only a chance coincidence (of the type ME harry < OE hergjan—OF harier < OF harer < Germ, harên)—but what enormous chance would it be that made the OF and the ME translator use, independently from each other, entarier and tary in order to render the Latin verb irritare! If, on the contrary, we assume ME tary to be derived from OF entarier, the chance element is reduced: it was natural for the two translators to use independently the two verbs which are etymologically one and whose semantic area is identical.
- The same verb appears also in the parallel translation of the same verset in the OF Cambridge psalter.
- In these passages the Hebrew original uses several different verbs which were reduced in number by the Greek Septuagint (παραπικπαíυειυ, παρоρ𝛄íζειυ, παоξύυειυ,) and are reduced to only one (irritare) in the Vulgate.
- The same reasoning would, of course, also apply in the case of the etymology OE terzan ‘to provoke, vex’ > ME tar(r)y, but the synopsis of the ME and OF Bible passages does not allow, in my opinion, the identification of terzan and tar(r)y.
- The only NE reflection of OE terzan is to tar vb. 2 ‘to vex, to provoke’ for which continuity from the 10th century to our days is established. As to the form to tarrow ‘to delay’, attested since 1375, it must be a secondary variant of to tarry patterned on the couple to harry-to harrow, two developments, due to OE phonetic conditions, from the one verb hergjan.
- In this article, several misprints should be corrected: as the basic etymon should be posited either interitare, the form given by the 7th cent, gloss, or, if this form should be interpreted in the light of the Romance forms, *inter(r)ītare (surely the long -i- is postulated by Rom., Prov., OF; the alternation of -r- and -rr- appears within OF [> Eng.] and mod. Prov., and in the opposition of the -r- form in Rom. versus the -rr- form in Neapolitan). The Prov. form is not toridá but tar (r) idá. As to the bibliography, “Schuchardt, Zs. 24, 149; 418” should be corrected to “Meyer-Lübke, Zs. 24, 149; Schuchardt, Zs. 24, 418.”
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