Get to work! New popular science books: Why red tape has nothing to do with mushrooms and horses

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Do you know the wonderful children’s story “A Table is a Table” by Peter Bichsel? One fine day, the old man decides to call his bed a painting, his table a carpet, and his chair an alarm clock. Consequence: he no longer understands people; and even worse: people no longer understand him. Even if a tree is not a tree and we just call it that, the important thing is that everyone in the German-speaking world has the same idea about this word.

“We symbolize peace,” writes Swiss linguist Christian Schmid (76) in his new book. And the dialect researcher, known from the SRF radio program “Schnabelweid”, paints a beautiful picture: we send everything we perceive to a mental dressing room in which we put on what we perceive. Schmid’s interest in preserving the image is to determine the age of the dress and show the naked truth underneath.

What is the meaning behind the adjective “chäferfüdletroche”? Where does the noun “helicopter” come from? And why do we say, “First come, first served”? Schmid presents 60 “idioms and word stories,” arranged in alphabetical order, like an encyclopedia. But the texts are not “chäferfüdletroche”, as in the dictionary, but are written in a fascinating way, because Schmid is not satisfied with the first explanation he comes across, he doubts, reflects and wants to get to the bottom of it.

A walking dictionary himself, Schmid uses both historical dictionaries and the Internet. “Never before has it been possible to comb through such a vast corpus of texts,” writes the German and English major. “You just have to take your time and play with different spellings and word forms over and over again.” Fun, but also challenging work. It is most productive when another meaning appears behind a seemingly clear word.

For example, with “red tape”: although some explanations laugh, Schmid is not convinced by the “stubborn story about a horse.” This word also has nothing to do with offices where mold grows on stacks of files. Rather, the form is borrowed from the Latin “similis” – “similar, equal.” Thus, red tape is always the same thing, excessively precise execution of official orders by civil servants.

Or “hanebüchen”: does this term have anything to do with roosters and books? Not at all, because the adjective comes from hornbeam, whose wood is hard, strong and durable. Jeremias Gotthelf attributed this inherently positive quality to people “who defend their civil rights very staunchly and are ready to fight.” “If you apply the line outrageous in the sense of “rude, heartless” to things or situations, they become “outrageous” in today’s sense, says Schmid. The truth of the word changes.

Source: Blick