ASKANCE

[Dr. Goodword]

• askance •

Pronunciation: ê-skæns • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adverb

Meaning: 1. Aslant, obliquely, sideways, out of the corner of your eye, as to look askance at something. 2. With mild suspicion or disapproval, as parents who might look askance at nose rings and tattoos on their children.

Notes: I used to ask aunts everything but that is spelled differently. Today's Good Word is a curve ball: it isn't what it seems to be, having nothing to do with ask. It apparently contains the prefix a- that is used to form "anomalous" adjectives such as aslant, abloom, afloat. The problem is, we have no skance or skant in English (askant is OK, too).

In Play: A sideway glance may be the only thing today's Good Word implies: "When I suggested that we move forward in the development of the helicopter ejector seat, the boss looked askance at me but said nothing." I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in the company didn't look askance—in the second sense of this word—at this particular project. However, looking askance does imply a hint of mild suspicion: "Mom looks askance at our cruising around looking for parties at night."

Word History: Today's Good Word is only ostensibly an "anomalous" adjective in the sense above in Notes. Closer examination, however, makes it more likely a modest makeover of Italian a scancio "slanting, aslope, across". The Italian word shares its source with Old French exclanc "left hand(ed)". There is a whole group of words of more or less obscure origin beginning in ask-: askant, askew, asquint. These no doubt influenced each other but none suggests that any share a common source. (I don't think any of us would look askance at offering Ed Bedford a word of thanks for suggesting today's curiously interesting Good Word.)

[LukeJavan8]

Interesting that it is related to "left-handed" in French.

And left-handedness with its "sinister" history is another
story.

[beck123]

Sinister - also from the French for "left"

"A sideways glance" can almost be contracted to "askance." All the sounds are in the right places, with the "gl" hardening to "k."

Any thoughts on that, Doc?

[LukeJavan8]

Also from the Latin senestra=left. And it became
devious from use, also the eastern use of left hands
for cleaning purposes.

Right handedness - dextrous, also meaning "able".
Etc.

Having been left-handed myself as a boy: but changed,
partly because I had polio in '52, and it was in my left
arm and leg. Had to learn to use the other to write.
Thank heaven for typewriters and now keyboards.

[beck123]

I don't know that origin of the current meaning of sinister is that well known. I've heard several variations on it, some not even closely related to others. It seems obvious to me that the superstitious human mind would mark lefties as being wrong - maybe not quite monstrous, but wrong - and therefore to be viewed with suspicion. They distrusted people with turned eyes, extra digits - anything that made them different from the norm. (I wish I had a dollar bill for every European woman that was killed for a witch because she bore supernumerary nipples.) It's easy to see how that could lead to the threatening sense of today's "sinister."

[LukeJavan8]

Ain't that the truth. Witches, and heretics as well
by the Inquisition.

The bad word was "aint". But I did not edit it out.
It was meant as a joke: 'aint' it the truth?"
as a sort of 'vulgar' lament, in the true meaning
of vulgar: commonplace, etc.

[beck123]

Heretics under the Inquisition were "protected" by a rule that only allowed a handful (three or four, if I remember correctly) tortures to be used in persuading them to see the evil of their ways. One was very similar to waterboarding, but it was applied much more vigorously. The others were more physically destructive.

Witches, on the other hand, had no such protection to my knowledge, and the means used to wrest confessions from them were limited only by the public's imagination.

[Dr. Goodword]

We aren't going to find GL moving to K; KL maybe, that would be simple loss of voicing since G and K are identical except for the vibrating vocal cords (chords?) that accompany G [g] but not [k]. However, Ls don't disappear without reason. They do turn into [o] or when not followed by a vowel, as in the pronunciation of hill and milk throughout the northeastern US.

This doesn't mean that glance didn't influence the creating of askance. Sometimes words are modified toward another word with the same or similar meaning but this is as yet undefined "influence", not a grammatical or historical rule. As I point out in my piece on rhyming compounds, music and rhyme do play a role in the creation of words in English and other languages.

[beck123]

Thanks for your thoughts on that.

[LukeJavan8]

Yes, good comment.
Even hip-hop obviously has a role to play, and Rap?

[beck123]

I think rhyming compounds are like higgledy-piggledy or helter-skelter and not necessarily any old rhyme. I could be wrong about that, and, if so, I expect to be corrected willy-nilly.

[LukeJavan8]

Just so long as it is not any old namby-pamby
(or mumbo-jumbo).

[beck123]

I wonder if there's a name for "tit for tat" and similar phrases. They're similar to rhyming compounds, but they are clearly not

[LukeJavan8]

Are you thinking of an "all encompassing"
group into which they would fit???

[beck123]

No, I imagine there's a different descriptor, comparable to "rhyming compound," that would apply to non-rhyming (but alliterative) phrases such as "tit-for-tat."

When I talked about the unusual poetic devices in the Icelandic sagas, one to which I was referring was their use of leading-syllable rhymes. We think of rhymes as occurring on the final syllable(s), but that isn't always the case.