Jennifer Pangman
copyright 2001
This
article will survey the course of development of the semantic field of
nakedness from its roots in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) down through Proto-Germanic
(PGer), Old English (OE), and Middle English (ME), with particular
consideration of the parameters of the field suggested by Old English, the
proliferation of grammatical forms in Middle English, and the impact of loan
words such as nude and divest on modern usage.
In
present day English, the semantic field of undress includes the terms naked,
bare, and nude. Although bare
and naked have remained largely synonymous, naked and nude
have become used in opposition to each other.
Although the latter two ultimately stem from the same root in PIE, nude
descends through Latin and becomes a prestige term in English, whereas naked
descends through the Germanic path of Old English along with bare. In effect, nude acquires
associations of idealization and abstraction and, more negatively, with
objectification, even though Latin nudare lacks such associations (OLD). In contrast, naked tends to be
characterized as more concrete and immediate.
However, whereas Sir Kenneth Clark portrays naked as a privative
term (23), John Berger has preferenced it as a state of potent presence
retaining self-possession through its subjectivity (53). The slipperiness of naked in PDE
thereby reflects the essentially paradoxical nature of its etymological
origins, which can signify both lack and presence, emphasizing either what is
missing or what is thereby revealed.
This paradoxical “polysemous” quality can be traced back to the roots of
naked in PIE, which potentially signified both potent presence and
privative exposure.
According
to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (1985), the
PIE root *nog-w- “naked”
branches down several paths through various suffixes:
PIE Root: *nog-w-
+ Suffixes:
*nog-w-edo *nog-w-eto,
*nog-w-oto *nog-w-mo
Latin nudus PGerm nakweda, nakwada Greek gumnos
OE nacod
ME naked
PDE nude, denude PDE naked PDE gymn(o)-: gymnasium,
gymnast,
gymnosperm
PIE
roots can also have several semantically related morphological variants: the
“o-grade”, the “zero-grade”, and the “e-grade” (e.g. *nog-, *ng-, and *neg-
respectively). From a reconstruction of
these, Huld has suggested that the semantic field of nakedness in PIE is
specifically phallocentric, interpreting derivatives of *ng-w- such as
Latin inguen “groin” as
suggesting that the zero-grade root may have referred to the male genitalia and
that the unattested verbal root *neg-w- therefore referred to the
exposure of the male sex organs. The
particularly male nature of PIE nakedness is also attested to by the Tocharian
words for man (as opposed to human) onk and enkwe,
which Huld traces from *nog-w-o-.
In contrast, Knobloch (1993) interprets the root *nog-w-o as
denoting “a stripped tree or a bald mountaintop” (Hitchcock LLBA).
Huld
also identifies the proliferation of irregular derivatives of *nog-w-o
and attributes them to taboo deformation based on magico-religious beliefs in
the potency of the naked body, inferring an association with magical
powers. Along similar lines, Knobloch
ascribes the derivation of Greek gumnos “naked” from PIE *nog-w-o
to a taboo deformation in women’s speech (LLBA). In PDE, although terms such as gymnasium
and gymnast have lost their initial associations with the practice of
exercising naked, the combinative form gymn(o)- (from Greek gymnos
“naked”) retains its
etymological sense in terms such as gymnosperm “a plant with ‘naked seeds’ in the sense of being unprotected by
an ovary”.
Although,
as Huld notes, the standard reference works do not readily acknowledge any
variants but the adjectival o-grade (*nog-w-), Janda suggests that Greek
nebros “fawn” and nebrax
“chick” derive from the e-grade
root through the association of nakedness with lack (i.e. the absence of
antlers or a rooster’s comb), particularly lack of protection (LLBA). Substantiating this etymology, Wood places
OE nacod within the broader pattern of Germanic w-gemination, aligning it with other words descended through –kw- developments of PIE u-stems (Wood 304). As Wood also notes, the shift reconstructed
between *nakweda, *nakwada and nacod is part of a pattern
of similar syncope by other cognates.
Within
OE, synonyms of nacod include many compound formations that refer
explicitly to the lack of clothing, but can also refer to broad range of lack
of coverage, not necessarily human. (Unless otherwise noted, all citations from
TOE; bracketed forms are rare):
-“not
dressed, unclothed”: nacod, bær,
unscrýdd , (ÁwÁde),
(ungegearwod), (ungegerad),(unscirped), (unwáeded)
-more generally “exposed, bare”: nacod,
bær,
unbehelod [lit. unconcealed (Hall)]
-with specific emphasis on being “not covered”: nacod,
open, (unoverwrigen)
-as a noun, “nakedness”: næcednes,
næced(u)
-as a verb, “to lay bare, divest, strip”: ábarian,
barian, genacodian, ongierwan, ungierw(i)an, geréafian, unscrýdan,
(barenian), (benacian)
-referring specifically to “lack of adornment,
plain, simple”: ánfeald, forthriht, hál, geráede, nacod,
(also bær
“unadorned”, as when glosssing nudus in
the
sense of apertus “plain” [DOE]).
-figuratively: (of words) “empty, not backed by
deeds”: nacod;
(of sword) “drawn, unsheathed”: átogen, nacod
-in compound formations: “half naked”: (healfnacod);
“stark
naked”: (eallnacod), (limnacod)
We
thereby find that in OE bær is closely synonymous with
nacod, in
that it spans a similar spectrum of usage.
It derives from PIE *bhoso- “naked” through Germanic *baza-
(AHDIER) and descends through ME bar, bare to PDE bare. Comparison of the entries for naked and
bar in MED suggests that this close correspondence also continues
through ME.
Within
ME, the range of meaning for naked is similar to that of OE nacod,
except that it broadens to include being scantily clad or having only an under
garment on, as in Chaucer (c137) CT Mk B.3320: “On his bak this sherte
he wered al naked” (MED “naked” adj. 1b.). In addition to the adjective naked, several other new
forms develop, but all except the adverb are rare and/or do not survive into
MnE (OED):
-adj. “naked”: nake
-substantive, “the naked skin”: the naked
-noun, “nakedness”: nakedhed(e), nakidhe(e)d;
naked
-verb “to
make naked”: naken,
nakenen
-adv. “nakedly”:
nakedliche
Also
from Lat nudus, MnE acquires the doublet for the adjective naked,
nude, which enters the language through early MnE as a legal term
meaning “not formally attested or
recorded” (OED). It does
not acquire the sense of “unclothed” until the 19th century, by
which time the use of the term as a substantive had long been imported from
French nu as an artistic term referring specifically to “a nude figure in painting or sculpture” (1708+) (OED). The aesthetic idealization attributed to the
term by Clark is thus particularly reflective of the French path of its descent
from Latin.
We
thereby see that the major shifts that have taken place in the semantic field
of nakedness have occurred in MnE, through the importation of foreign loan
words. However, in spite of the tendency for the Latinate terms to occupy a
higher register than their native Anglo-Saxon counter-parts and in spite of
attempts by theorists to assert a strict dichotomy with nude, the term naked
has remained resistant to any clear division between presence and absence,
potency and privation.
For further
reading
American
Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Ed.
Calvert Watkins. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1985.
Berger,
John, et al. Ways of Seeing. London and Harmondsworth, MS: BBC and
Penguin, 1972.
Clark, Kenneth. The
Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1959.
Delany,
Sheila. The Naked Text: Chaucer’s Legend
of Good Women. Berkely: U of California P, 1994.
Dictionary
of Old English. Eds. Ashley Crandell Amos and Antonette
dePaolo Healey. Toronto: for the Dictionary
of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval
Studies, University of Toronto, by the Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986-
Hall,
J. R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary. 4th ed.
Toronto: U of Toronto P in Association with the Medieval Academy of
America, 1984. (No
historical examples.)
Huld,
Martin E. “Magic, Metathesis and Nudity
in Indo-European Thought.” Ancient
Languages and Philology. Vol 1 of Studies
in Honor of Jaan Puhvel. Eds.
Dorothy Disterheft et al. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 20. Gen. eds. A. Richard Diebold and Edgar C.
Polomé. Washington: Institute for
the Study of Man, 1997. 75-92
Janda,
Micheal. “Ancient Greek nebros ‘fawn’
and nebrax ‘chick’”. Die Sprache
38:1 (1996) 97-92. Linguistics and
Language Behavior Abstracts. (The full
article is in German.)
Klein,
Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological
Dictionary of the English Language.
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966. 2 Vols.
Knobloch,
Johann. “Greek gumnos- A Relic of
Mediterranean Woman’s Language”. Historische Sprachforschung. 106:2 (1993) 303-4. Linguistics and
Language Behavior Abstracts . (The full article is in German.)
Middle
English Dictionary. Ed.
Hans Kurath et al. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1952-
Oxford
Dictionary of English Etymology. Ed. C. T. Onions. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1966.
Oxford
English Dictionary. 2nd
ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989.
Shakespeare,
William. The Tragedy of King Lear. Ed. Russell
Fraser. Signet Classic Shakespeare. Gen. ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: Penguin, 1963.
Wood,
Francis A. “Germanic w-Gemination”. Modern Philology.
18 (1920-1) 79-99, 303-8.