Words of the Month - Hearse and Rehearse

        I haven’t had time for blog posts this week, (if you’re local, come see me at the Needham Open Studios Fall Pop-Up tomorrow!), but I couldn’t let the month end without at least a couple of Words.  So here’s a very quick look at a linguistic question that occurred to me recently: what on earth do hearses and rehearsals have to do with each other?

        Let’s start with the hearse that seems somewhat appropriate for Spooky Season.  Would you have guessed that its root goes all the way back to an Oscan word that may have meant either “wolf” or “bristly”?  Oscan was the language spoken in central and southern Italy before Latin took over.  Latin also took over the word, with the meaning “harrow,” presumably because of the teeth or the bristles.  A harrow, in case you don’t know, is a sort of large rake for breaking up soil, hence a harrowing experience feels like you’re being raked and broken up.  But we still seem to be pretty far from a vehicle for carrying a dead person to the grave…

        The next step took place when late 13th century Anglo-Latin used the word to refer to a large church chandelier or framework for candles to be hung over a coffin, presumably because it was sort of shaped like a rake with candles stuck on the spikes.  From there the word was applied to any sort of display or framework built over a deceased person, and from there, in the 1640s, to the vehicle that transports the coffin.

        So why, then, does rehearse not mean something like, “to transport a dead person again”?  Well, go back far enough and it does mean “to rake again,” at least sort of.  Old French took that “harrowing” meaning and applied it metaphorically for “to go over something again, to repeat,” which is a natural extension since after all we still have sayings like “let’s not rake that up again,” or “we keep going over the same ground.”  By the mid-fourteenth century rehearse had entered English with the meaning “to tell again, repeat.”  By the 1570’s (just in time for Shakespeare) it had gained the sense of “to practice in preparation for a public performance,” because you have to repeat your lines over and over.  And there we are.

        So as you’re raking the leaves from your lawn this fall, consider the connection with both hearse and rehearse.

[Pictures: Harrow, wood engraving by J.W. Whymper from An Illustrated Vocabulary, for the use of the deaf and dumb, 1857 (Image from University of California);

Hearse, wood engraving by John Henry Walker, ca. 1850-1885 (Image from McCord Stewart Museum Montreal);

Funerary carriage, wood engraving by Walker and James Lovell Wiseman, ca. 1875 (Image from McCord Stewart Museum Montreal).]