This Christmas, as you’re filling your trolley with bounteous joy, spare a thought for those forgotten words that are not having such a happy time right now.
As you’re merrily elbowing your way down the fresh veg aisle, fighting for your share of Brussels sprouts and clambering over the elderly to beat them to that last swede (the one you’ve shown no interest in for the rest of the year), your attention may be arrested momentarily by the soaring tones of that well known Christmas carol, O Come All Ye Faithful, being piped over the tannoy. And somewhere in the middle of verse 2, your hand may rest awhile on that punnet of fresh cranberries (seriously, why don’t you just buy a jar?) as the lyrics seep into your consciousness and you pause to think: “Begotten? I wonder what happened to that word.”
Begotten (as in sired) is, of course, the past participle of beget – another word that has fallen into neglect over the last century or so, and one of many heritage words in the English language that feature the small but interesting ‘be-‘ prefix. These words mostly fall into two camps: one where the ‘be-‘ signifies bringing about, eg besiege, befall, becalm, bestow, bemuse; the other where the ‘be-‘ signifies an intensification, eg beseech, bemoan.
In some cases these words remain in common usage while their stem is long forgotten, eg beseech, besmirch, befuddle, betray. In others, a change of tense has been necessary to keep them out of the Sunrise Rest Home for Retired Words, eg bespoke from bespeak and beloved from belove.
Meanwhile, despite stemming from one of the most common English words, beget lies bed-bound, waiting for the nurse to begin her rounds with the mid-morning tea and biscuits, dusting off her past participle for the festive season and bemoaning the lack of visitors.
And as the dulcet tones of Julio Iglesias ooze from her wireless, she thinks back to the good old days when lyricists and poets queued up to avail themselves of her simple charms. Wiping away a solitary tear, she muses on how different things might have been had Cole Porter not been beguiled by some Spanish dance but stuck to his original idea of writing a song about a romance in a French bakery. Alas, ‘When they beget the baguette’ never saw the light of day and now the curtains close on another once cherished word.
