Question: I follow your column in my Sunday paper with much interest, and I hope you can clear up a puzzle for me. Recently I have noticed the word "sanguine" used frequently in the media (in phrases such as "sanguine about the outcome of the election"). How did this word, which is the same as the French adjective from the noun "le sang," meaning "blood," acquire such an apparently different meaning?
Answer: "Sanguine" has been a synonym for "cheerful" and "confident" in English since the 17th century. In more recent usage "sanguine" is often interchangeable with "optimistic," as in your example, or as in "sanguine about the future." Sometimes, too, it can even mean "not overly concerned," as in "sanguine about the ozone layer."
"Sanguine" has been part of the English lexicon since the 14th century, when, having been borrowed from Middle French, it meant "bloodred" (a meaning it retains). The French word, in turn, is derived from "sanguis," the Latin word for "blood." English "sanguine" also shares senses of "bloody" and "bloodthirsty" with the adjective "sanguinary." "Sanguinary" comes directly from Latin "san-guinarius" but didn't show up in English until the 17th century.
The answer to your puzzle is to be found in the part "sanguine" played in Medieval physiology. In the Middle Ages it was believed that a person's temperament resulted from the unique balance of four "humors" within the body. These four humors ("humor" is the Latin word for "moisture" or "fluid") were yellow bile, phlegm, black bile and blood; each was characterized by different degrees of heat, cold, moistness, and dryness. The predominance of one or the other gave a person his or her particular temperament (thus "humor" can now mean "mood" or "temperament"), as well as a characteristic complexion. Thus, biliousness (too much yellow bile) was associated with yellowish skin, irascibility, and vindictiveness. Phlegm, the cold and moist humor, was associated with sluggishness; in today's jargon, a phlegmatic person possesses a certain calm fortitude but is perceived as somewhat dull. Black bile, or melancholy (from Greek "melan," meaning "black," and "chole," meaning "bile"), was characterized by dark depression. "Sanguine," describing a person whose predominant humor was blood, denoted a ruddy complexion, cheerfulness, and confidence. Psychologists today still refer to a "sanguine temperament," and, as we noted above, "sanguine" is often synonymous with "cheerful" and "optimistic."
Question: In Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the etymology given for "bonfire" is that it derives from Middle English for "fire of bones." Could you explain this? Is it possible that "bon" comes from the French word for "good," and a bonfire is really a "good fire"?
Answer: Your theory was in fact the etymology offered by Samuel Johnson in 1755 in his great Dictionary of the English Language. Johnson defined "bonfire" as "a fire made for some publick cause of triumph or exaltation," and derived the word, as you suggest, from French "bon," meaning "good," plus English "fire." Other correspondents have written us championing this etymology against the rather gloomy one we give in our dictionaries, which, as you've noted, derives the word from Middle English "bonefyre," literally, a fire of bones. In support of the jollier etymology are cited such foreign words for "bonfire" as German "Frendefever," literally "joy fire," French "feu de joie," Italian "fuoco d'al-legrezza," and so forth.
There are several reasons, however, for preferring the "bone fire" etymology. First, the creation posited by Johnson's etymology would be somewhat unusual - a French/An-glo Saxon hybrid. "Fire" is purely native English. Second, knowing that the word goes back to the 15th century, we might expect it to have evolved to "boonfire," since "boon" (as in "boon companion") is the form that developed from the French "bon" when it was borrowed at this early date.
Third, the spelling in our earliest attestation of around 1475 is "banefire," and "bane" is a spelling of "bone" which long continued common in Scotland. Even more telling, however, is the fact that the earliest appearance is glossed "ignis ossium" - Latin for "fire of bones." And a citation from the 15th century confirms that this is not just a learned folk-etymology: "In worshyppe of saynte Johan the people waked at home, & made each maner of fyres. One was clene bones and noo woode, and that is called a bone fyre."
This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Send questions to: Merriam-Webster's Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.