I just used this phrase in a Good Reads comment on Anthony Horowitz's Point Blank a little bit ago. Though I double-checked before posting, I did know it was 'derring do', not 'daring do', as I'm sure it has been spelled many a time. But I have no idea of where the phrase comes from. Nor, when I get right down to it, do I know what it really means. I know what I mean by it, which is roughly 'doing daring things'. But as I think about it,that's probably too easy. 'Derring' and 'daring' are probably not just variants of the same word. The only thing I can think of us is that derring might be from German or possibly the Nordic. The latter is probably only because I'm thinking of the word 'herring'. Well, before I drift too hopelessly out to sea, let's find out...
For once, I seem to have been pretty much right the first time round, which at first was a bit of a letdown. I guess it's actually more properly 'derring-do', but that's minor stuff--it still means something along the lines of 'heroic daring'. However, digging a little further often leads to more rewarding things, and it's certainly the case with this word or phrase. It is in fact, a word borrowed, passed along and variously shaped and misinterpreted by some of the brightest lights of English literature. It first finds it way into print in Chaucer's Troylus and Criseyde as 'durring don'--daring to do; becomes 'dorryng do' through the poet John Lydgate in a nod back to Chaucer; is misprinted later as 'derrynge do' and then misinterpreted by Edmund Spenser, who much like me (though in this one sense only) thought he was encountering a different word and took it to mean 'brave actions'-- though he too changed it a little to 'derring doe'--which Walter Scott then grabbed up for Ivanhoe, from which his version 'derring-do' then became part of the common parlance.
I pretty much lifted all that from phrases.org.uk, by the way, so have a look if you would like a fuller and very lively account of the above.
I was also pleased to learn that 'derring-do' is what the OED calls a 'psuedo archaism'. We like to think of those times when men were men and acted out brave feats of derring-do, except that, well, they didn't exactly. Or at least they didn't know that was what they were doing.
Chaucer, Lydgate, Spenser, Scott--great men and great writers--but not the most meticulous of spellers, I'm thinking.
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Great phrase: pseudo-archaism, misspellings, Sir Walter Scott. You got a lot of bang for the buck on this one.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say I'd never seen this word spelled before, until I read in your post that Sir Walter Scott used it for Ivanhoe, which is just a fantastic book.
It's always great to see how words go through a process of being mangled before we get what we have today.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the link to the phrases site! I think I'm going to have fun with that one.
Brian, yes, at first I thought this was the least interesting word--or phrase--I'd chosen. But now I think it's more of a treasure trove. I like how, because it is not the most common of words, it actually can be traced back through a line of writers, and so you know who read who and was impressed by them.
ReplyDeleteNate, happening upon that website was probably worth writing the post just in itself.
And as to mangling, one of the first things I read in my research was someone asking for help discovering more about the phrase 'deeds of deeding do'. So you could see just right there how in the right hands, like, say Sir Walter Scott, a next generation of writers might be using the phrase 'deeding do' and think nothing of it.
I thank you for that introduction to phrases.org.uk, which sounds like a good deal of fun. But I don't think anyone was a meticulous speller in Chaucer's time. I have read that standardized spelling is an 18th-century notion, at least with respect to English.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
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Yes, but Chaucer wasn't the mangler, was he?
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the era of meticulous spelling may have come and gone. I don't know that we're really any the worse for it.
Ur rite about that!
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, as the world stops caring about spelling, my job of looking up books for people means that I have to get the spelling just right, or I can't find what they're looking for. I suppose at some point there will be a program like Google's which asks 'did you mean...?', but I suppose we won't be able to afford to get it.
ReplyDeleteThere's a weird split with respect to spelling, at least among we educated folks. Machines demand more and more precise spelling of us as humans grow laxer, less literate and in increasing thrall to fashion and business (as if there were a difference) in these matters.
ReplyDeleteSo it's not simply a matter of declaring that we are growing stupider or less literate, though that may in fact be the case. It's a sprt of technologically sophisticated illiteracy.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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I think that, as with all things technological, we will eventually be let off the hook about spelling. Our machines will end up telling us "Oh, don't you worry about it, dear," and with a pat on the head we will toddle off while they clean up our textual mess behind us.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't you doubt that anyone will be typing anything in twenty years? It already seems a bit passe.
Typing in its literal sense is already gone. In the sense of assembling words by use of a keyboard, I think we'll still be using our fingers for something other than scratching ourselves in twenty years.
ReplyDeleteI think precision in spelling will persist and even increase to the extent that English grows as a, er, lingua franca. The illiteracy may be confined to English's operation within groups of native speakers that already speak the same language and do not need the precision that communication between groups requires.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Or maybe spelling will be simplified exactly because English is becoming a Lingua Franca.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that like Peter said, standardized spelling only became a concern around the 18th, even 19th centuries. And I'd believe largely because of technology making print more readily available.
ReplyDeleteNow that that technology is expanding even further, and publication in all sorts is opening up even wider, it's becoming harder to maintain that standard.
But it seems to me that the written language is an extension of the spoken, which is in constant flux. So spelling is a snapshot of what was spoken once.
Wow.I really like that idea of spelling being a snapshot of what was spoken once. An after trace.
ReplyDeleteFrench spelling is especially a relic of what was once spoken. Think of the final z in second-person plural present-tense verbs (cherchez, regardez) or of the silent endings in third-person forms (aiment, pronounced aime).
ReplyDeleteMarco: If simplified means standardized, you could be right.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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I always thought that derring-do was a consciuosly archaic word, you know, the kind of word that is more written than spoken. At least, in India, we only see it in books and newspapers, I have never come across anybody speaking it.
ReplyDeleteI kind of always associated it with Errol Flynn and The Prisoner of Zenda-kind of swashbuckling stuff, so the fact that it goes back to the Chaucerian era was an eye-opener.
Those are like the associations the term had for me. I always pictured it as the sort of thing a carnival barker would should about outside a sideshow tent.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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French is a great example of that, Peter. As are some names in England. Like Worcestershire.
ReplyDeleteI am guessing that the reason we associate so readily to swashbuckling, Sucharita, is that the only reason it really exists in the language is entirely due to the mass appeal of Ivanhoe, at least as the cited article would have it. I find it interesting to think of a popular novel as an early form of viral transmission.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Marco, but I took simplified to mean something a little different than standardized. I think the very common use of 'thru' for 'through' would be an example of this sort of direction.
ReplyDeleteThat great Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock had great fun with this. One of his literary sketches is about an impoverished artistrocrat who lives in Knotacentinem Towers, pronounced Nosham Taws. Read the "real" name out loud for best effect.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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Very fun. Stephen Leacock isn't very well known here, though. I think I only know of him, maybe through some essay of Robertson Davies.
ReplyDeleteJust noticed your (inadvertent) new coinage--'artistrocrat'. It's got a ring to it.
ReplyDeleteDavies wrote a heartfelt introduction to one of my Leacock collections.
ReplyDeleteMy inadvertent coinage sounds like the hialrious dog Astro form the Jetsons orm, even worse, like the unbearable Scooby-Doo, whose continued popularity is posterity's joke.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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I think Bono might be a good example of an artistrocrat.
ReplyDeleteDon't let some people around here hear you knocking Scooby-Doo, though.
I have withering contempt for people who say, "Ruh, roh" and think they're being funny.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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I have a friend who does say that, unfortunately, but as he is still basically a kid, I forgive him.
ReplyDeleteI'll make an exception in this case. But don't let this happen again.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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There is probably a whole post for someone somewhere about bright people who speak largely in allusions to popular media. I've had several friends over the years who can mimic TV characters, or recite whole musicals or whatever. It's not easy being around this type of mind, but they are generally smarter than I am, and sweet in some way, so I try to ignore the element of their personality that finds this kind of stuff amusing.
ReplyDeleteWell, there are good popular-media references and bad ones. When I hear someone say, "Ruh-roh," I want to slap myself in the forehead and cry "Doh!"
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Detectives Beyond Borders
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Peter, you can hate Scooby Doo, but Velma? She's among the great female detectives of our era.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess she didn't bother me as much as the goofy guy or the damned dog.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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love the phrase derring do - one of my favourites. I suppose people do misspell but its such a cool phrase that I think people try hard to get it right.
ReplyDelete"Derring-do" is inextricably bound up with the idea of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. twiddling his mustache, a twinkle in his eye.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
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Funny, although Brian has mentioned never having seen it in print apart from Ivanhoe,my two hour delay in the L.A. airport this morning, did yield a contemporary sighting and even an unusual feminine context. The current New Yorker has an article about buying a bathing suit, which to me was interesting only for this sentence:
ReplyDeleteIt takes a certain amount of derring-do and self-delusion to view one's mostly naked body reflected florescently in a three-panel mirror.
And not a swashbuckler or a twiddled moustache in sight. Or one hopes not.
That sentence would have caused a raised eyebrow had it come under my professional scrutiny. Derring-do implies conscious action. It may require derring-do to dive off a cliff; it does not to fall off the same cliff. View is too passive a verb to demonstrate that the writer knows what derring-do means. To study one's body, to parade one's body in those mirrors or to parade one's body in front of them might require derring-do, but not to simply view it.
ReplyDeleteTo view is not to do. But then, I don't work for the New Yorker. How would I know what its standards are?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
turthowe http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I suppose the argument is that viewing in this particular situation is one that takes great courage and perhaps even a bold disregard and even recklessness. Sounds pretty active to me.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you're right. I still think it's too whimsical for the context, though. Its connotations are all wrong.
ReplyDeleteThen again, no one asked my opinion.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Well, the whole article was too whimsical by half, or I think it was, because I didn't even find it entertaining enough to finish it, even as airport fare. I kind of like taking the term into new territory, especially an essentially masculine one into feminine territory, but you're right, it doesn't quite pass muster.
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