Wear and Weary

Winter drags on.  Diversions are few in number and seem forced.  Of course spring will come eventually and we'll all be just as excited as usual.  Likely more so given the long, tiresome stretch of near house arrest imposed on us by Covid.   

But for now I feel like the central character of a fascinating bit of doggerel written by the great Samuel Johnson.

"Hermit Hoar in solemn cell

Wearing out life's evening gray...."

One of the greatest students of the English language is not about to use words frivolously, so reading this I wondered about the word "wear" and how it relates to the theme of being "weary".  Doctor Johnson is rather the etymological trickster.  Keep an eye on him.

Wear, the action of wearing clothes, comes from the times when Old German and Old Norse stomped around and feasted together.  Werian meant "to clothe, put on, cover up".  It had a bit of rhyming help from another word,  warjan, that the Goths brought to the etymologic feast.  It meant "to ward off, prevent".  If you live in ice covered Northern Europe you can see how clothing would tend to do that.  If you have a bit of modern German at your disposal Wehrmacht meaning "defending/armed forces" and Gewehr, meaning "gun", presumably descend from warjan.

With enough time the clothes you are wearing will "wear out", be reduced by the passage of time.  This is a modern coinage, with wearing down from the 1840's and wearing off from the 1960's.  I have not traced the specific form "wearing out", but Johnson writing in the late 1700's might have created it.

If this line of discussion makes you weary, well that's also Old German.  It comes from werig meaning "tired, exhaused, miserable, sad".  Another off shoot of this ancient word is wuorag, from  High German.  It meant "intoxicated".  Sam Johnson, that sly old fox, probably knew this.  And in fact the poem I started out with ends rather more hopefully with a young seeker of wisdom approaching the wise old man and asking for the Meaning of Life!

Hermit Hoar

by Samuel Johnson

Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,

Wearing out life's evening gray,

Smite thy bosom, Sage, and tell,

What is bliss? And which the way?

Thus I spoke; and speaking sigh'd;

Scarce repress'd the starting tear;

When the hoary sage reply'd:

"Come, my lad, and drink some beer."