Legend (L’amour de l’étymologie I)
I’ve been thinking about cartography quite a bit too much lately, thanks to two buddies who have been encouraging my interest in maps with their enthusiasm and creative writing. So today, I thought to myself, I would begin a feature seductively (gahaha!) entitled “L’amour de l’étymologie”. Silly I know, but shit like this sounds pleasantly oceanic in French, so get off my back. Justifications aside, I chose the word legend because of maps.
Legend can be used as a noun in any number of ways. (Next time, for the sake of my sanity, I will choose a word that cannot be used in any number of ways.) Most of the archaic ones deal with the lives of saints, collections of the lives of saints, instructional booklets which conatin educational information on the lives of saints(!), etc. Some other obsolete meanings include: a history/account and a roll/list/record. It can be used to refer to writing(s) in general, but this is a rare usage.
Legend can also mean an inscription impressed on a coin/medal or the “written explanatory matter accompanying an illustration, map, etc. Also attrib., as legend-line.” I like the alliteration of that last one. (Hey, check out that rockin’ font they used on the legend-line. Death to Helvetica!)
Contemporary meanings that include variants of what we sorta-kinda thought we knew what legend meant: “An unauthentic or non-historical story, esp. one handed down by tradition from early times and popularly regarded as historical.” For an individual: “A person of such fame or distinction as to become the subject of popularly repeated (true or fictitious) stories”. The person may be “famous or notorious only for a short period of time, within a limited social circle, or in one’s own estimation”. Often, the person may be described as a legend in one’s own time.
The word has a nautical meaning: “Applied to the estimated or planned displacement, speed, etc., of a ship before construction or testing.” I don’t have a firm grip on this definition (rhetorical lie), so here’s an example from that old blatherer, Sir Winston Churchill: “If you ask your people [the Admiralty] to give you a legend for a 16-inch-gun ship, I am persuaded they would show you decidedly better proportions than could be achieved at 14-inch.”
As a transitive verb, to legend means “To tell as a legend”; to “legend out” means “to tell stories of; to tell of in legend”. This usage was first recorded in 1597, but is now considered obsolete. (Example: I’m totally glad George W. DaSent legended the burning of Bergthorsknoll in English. Totally.)
At this time, I refuse to define urban legend, urban myth, and legend’s many attributive uses.
:: Bibliography ::
“Legend.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2007. 12 Dec. 2007 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/findword?query_type=word&queryword=legend&find.x=0&find.y=0&find=Find+word>.
