Problems of French Word-Formation

Abstract

HERE is Littre's explanation of this word: 'Ver, et moulu: moulu par les vers; Berry, vermoulu; wall. viermoyeu; bourg. varm6lu.' His first example is from Beaumanoir, Coutumes, xxxviii, 19: 's'on voit le fust du pressoir vies ou vermolu.' The Dictionnaire General gives the same etymology and the same quotation. Nothing could be simpler; like English worm-eaten it is composed of a verb preceded by a noun of agency, and thus merits enrolment in Darmesteter's list. 'From vermibus molutus,' says M6nage, and neither Littre nor Darmesteter takes us any farther. But the beauty of this simple design vanishes if we but glance at the history of the word and its family, and the tangled pattern which there confronts us leads us to question the adequacy of such a pleasingly obvious equation as: vermoulu = 'moulu par les vers.' Before setting forth the main features of this history, as far as we have been able to reconstitute it, we would make two preliminary remarks. In the first place, we note that the word stands out from among its fellows in Darmesteter's list, inasmuch as it is a participle with no infinitive, or rather, with an infinitive of a different conjugation, se vermouler, and also because it is the only compound where the first element is a living agent, that is to say, where 'par' (les vers) and not 'avec' (du sel, la main, etc.) is to be understood. Secondly, we would observe, although the force of this will only be felt later, when the reader is familiar with the various equivalents and alternative forms of the word, that to say of a piece of wood that it has been moulu, 'milled' or 'ground' by worms, is, in itself, rather strange, and scarcely a spontaneous popular creation, because in early times, as with simple folk to-day, worms (or grubs) are considered as begetting themselves2 within the object, and the attribute applied to the object thus affected is usually one connoting a condition ('worminess') of the object itself, produced, so to speak, from within, rather than a modification imposed by an extraneous agency; the modern reflexive verb se vermouler is itself a good illustration of this: 'ce bois est sujet a se vermouler.' We turn now to the history of the word. It appears as early as the thirteenth century, accompanied, in Beaumanoir's Coutumes, ch. xxxviii,