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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004Legend, legendary
What do you think of the way the words "legend" and "legendary" are used today? > What do you think of the way the words "legend" and > "legendary" are used today? My understanding is that "legend" is used nowadays as a noun and "legendary" as an adjective, which strikes me as just how they ought to be used. Is there anything specific you're wondering about?  SignatureBob Lieblich We need some help from you > > What do you think of the way the words "legend" and > > "legendary" are used today? [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Is there anything specific you're wondering about? A "legend" used to mean a story, such as a myth or fable, usually fictional, handed down through generations. "Legendary" referred to such a story. Now any fairly well-known person is "legendary." I've even seen the word used in reference to a recipe! Is Frank Sinatra a "legendary" singer? > > What do you think of the way the words "legend" and > > "legendary" are used today? [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Is there anything specific you're wondering about? > A "legend" used to mean a story, such as a myth or > fable, usually fictional, handed down through generations. > "Legendary" referred to such a story. Now any fairly > well-known person is "legendary." I've even seen the word > used in reference to a recipe! Is Frank Sinatra a "legendary" > singer? Etymologically (though that approach may throw little light on every modern sense) a "legend" is simply something that "ought to be / must be read". Hence the use of "legend" to describe an explanatory caption to a picture or a table showing the conventions used by a map-maker. In the story sense, I would distinguish "legend" from both "fable" and "myth": a legend concerns people who are thought perhaps to have really existed but for whose lives there is little direct evidence and around whom there has been an accretion of imaginary detail - King Arthur and Robin Hood might be examples. Even, for example, those who believe in the absolute truth of the Gospels carry round in their heads a certain amount of legend. A topical instance for Epiphany-tide: the "wise men from the East" have become three Kings, though the Bible mentions neither their status nor their number; they are given names, though none appears in the Bible; they are of differing races, though the Bible doesn't say so; they arrive twelve days after the birth of Jesus, though the Bible story, read carefully, is thought to suggest a gap of about two years; they are buried in Cologne - a very likely tale! As a whole the story, whatever its original basis in fact, is now re-told as a legend. As to Frank Sinatra, one has to ask whether his life and singing have caught the lasting interest of many people, and whether imaginary detail has developed around that life so that many people can't tell the difference between Sinatra fact and fiction. Have films or books about him included imaginary detail? Does the story as people now know it, or think they know it, say something of significance to the image of America? If so, then I would think him properly described as a "legendary" figure. "Legendary" or "fabulous" for a recipe would seem merely an exaggerated form of praise, but there are some legends about cooking: Mithridates' concoction of prophylactic poisons, Mrs Beeton's "First catch your hare" . . . Alan Jones >> A "legend" used to mean a story, such as a myth or >> fable, usually fictional, handed down through generations. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > caption to a picture or a table showing the conventions used by a > map-maker. Etymologically, if the OED is to be trusted, it is from medieval Latin 'legenda' - 'what is read'. No 'ought' or 'must'. Earliest usage is cited as << A collection of saints' lives or of stories of a similar character. the Legend, spec. a mediæval collection of saints' lives written by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, in the 13th century; now usually called the Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea),>> Thence to 'story of a Saint's life'. Thence to 'a history' (from Chaucer on, people were wont to talk of 'the legend of my life' without conveying they thought they were actually all that and a bag of chips.) Thence to stories in general << popularly regarded as historical. >> And by C20 we find << 1918 L. Strachey Eminent Victorians 168 She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. >> Simultaneously developed the use for writing on eg coins and maps - << 1611 Cotgr., Legende, a Legende, a Writing; also, the words that be about the edge of a peece of coyne. >> 'Legendary' relates to all the above and by the 60s << a1961 in Webster s.v., Legendarily successful personality. >> Frank was a legendary singer because legends were told about his singing - how he developed his technique, what his technique actually was etc. And he was also a legendary figure because of all the stories told about him. No doubt the stories will be handed down through generations (I've certainly told my children - at least I was speaking on the subject while they sat mute) though 'handing down through generations' is not an absolute requirement of legends (but it does happen). -- John Dean Oxford De-frag to reply [...] > > Etymologically (though that approach may throw little light on every > > modern sense) a "legend" is simply something that "ought to be / [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Etymologically, if the OED is to be trusted, it is from medieval Latin > 'legenda' - 'what is read'. No 'ought' or 'must'. Hm. I confess that I didn't look at the OED. But - Latin "lego, legere" (3rd declension) means "[to] read". In classical Latin the ending "-ndum" (plural -nda) makes the word gerundive, usually with the sense (so my Latin grammar confirms) of _necessity_. Compare "agenda" - things to be done, or "memoranda" - things to be remembered. "What is read" would surely be simply the perfect participle - lectum, pl. lecta. Perhaps medieval Latin had lost the original force of the gerundive. Alan Jones >A "legend" used to mean a story, such as a myth or >fable, usually fictional, handed down through generations. [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] >> >> Is there anything specific you're wondering about? Legend, like hero, has been degraded for popular use. I sneer when I hear these things, but I'm just a snob. Carter Carter Jefferson carterj98@mindspring.com http://carterj.homestead.com/ |
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