chétif

Forms

chétif (feminine chétive, masculine plural chétifs, feminine plural chétives)^[1] Old French caitiu, caitif and chaitif.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French chaitif, inherited from Vulgar Latin *cactivus.^[2][3][4] The Vulgar Latin form is explained as a crossing of Latin captīvus (“prisoner”) with Gaulish *cactos (“captive”), a Gaulish word reconstructed from Old Irish cacht (“servant”) and Breton caez.^[2][3][5] Wiktionary gives the Gaulish form as *caxtos, from Proto-Celtic *kaxtos, and compares Welsh caeth.^[1] Bloch and Wartburg compare a similar crossing in orteil.^[5]

The sense “wretched” goes back to Latin: Seneca used the word of a person enslaved by a passion, Christian writers of man held captive by sin, and Saint Augustine of one who lacks grace and cannot free himself, hence “pitiable, wretched”.^[2][3][5] The same development gave Italian cattivo (“bad, wicked”), while Spanish cautivo means only “captive”.^[3][5] Cognate with Old Occitan caitiu and Portuguese cativo.^[6][5] captif is the learned doublet borrowed from the same Latin word.^[1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found as caitiu in the 10th-century Passion, meaning “prisoner”, a sense recorded until 1530.^[2] The Chanson de Roland (about 1100) uses caitif for “wretched, unhappy”: the widowed queen there calls herself caitive.^[2][6]

Semantic evolution

In Old French the word was a doublet of captif, with the two senses “prisoner” and “wretched”;^[3] the sense “captive” died out around the 15th century.^[5] The meaning “weak in constitution, sickly” appears in the Couronnement de Louis about 1150, but it stayed rare until the 17th century,^[2][3] and the Académie recorded it in 1694.^[7] From the 12th century the word was also applied to things of little worth: a poor harvest, a mean meal.^[7][8][6]

The old sense “wretched” survives in Picard dialect and in ch'timi, “poor me”, a jocular name for the people of northern France that spread into general French around 1914.^[3] In the centre of France a spoken form chtit or chetit, crossed with a pronunciation of petit, came to mean “small” and also “bad, poor”;^[3] Bloch and Wartburg record chti “wicked, sly” and “weak” in the dialects between the Loire and the Massif Central.^[5]

English borrowed the Old North French form as caitiff around 1300, first meaning “wicked, base”.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 980 – Caitiu “prisoner” appears in the Passion.^[2][3]
• c. 1100 – Caitif “wretched” is used in the Chanson de Roland.^[2][6]
• c. 1120 – The derivative caitiveted is recorded.^[3]
• c. 1150 – Chaitif is used for “of weak constitution” in the Couronnement de Louis.^[2]
• c. 1300 – English borrows the word as caitiff.^[9]
• 1530 – Last record of the sense “prisoner” cited by the TLFi.^[2]
• 1690 – Furetière records the sense “sickly, puny”, rare before the 17th century.^[2]
• 1694 – The Académie records the physical sense.^[7]
• c. 1914 – Ch'timi spreads in general French.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of weak constitution, puny or sickly-looking (of a person, an animal or a plant): une fillette chétive.^[8][2][1]
2. (literary) Of little value, paltry, meagre: une chétive cabane.^[8][6][1]
3. (archaic) wretched, unhappy.^[6][3]

Noun

1. A weak, puny person: les forts et les chétifs.^[2]

Word family

• chétivement
• chétiveté
• ch'timi

Related words

• captif
• Latin captīvus
• Italian cattivo
• English caitiff

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
5. ^ a b c d e f g Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ a b c d e f Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
7. ^ a b c Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
8. ^ a b c Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com