06.19.08
Hocus pocus! And a fantastic etymology appears!
“You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out . . .” Now everybody! It’s etymological “Hokey Pokey” time, so shake it all about. You put your right etymology in, you take the wrong etymology out. You define hocus pocus as a corruption of “hoc est corpus” and I’ll shake you all about.
The wrong etymology of “hocus pocus”—the magician’s incantation—is that it comes from either a misinterpretation or a parody of words in the Latin Mass. I bring this up because a friend recently, with all earnestness, filled me in on this “interesting history.” Wikipedia (sometimes known as “wackypedia” or, in homage to friend Fozzy Bear, “wokkawokkapedia”) helps spread the nonsense:
a distortion of hoc enim est corpus meum—”this is my body”—the words of consecration accompanying the elevation of the host at Eucharist . . . mocked by Puritans and others as a form of “magic words”. The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, says that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the Latin words nor see clearly his movements.
This notymology, says the OED, seems to result from a conjecture by one John Tillotson in a seemingly grumpy sermon from the 1690s: “In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.”
Well, in all improbability, actually. Hocus pocus likely originated as nothing more than part of a series of nonsense syllables used by a stage conjurer (who apparently actually called himself Hocus Pocus) around the 1620s to embellish his act. Later, hocus pocus may have been used in punning reference to words in the Eucharist, but those words are not the source.
So, with all respect to my earnest friend, if you continue to spread the false etymology of hocus pocus . . . You put your wrong foot in, you take your wrong foot out, you put your wrong foot in and you keep it in your mouth.
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Joshua Valle said,
September 17, 2008 at 5:54 pm
It seems to me you are trusting the OED too much. I might agree that your conclusion may be the best guess that one can make but ultimately it seems to be just that, a guess. We don’t know for example that the jugglers and magicians didn’t replicate the nonsense syllables they heard in the incantation at mass. Tillotson’s apparent lack of methodology does not make his conclusion false, it just does not lend any evidence to it. You can cite Tillotson as the source of a folk-etymology, but you should not use him for evidence against “hoc est corpus” as the most basic source for “hocus pocus.” I don’t deal with English etymology, but it seems to me what you need to do is to give some evidence for an alternative explanation which traces the the use of these words in such a way that rules out an origin in the mass. To attribute them to non-sense syllables which “stuck” somehow, begs the question of why they stuck.
Bill Brohaugh said,
September 17, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Good points, Joshua. Yes, lacking proof of definitive origin, we can allow the possibility of various other explanations, and I’ll grant you that my post declaring the etymology to be false in the absolute should have been qualified as “likely false” or “almost assuredly false.” I’ll turn to a source I respect for further explanation of why those declarations are likely true: Dave Wilton, author of Word Myths, writes:
From this standpoint, probabilities are different from guesses, and homonyms and near rhymes are different from genealogies.
Regarding your final point, I would argue in return that to attribute the words to any source—the clerical or the nonsensical or some third, fourth or fifth possible derivation—begs the question of why they stuck. A partial and possible primary explanation of sticking is that rhyme and meter and have staying power (see my post on that). Add in the natural tendency for creation and acceptance of reduplicative words (dilly-dally, flimflam, hocus-hocus-bo-bocus-banana-fanna-fo-focus-fee-fy-fo-mocus-pocus! as examples), and the creation of hocus-pocus in a puff of magician’s smoke becomes all the more believable.
Tom Brown said,
December 10, 2008 at 3:25 am
The thing that tends to support the belief that “hocus pocus” is derived from the Latin Mass, is the fact that the church — at some point in history –decided to throw in the virtually meaningless and superfluous word “enim” to break up the “hoc est corpus” phrase that was so common and so ridiculed as a magical incantation over the centuries. “Hoc est corpus” was too easy to turn into “hocus pocus” — so the Church made it “Hoc est enim corpus” to break up the rhythm of the phrase.
Jordanes said,
December 24, 2008 at 5:14 am
Tom, before we could give your assertions any credence, we would first have to find out when the Roman Missal is known to have rendered it “Hoc est enim corpus meum” rather than “Hoc est corpus meum.” I’m pretty sure “enim” was already there by the late 1500s when St. Pius V promulgated the Roman Missal for the entire Latin Rite, but we have no evidence that “hocus pocus” was known until the early to middle 1600s.
Traditionalist said,
June 7, 2009 at 3:59 am
The word “enim” was not just thrown into the Words of Consecration without a reason. It is actually found in the Last Supper narrative in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Hic est enim sanguis meus novi testamenti” (Matt 26:28). It is likely that the author of the Roman Canon (fourth century) thought it fit that “enim” be in the Words of Consecration of the Body, since “enim” was already present in the Words of Consecration of the Blood in Matthew.