Take A Break And Find Out More About A Myriad Of Culprits

October 25, 2011

Every now and again here at Get Paid To Write Online, I make a post about words or languages.

Things have been somewhat hectic over the last few months and so my working time has been dedicated more to delivering piece after piece than thinking about the various different aspects of writing.

I’m writing this on a Sunday afternoon, however and it’s the first time in a while that I’ve had the opportunity to kick back and look at some of the notes I’ve made over the last few months when it comes to words and languages.

This may sound like a somewhat childish way of working, but whenever I come across a word I don’t know the full meaning of or that I simply think is interesting and want to know more about, I jot it down.

And one of the most prominent words on my list at the moment is myriad.

I don’t use myriad in my writing much. It’s not because I don’t know what it means or that I can’t fit it into a piece anywhere, but I’ve always thought of it as being somewhat of a traditional, slightly older word.

I’ve just carried out some research into it, however and it’s actually a particularly interesting word.

I always thought that myriad was a word that simply referred to a large number, such as a ‘myriad of people in the street’ or a ‘myriad of boats on the ocean’, but when you look at it’s first usage as a Greek word, it actually referred to the specific number 10,000 and was used to refer to multiples thereof (‘four myriad of people’ for 40,000 people, for example).

While I thought this was interesting enough, I also found out that in the modern day, not only can myriad be used as an adjective, but as a noun, too, making the sentence “there were myriad people outside today” a perfectly correct one.

Another word on my list that I find interesting is culprit and the origin behind this word is arguably more interesting than myriad.

Around 350 years ago, whenever someone was taken to court and asked how they pleaded to a crime, they would give their response and the court clerk would then say “Guilty; ready to pursue or aver our indictment”, which essentially meant that they were ready to start the trial against the person in question.

At the time, French was the official legal written language and so “Guilty; ready to pursue or aver our indictment”, when translated into French, is “Culpable; prest d’averrer nostre bille”.

Similar to legal writings today, this was shortened when written and was noted down as “Cul; prist”.

As with the vast majority of words, over time, this began to be read — and said — as “cul.prit”, eventually developing into simply “culprit” and relating solely to the person being accused of a crime.

Words and languages continue to amaze me each and every day and these two words are prime examples of how fascinating words and languages from all around the world and from right throughout history can be.