As appealing as it seems, Paley's argument cannot be the
whole story. To examine the complexity of life and our own ori-
gins on this planet, we must dig deep into the fascinating reve-
lations about the nature of living things wrought by the current
revolution in paleontology, molecular biology, and genomics. A
believer need not fear that this investigation will dethrone the
divine; if God is truly Almighty, He will hardly be threatened by
our puny efforts to understand the workings of His natural
world. And as seekers, we may well discover from science
many interesting answers to the question "How does life
work?" What we cannot discover, through science alone, are
the answers to the questions "Why is there life anyway?" and
"Why am I here?"
There's an awful lot of BS here. In Old English, Anglo-Saxon if you prefer, there was a noun and verb. The noun was wryhta--i forget what the verb form was. Before becoming almost obsolete, wright meant someone who made things, or worked in a particular medium. Therefore, a person who worked in wood was a woodwright, a carpenter. Someone who made carts was a cartwright, someone who made wains (a large, four-wheeled wagon) was a wainwright. Someone who made wheels was a wheelwright. Wrought is the past participle of the verb. There is a town in North Carolina which was settled in the 17th century. They have a little museum in nearby Wilmington which lists the passenger manifest. The passengers were all carpenters and their families. The town is called Wrightsville Beach, because all of the carpenters on the little ship were named Wright. The usage survives to this day in family names, of course, but also in some terms in which it still means someone works in a medium, such as a playwright.
That's a frosty start, but still I read on. What you have given is nouns, very nice and interesting nouns, but nouns nevertheless.
I was remarking on the absence of the present tense of the verb.
There's an awful lot of BS here. In Old English, Anglo-Saxon if you prefer, there was a noun and verb. The noun was wryhta--i forget what the verb form was. Before becoming almost obsolete, wright meant someone who made things, or worked in a particular medium. Therefore, a person who worked in wood was a woodwright, a carpenter. Someone who made carts was a cartwright, someone who made wains (a large, four-wheeled wagon) was a wainwright. Someone who made wheels was a wheelwright. Wrought is the past participle of the verb. There is a town in North Carolina which was settled in the 17th century. They have a little museum in nearby Wilmington which lists the passenger manifest. The passengers were all carpenters and their families. The town is called Wrightsville Beach, because all of the carpenters on the little ship were named Wright. The usage survives to this day in family names, of course, but also in some terms in which it still means someone works in a medium, such as a playwright.
Thanx for the history.
I found that interesting.
David
0 Replies
Setanta
1
Reply
Sat 9 Aug, 2014 11:51 am
@McTag,
Apparently, you didn't remark that i had said that wrought is the past participle of the verb.
We seem to be discussing this in parallel. That was a given from the start, at least for me.
I also was interested in the remarks about wainwright, cartwright and so on. We also have a surname Seivewright. It amuses me occasionally to make make mental lists of surnames which were occupations, from the common names like Farmer and Cook and Clark to the more unusual Mercer, Fletcher, Pargetter and so on.
What an excellent occupation for a rainy day it is.
I have read that Wright or a name incorporating -wright accounts for 12% or 13% of surnames in England. There are other interesting surnames, as well. Franklin means a free man, in the specific context of a serf who, through diligence and saving, has acquired sufficient cash to pay a form of heriot for a quittance of feudal service, and has acquired enough land to establish a freehold. Palmer, it is said, comes from those who made the pilgrimage to the "Holy Land," and brought back a palm frond as proof that they had been there. In addition to those you named, there is Fuller (one who treats otherwise raw wool cloth), Bowyer (a maker of bows and/or arrows), Thatcher (the notorious pirate Blackbeard was known as Edward Teach or Edward Thatch), Mason, Miller, Smith, Cooper, Brewer, Archer, etc. You have to wonder about the erstwhile royalist officer who became a Parliamentary General, George Monck. Was there a randy friar in his family tree?
It's catching.
You can group them into categories too:
Fell, Skinner, Tanner, Leather, Sadler
Farmer, Gardener, Shepherd, Driver, Warrener, Falconer
Waller, Mason, Carpenter, Joyner, Turner, Planer, Sawyer...
Oh, the fun to be had.
0 Replies
contrex
1
Reply
Sun 10 Aug, 2014 02:16 am
@Setanta,
Setanta wrote:
You have to wonder about the erstwhile royalist officer who became a Parliamentary General, George Monck. Was there a randy friar in his family tree?
Derived from Anglo-Scottish 'munuc', one who lives at a monastery. The name Monk, Monck, etc was originally occupational, describing a servant employed at such a place, although later it assumed the religious meaning with which it is now associated. As a surname it was almost always a nickname for somebody who looked like a monk, or for one who led a solitary life given to good works, or to an actor, one who played the part of a monk in the pageants or the travelling theatres of the Middle Ages.
0 Replies
seriocomix
1
Reply
Sun 21 Dec, 2014 09:15 am
@Setanta,
Ah, here's where we jumped the track--again--proving that erudition is not necessarily congruent with continuity. We got our bridge built across 90% of the river, then we either leaped or at least appear to have leapt off into a swimfest of occupational proper names.
Past participle of WHAT verb? To "wright"? Am I going out this afternoon to wright some iron, or do I just scrabble at it with my bare hands until it passes from the present into the past, where it can be properly wrought?
Maybe a wright puts things aright. To rights, as it were. Then they could be said to be wrought.. Else we have wreaked some havoc. I leave the subject now, with a wry smile.
0 Replies
contrex
1
Reply
Sun 21 Dec, 2014 11:18 am
@seriocomix,
seriocomix wrote:
Past participle of WHAT verb? To "wright"?
It is reasonably accurate to say that "wrought" is an archaic past participle of the verb "work", although in modern English, it is usually not interchangeable with the more common "worked". Because the phrase "work havoc" has become uncommon in modern English, its past tense "wrought havoc" is sometimes misinterpreted as being a past tense of "wreak havoc".
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