“Aw, man, were you watching the toro and the matador? Did you see the gore?”
“The mess of blood? I mean, I wasn’t looking for it, but—”
“No, I mean—”
“When the toro speared him with its horn? Fortunately, I didn’t—”
“No, I mean the gore of his costume.”
“The what?”
“You know, the triangular panel in his vest. That’s where the horn pierced. It made a big hole. And a big mess.”
“So… the gore is covered in gore because it got gored, is what you’re saying.”
Yes, there are three kinds of gore. One is a noun referring to blood, particularly after it’s been exposed to the air; one is a verb referring to puncturing with a horn or spear or similar; one is a noun referring to a triangular panel or clothing or piece of land or similar shape, such as the space between two close lines of longitude as they converge at a pole. In surveying and cartography, this third gore refers to an area that is unincorporated due to a gap between two competing surveys or a similar error; it can also refer to the triangular patch of land between two converging or diverging roads (like that bit that people do screamers across when they realize they’re missing their exit).
If you take a moment, you can discern connections of sense: gore, as in blood, is produced when you are gored, and you are gored with something pointy just as a gore of land or clothing or whatever is pointy. So, then, which came first?
Ha. They all did. They’re three separate roots.
They all come by way of Old English, mind you – this isn’t one of those cases where you have words that look the same but one came from Latin and one from Germanic. But they were different words in Old English.
The gore that means ‘drying blood’ comes from Old English gor ‘dirt, filth, muck’, from a Germanic root for ‘manure’ – the sense extended onto drying blood and then largely shrank to it. It is traced to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘warm’.
The gore that means ‘pierce’ comes from Old English gar ‘spear’, from a Germanic root for ‘spear’, traced to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘spear’ from an older root meaning ‘fling’.
The gore that means ‘triangular piece’ comes from Old English gara, from a Germanic root for ‘wedge-shaped piece’, traced to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning ‘spear’ from an older root meaning ‘fling’.
Oh, wait, those last two do come from the same root… way back in PIE. Then they sort of… diverged. At an angle. Meanwhile, the first one comes from somewhere else altogether; there’s a sort of unsurveyed gap between them.
But now all three have converged – in form, though they continue to diverge in sense. It’s all kind of messy. Well, words will do that sometimes (cleave and cleave are a prime example). It’s an inconvenient truth.
Incidentally, the family name Gore probably traces to the triangular patch of land. But until AD 2000, “bush versus gore” was just your two choices when walking by the forested edge of a field and seeing a bull charging towards you.
Sesquiotica 