twig

I twigged to it after reading Brendan Behan’s play The Quare Fellow.

In act two, Crimmin, a warder in an Irish prison, is slipping a few cigarettes to a prisoner who – unlike most in the play – speaks Irish first and foremost. He says, “Seo, cúpla toitín. Táim fhéin is an screw eile ag dul isteach san ospidéal, nóiméad. Roinn amach na toitíní siúd, is glacfhaidh sibh gal. Ma thagann an Governor nó’n Chief nó an Principal, na bíodh in bhur mbéil agaibh iad. A’ tuigeann tú?” And the prisoner replies, “Tuigim, a Thómais, go raibh maith agat.” 

The text helpfully gives a translation note: “Here, a couple of cigarettes. Myself and the other screw are going into the hospital for a moment. Divide these cigarettes and let you take a smoke. If the Governor or the Chief or the Principal come, let you not have them in your mouths. Do you understand?” And the reply: “I understand, Thomas, thanks.”

I first read this shortly before I started to study Irish, but at the time – and later, as I learned some of the language – I couldn’t help but notice that tuigeann tu means ‘you understand’ and tuigim means ‘I understand’. Which meant that the root for ‘understand’ is tuig-. Which is not pronounced exactly as “twig” – it involves a velarization of the t and a palatalization of the g that English phonology has no grasp of – but the closest English sound to it is “twig.”

Most of the time in English when we say twig we mean sense number one in the dictionary, noun, ‘little branch’ – it comes from an old Germanic and ultimately Proto-Indo-European root that is related to the root for two (because it splits in two). Now, sometimes, if a word gains a new sense or nuance, we might say it’s been tweaked, which traces to Old English twiccian ‘pluck’, which is a thing you can do to a twig, though the two are unrelated etymologically. But if instead of plucking you grasp – figuratively, as in you gain insight into something such as the development of a word – you twig, in sense number two, verb. And guess what. Guess where this twig comes from.

Well, if you ask the Oxford English Dictionary, it says “Of unknown origin.” But if you ask Merriam-Webster, it says “perhaps from Irish & Scottish Gaelic tuig- understand.” And if you ask Wiktionary, it declares, “From Irish and Scottish Gaelic tuig (“to understand”).” Incidentally, this word tuig is not etymologically related to English twig; it seems to come from a Proto-Indo-European root relating to understanding. But these twigs have twined together in the thicket of the English lexicon.

Sometimes, in etymology, when you grasp at twigs, they do not support you and you fall – as linguists like to say, etymology by sound is not sound etymology. But suggestive resemblances can sometimes lead you to a true root: something tweaks your ear, and you twig. A’ tuigeann tú?