Re: CHAT: Shrive (was CHAT: Return of the Sal)

At 4:29 pm -0600 24/3/00, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>So how did the noun end up as <shrove>? I would expect something like
>*/SrIv/, following <writ> from <write, wrote, written>.
The noun directly cognate with 'to shrive' is 'shrift' as I noted in a
previous mail.
At 7:57 pm +0100 24/3/00, Raymond Brown wrote:
.....
>'Shrift' originally meant "a prescribed penance"; it then came to mean
>"confession" or "absolution".   The "short shrift" was the short time for
>confession given to a condemned person before s/he was executed.
Whether 'Shrove' in "Shrove Tuesday" is really an epithet noun or is just a
plain ol' adjective is a matter of debate.  As AFAIK the word survives only
in this phrase and as a bound morpheme in "Shrovetide" (the period
preceding Lent) which, itself, is now somewhat archaic & not readily
understood by many.  Indeed, one could make out, I think, a good case that
the "Shrove" in "Shrove Tuesday" is the same bound morpheme & that the
space is merely a convention in writing.

The "Shrove" here, whatever its status in modern English, is not directly
derived from 'to shrive', but from a now obsolete word "shrove" which could
be used either as a noun or a verb, thus:
"shrove" [noun] = the period before Lent, Shrovetide
"to shrove" [weak verb] = to celebrate Shrovetide

Its assumed its related to 'to shrive' but its derivation is obscure;
indeed, it is an odd derivation also semantically since the Shrovetide
period was (and in some countries still is) a time of carnival where people
have a 'last fling' before the austerities of Lent.
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At 5:45 pm -0500 24/3/00, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>> I think the active 'shrive' (present) & 'shrove' (past) are now quite
>> obsolete (tho I'd be happy to be be proved wrong  :)
>
>So you think "The priest shrived the criminal" is obsolete,
Yes I do - tho, as I said, I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

It's interesting that you use "shrived"; the dictionaries do indeed give
the weak forms as alternatives to the strong forms.  I've heard it used
and, as I said, have occasionally used it myself only in the passive with
the strong pp 'shriven'.

>and needs
>to be replaced with "The priest administered the sacrament of confession
>to the criminal", or some such?
The modern terminology 'the sacrament of reconciliation' - tho the older
term survives   :)

I guess one would say something like: 'the criminal made his confession',
'the criminal received absolution', 'the priest heard the criminal's
confession', 'the priest gave the criminal absolution', etc.

But thankfully IMHO the 'short shrift' is a thing of the past this side of
the pond as the death penalty has been abolished now for some time.

But in my original post I carefully avoided the term 'criminal' since in
earlier times when beheading was commonplace & the term 'short shrift' had
its original meaning, not all who received short shrift would be accounted
criminals now.  Free speech was once very dangerous.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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