SHAKSPER 2007: Atone

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 02/12/07 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0131  Monday, 12 February 2007

[1] 	From: 	John D. Cox <cox@HOPE.EDU>
	Date: 	Friday, 9 Feb 2007 13:55:33 -0500
	Subj: 	Atone

[2] 	From: 	Norman D. Hinton <hinton@springnet1.com>
	Date: 	Friday, 09 Feb 2007 19:39:47 -0600
	Subj: 	Re: SHK 18.0120 Atone

[3] 	From: 	William L Davis <wld211@nyu.edu>
	Date: 	Saturday, 10 Feb 2007 09:57:12 -0500
	Subj: 	RE: SHK 18.0120 Atone


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		John D. Cox <cox@HOPE.EDU>
Date: 		Friday, 9 Feb 2007 13:55:33 -0500
Subject: 	Atone

I'm not a historical linguist, but in response to Dennis Taylor's 
question about "atone," what I think happened is this. "Atone" was 
originally a common English verb that was pronounced "at one," and it 
meant what OED says, "to set at one." Tyndale chose this verb to 
describe the reconciliation of God and humankind in his translation of 
the New Testament. Eventually, the verb passed out of the language, 
along with its original pronunciation, so that only the biblical use of 
it remained as a specialized verb with an exclusively theological 
meaning and the current pronunciation, which masks the original meaning.

In the estimation of critics as various as Patricia Parker and R. Chris 
Hassell, Shakespeare never uses "atone" in the theological sense, even 
in word play. He uses it only in the older sense, and he probably 
pronounced it "at one."

John Cox
Hope College

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		Norman D. Hinton <hinton@springnet1.com>
Date: 		Friday, 09 Feb 2007 19:39:47 -0600
Subject: 18.0120 Atone
Comment: 	Re: SHK 18.0120 Atone

The earliest use recorded in the Middle English Dictionary is from the 
romance _Bevis of Hamptoun_,

 >So şai atonede wiş oute sake.

The derivation from the phrase 'at one' is fairly clear here.  The date 
of Bevis is in the range ~1300 to ~1330

The phrase "at ones", in the sense "all at once" can be found in works 
dating around 1295

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: 		William L Davis <wld211@nyu.edu>
Date: 		Saturday, 10 Feb 2007 09:57:12 -0500
Subject: 18.0120 Atone
Comment: 	RE: SHK 18.0120 Atone

The OED, while being a tremendous resource, is not infallible. Staff 
members on the project, along with hundreds of volunteer readers, combed 
through the resources of old books, personal letters and other documents 
to identify the earliest known usage of words. Without the benefit of 
modern resources or access to all the rare books available, however, 
entries were bound to fall short on occasion. I'm sure the people 
working on the first edition would have given their left arm to have a 
modern resource like the Chadwyck-Healey database to aid in the project 
(the first complete edition of the OED, I believe, spanned a time period 
from approximately the late 1850s to the late 1920s, or thereabouts). 
Simon Winchester has written a couple of insightful and entertaining 
books on the creation of the OED, and they give a lot of interesting 
background information into the whole project: "The Professor and the 
Madman," and "The Meaning of Everything." So, if you've found a word 
that is used in a way which appears to predate the OED's entry, you just 
might be correct in pushing back the usage to yet an earlier time.

Best,
William Davis

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