Learn English – Crush the spearhead leek

etymologyfoodold-englishuncountable-nouns

I've often wondered why the pungent plant called garlic is a mass noun. If I look at its etymology, I see it is derived from Old English.

Old English gārlēac, from gār ‘spear’ (because the shape of a clove resembles the head of a spear) + lēac ‘leek’.

Garlic is said to be a mass noun, yet it is not an indistinguishable mass, it is "concrete" and can be smelt, seen, touched, peeled, chopped, and crushed. It is definitely a quantifiable “thing”. A (mass) concrete noun refers to an aggregation of things taken as an indeterminate whole {luggage} {cutlery} {stationery}, so in order for it be enumerated, a “unitizer” must be used in conjunction with the preposition of, e.g. a bulb of garlic

I could be tempted to explain that garlic is a mass noun because it is segmented, yet I am reminded that citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, etc.) also have segments and they are all countable. Similarly, the closely related onion plant has an edible bulb which is made up of concentric layers, or more precisely, scales. In spite of its inner division, onions are not considered a mass noun.

Maybe the aromatic plant 1,000-700 years ago was vastly different from the one we are familiar with today because personally, I don't see that much similarity between an Anglo-Saxon spearhead and a clove of garlic.

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Anglo Saxon spears (via KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY)

Questions

  • Is there an explanation why garlic was considered uncountable by the Anglo-Saxons? Has it always been so?

  • Garlic appears to be a compound word, spear(head) + leek, which suggests it was either discovered and named when the word leek had already been established, or, the gārlēac plant used to have a completely different name. Is there any supporting evidence for my suppositions?

Best Answer

Not sure if this helps, but the origin appears to be from Middle English when the combination of the two terms took place. Usage of the Old English term appears to suggest a non- countable noun.

The modern English form has not changed a great deal over the course of history. Taking a step back to Middle English, we can find it variously spelled as garlec, garleek and garlek, among others. Let’s take a look at an example from 1399, from the Forme of Cury:

  • Take Colyandre Powdour of Peper and garlec ygrounde in rede wyne.

This work t ranslates as “forms of cooking” – the ‘cury’ is in fact from French cuire. It is a collection of recipes claimed to have been written by the Master Cooks of King Richard II.

Just a few years previously, Chaucer wrote in his Canterbury Tales:

  • Wel loued he gā̆r-lē̆k, oynons, and eek lekes.

Here, you can see that it has been written as two parts put together, and you might wonder why. The reason is, of course, simple. Garlic is indeed formed of two parts. It comes from Old English garleac or garlec in some dialects, which consists of gar and leac. We will start with the first element: gar. This meant ‘spear’. You have only to look at the shape of the cloves to see why it might be called a spear – they do indeed look similar to the shape of a spear-head. This term, gar, has of course become obsolete, but we can see a well-known example of it in Beowulf, from around the 10th century:

  • Hwæt! We Gár-Dena, in geárdagum, þeódcyninga þrym gefrunon

  • Lo! We have heard renowned the Spear-Danes’ great kings in days of yore

Let’s take a look at the second element: leac. There is nothing strange about this at all. Quite simply, it means ‘leek’, another word that remains little changed!

  • Ðæt greáta cráuleác; nim ðes leáces heáfda

That makes crow-garlic; take the leeks on the rise

From Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of early England, a collection of Old English source texts.

The Old English word is thought to derive from Proto-Germanic *lauka. There are cognates to be found in other Germanic languages; Swedish lök and Danish løg both meaning ‘onion’,Dutch look and German Lauch, meaning ‘leek’.

(The Millers Tale)

Garlic from aphaDictionary.com

Notes: Although it refers to countable objects, garlic is a mass noun, which means that it has no plural. It behaves like nouns referring to masses or substances with indeterminate boundaries, like water, air, and contemplation. We can say, "two onions" but never "two garlics"; instead, we must say "two heads of garlic" or "two cloves of garlic".

Garlic as a mass noun from Lexical meaning:

8–3 Onion is generally a count noun, and garlic generally a mass noun – one says an onion but not #a garlic , and a head of garlic but not a head of onion or a bulb of onion. Onion can be treated as a mass noun, however, In contexts like “this soup has too much onion*” ...

Wierzbika notes that both onions and garlic are used chopped up as an ingredient....Since they are usually experienced chopped, their integrity as individuals is compromised. That is why they can be both used as mass nouns...but Wierzbika notes that whole onions are sometime prepared and eaten....head of garlic are not eaten this way because of the paper between the cloves.

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