She was a prymerole, a piggesnye.
- Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale.”
This essay examines the history, etymology and usage of the word pigsney from its early usage in Chaucer's “Miller's Tale” to the present day. Although the word has now dropped out of common usage, a derived phrase (In a pig's eye) still exists in some English-speaking regions. Originally, pigsney was a term of endearment; later the connotation changed and it became a term of abuse.
The literal meaning of pigsney is simply “pig’s eye.” The word, which dates from Middle English, was formed by adding the -s genitive form of pig to nye (a variant of eye). Several variations on the spelling are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. The most common variation on pigsney is doubling of the central consonant g and the addition of a final schwa, as in Chaucer’s use of the word. Over time the final schwa has been lost and the double g collapsed to a single one.
The current pronunciation is [pɪɡzni]. In Chaucer’s time, prior to the Great Vowel Shift, the main vowel would have been pronounced [i]. The final schwa would also have been pronounced in Middle English.
The OED suggests that pigsney “originate[d] in children’s talk or as a nursery endearment.” In truth, however, the word’s source and original meaning is now lost. As the OED admits, “[t]he semantic motivation for the compound is uncertain and disputed.” Why the word was ever used to express endearment is also debatable, as the image of a pig’s eye is not a particularly flattering one. Ultimately, most of the discussion around the history and usage of the word, though intriguing, is surmise and guesswork.
The OED’s earliest given quotation for pigsney is by Geoffrey Chaucer in his “Miller’s Tale,” which dates from around 1390. The explanatory notes to The Riverside Chaucer suggest that the word may have been a colloquial term for the cuckoo flower, also known as pig’s eye. This is a plausible suggestion. Chaucer uses the word to refer to Alison, the arch and pretty heroine of the tale, who is described in terms of robust rusticity:
But of hir song, it was as loude and yerne
As any swalwe sittynge on a berne.
Thereto she koude skippe and make game,
As any kyde or calf folwynge his dame.
Hir mouth was sweete as bragot or the meeth
Wynsynge she was, as is a joly colt.
Inclusion of country flowers would thus be appropriate to this obviously rural description of Alison. The Riverside Chaucer suggests primrose, cowslip or daisy for prymerole and the cuckoo flower for pigsney, and proposes that both words could have been used to mean “poppet.”
Given that the word has no equivalent in modern English, it is interesting to see how present-day editors and translators of Chaucer deal with it. A Cambridge University Press edition for students simply acknowledges the difficulty of translation and does not offer a meaning at all. However, it notes that the alliteration of prymerole with piggesnie “express[es] unreserved admiration for Alison’s sexual attractiveness, in words whose explosive initial letter helps to suggest her exciting effect.” The Norton edition of The Canterbury Tales takes an approach similar to that of the Riverside, glossing prymerole as primrose and piggesnye as cuckooflower, but without the extended explanation the Riverside edition offers. Peter Ackroyd, in his prose translation of The Canterbury Tales, also translates both words as flowers, but for some inexplicable reason uses rose and marigold. Neither of these is the appropriate flower, at least according to The Riverside Chaucer, but Ackroyd’s translation does retain the flavour of the countryside. Rose and marigold, however, suggest a slightly more cultivated countryside than primrose and cuckooflower. As Alison is portrayed as wild and unmanageable, the latter pairing of words is probably more appropriate.
According to the Riverside edition, pigsney “[a]s a term of endearment... is commonly recorded from time of Skelton [a1529] on.” It seems to have been a “‘low,’ or at least a very familiar term of endearment, suitable no doubt for a wenche.” This may be why the word gradually underwent pejoration, in the same way that wench itself did. Originally wench meant simply a young girl or serving woman of fairly humble status, but it later acquired the meaning of mistress, prostitute, or a woman of doubtful morals. Similarly, the connotation of pigsney gradually changed for the worse, so that by 1876 it appears in Dwale Bluth as “a certain ‘Traipsing, hautecking, kerping, pigsnie.’” The English Dialect Dictionary records a nineteenth century use “as a term of contempt for an immodest woman.” The word may also have acquired its negative connotations because of its association with pigs, animals which are popularly perceived to be greedy and unclean.
Mostly pigsney seems to have been applied to a woman, but the OED lists a few examples of it being used towards a man. The same definition is given as when directed towards a woman: one who is “specially cherished or beloved.” There seem to be no instances of it being used pejoratively towards a man. Johnson’s 1755 dictionary relates pigsney to piʒa, which he claims is the Anglo Saxon word for girl. This could explain why the term was used mainly towards women. However, no other evidence for this exists, and piʒa does not appear in Bosworth and Tollier’s An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, or in any online dictionaries of Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
One other meaning of pigsney is recorded in the OED: the more prosaic one of “[a]n eye, especially a small one.” It was used in this sense by Oliver Goldsmith in his 1775 translation of Comic Romance:
The hostess received such a blow on her little pigs-nyes, that she saw a hundred thousand lights at the same time.
The more usual form for this meaning, however, seems to have been pig’s eyes, as the OED cites many more examples under the entry for this usage.
The OED records this use of pigsney as obsolete, archaic when referring to a man or boy, and rare when referring to a woman or girl. Judging from the quoted examples given in the OED, pigsney seems to have dropped out of usage sometime in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. The word is now used only as a deliberate archaism or to add verisimilitude to historical fiction, as in Margaret Frazer’s 1993 novel The Servant’s Tale:
Piers lifted his head out of his nest again and asked, “Was Ellis in a fight again?”
“Hush, pigsney,” said Rose.
The vast majority of English speakers, however, will never have heard of the word.
Nevertheless, according to the OED, a derived phrase - in a pig’s eye - still exists as colloquial speech of some parts of the English speaking world, primarily in Australia and North America. It seems to be the only trace of the original pigsney to survive to the present day. The Dictionary of American Slang defines in a pig’s eye as a term of “vehement denial,” similar to the OED’s slightly extended definition of “a derisive retort expressing emphatic disbelief, rejection, or denial.” The Dictionary of American Slang also gives three variant, slightly more vulgar, forms of the expression: in a pig’s ass, in a pig’s asshole, in a pig’s ear. What relation, if any, the expression has to the original word pigsney is now uncertain, although it presumably derives from its abusive use.
Pigsney has had a long and varied history since its early appearance in “The Miller’s Tale.” Chaucer’s use of the word is not quite as a term of endearment, but rather to express appreciative approval of Alison’s sexuality. However, given the extreme and very conscious bawdiness of Chaucer’s tale, and the doubtful morals of all its characters, probably he would not be at all surprised could he see how the word has come to have decidedly negative connotations.
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin Books, 2009.
“A.Word.A.Day - pigsney.” Wordsmith. Accessed Oct 11, 2013. http:// wordsmith.org/words/pigsney.html
Bosworth, Joseph, T. Northcote Toller, and A. Campbell. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth. Edited and Enlarged by T. Northcote Toller. London: Oxford University Press, 1898.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Miller’s Tale.” In The Riverside Chaucer, edited by F.N. Robinson, 68-77. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Kipfer, Barbara Ann, and Robert L. Chapman, eds. Dictionary of American Slang, 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
Kolve, V.A., and Glending Olson, eds. The Canterbury Tales: Fifteen Tales and the General Prologue. New York: W.N. Norton & Company, 2005.
“Pig.” Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed Oct 11, 2013. http:// www.oed.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/view/Entry/143654#eid30637618.
“Pig’s eye.” Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed Oct 11, 2013, http:// www.oed.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/view/Entry/264214?.
“Pigsney.” A Dictionary of the English Language: A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson. Accessed Oct 11, 2013. http:// johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/?p=9929.
“Pigsney.” Oxford English Dictionary. Accessed Oct 11, 2013. http:// www.oed.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/view/Entry/143742?redirectedFrom=pigsney#eid.
Robinson R.N. Explanatory notes to The Riverside Chaucer, 795-1116. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Winny, James. Explanatory notes to The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, 55-84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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