Hugh in Newton, Massachusetts, noticed two very different senses of quarry, represented in John Singer Sargent’s painted stone quarries and Gustave Courbet’s The Quarry, with its fallen stag. They’re different words. The excavation sense goes back to a Latin word connected with a four-sided, squared stone, while the hunting sense in Middle English meant the entrails of a killed animal spread on the hide and given to the dogs. That second quarry is related to French cuir, meaning “skin” or “hide,” and to excoriate, originally “to skin or flay.” Humble pie comes from the same deer-guts neighborhood, from numble pie by misdivision. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Two Different Words Spelled “Quarry”: Stone Pits and Animal Guts for Hunting Dogs”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Oh, hi, Grant. This is Hugh Ault in Newton, Massachusetts.
Hi, Hugh. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Hugh.
I have a query about quarry.
A query about quarry?
I recently went to an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts here and saw the watercolors of John Singer Sargent, who was an American early 20th century painter. And one of the features of the exhibit was a series of stone quarries in Italy that he had painted with lovely pastels and colors. And then I subsequently went to a museum at the McMullen Museum at Boston College where I teach. And they had an exhibition of Gustave Courbet, who’s a 19th century French realist. And one of his most famous paintings is entitled The Quarry, but that’s a depiction of a fallen stag after a hunt. And my wife, who’s an art historian and docent, admired the artistic styles, but I was struck by the linguistic question of the two different meanings of the same word, and I thought it might have a Latin root.
Martha, that’s in your court.
Oh, I’m thrilled that you asked about this because there are two different words here, actually. It’s not the same quarry. And the one that has to do with excavation goes back to the idea of a place where stone is chipped and shaped. And so you’re making things at right angles out of that. And it goes back to a Latin word that has to do with for.
Oh, that’s fascinating.
So it’s like quatre in French.
Exactly. And the other quarry is really interesting. And if you know French, you’ll find this especially interesting. And I’m fascinated that it was a painting of a stag because in Middle English, the word quarry referred to originally the guts of an animal that are given to dogs after the hunt. And they traditionally were spread out. You would kill the animal. You would disembowel it. You would skin the animal, too, and put the skin down on the ground and put all the guts there for the dogs to devour. And if you know French, you know the French word for skin or hide, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Queer.
Queer, yeah. And that was actually the French title. The original French title was curé.
Oh, okay. I think it’s related to the explanation you had.
Yes, exactly. So there are two different quarries here with really picturesque images behind each of them. The second one actually is also related to the English word excoriate. If you think of skin or hide, you know, originally that was to skin or flay somebody.
Interesting.
Yeah. Well, that’s very, very interesting, and thank you very much for your help.
Thank you, Hu.
Okay.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
You know, another interesting word coming from the whole idea of deer guts, of course, is humble pie.
Humble pie?
Yes.
How’s that?
The old word for the innards of deer was numbles.
Numbles?
Yeah. So you would make a numble pie. And a numble pie eventually, by misdivision, became a humble pie.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Why do you know so much about guts, Martha?
You know.
You’re a gutsy gal.
Maybe that’s it.
That’s it.
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