Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Word Guru, is tergiversate [tuhr-JIV-uhr-sayt, TUHR-juh-vuhr-sayt; the “j” indicates that the g is pronounced softly, as in gel rather than as in gift]. This inkhorn term means, according to the Word Guru email, “To evade or to equivocate,” or “To change one’s loyalties.” According to Dictionary.com, it means “to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject,” or “to turn renegade” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tergiversate).

The verb seems to have entered the language in the “1650s, a back-formation from tergiversation, or else from Latin tergiversatus, past participle of tergiversari ‘be evasive,’ literally ‘to turn one’s back,’ from tergum ‘the back’ (of unknown origin) + versare ‘to spin, turn,’ frequentative of vertere ‘to turn’ (from PIE root *wer- (2) ‘to turn, bend’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tergiversate). A “frequentative form (abbreviated FREQ or FR) of a word is one that indicates repeated action. The frequentative is no longer productive in English, unlike in some language groups, such as Finno-Ugric, Balto-Slavic, and Turkic” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequentative). In linguistics, productivity means “the degree to which speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_(linguistics)). In English, we do have some words that indicate repeated action, but we don’t have a specific process in English for making frequentative words.

Tergiversate may be a back-formation because tergiversation entered the language in the “1560s, from Latin tergiversationem (nominative tergiversatio) ‘a shifting, evasion, declining, refusing,’ noun of action from past-participle stem of tergiversari. This is, etymologically, ‘to turn one’s back on,’ thus ‘evade,’ from tergum ‘the back’ (a word of unknown origin) + versare ‘to spin, turn,’ frequentative of vertere ‘to turn’ (from PIE root *wer- (2) ‘to turn, bend’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=tergiversate). Of course, without the ability to go back in time to see when the word was either borrowed or coined, we cannot be sure which one actually occurred.

According to On This Day, on this date in 1215, King John took an oath to go on a crusade as a way of winning the support of Pope Innocent III in his battle against the barons of England.

King John (1166-1216, r. 1199-1216) may have been the worst king in English history, though there are other worthy candidates. He was the youngest son of Henry II (1133-1189, r. 1154-1189) and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204). One older brother, Henry the Young King (1155-1183), died at 28, before Henry II died. Another older brother, Richard the Lionhearted (1157-1199, r. 1189-1199), died without a legitimate male heir. Richard actually left John in charge of England when he went on the Third Crusade, though he had named his nephew Arthur as his heir. This period, when Prince John was in charge, is the period we associate with Robin Hood. But when Richard died, there was much confusion about the succession, and John became the king with the support of most of the British nobility.

But John’s reign was not exactly successful for him. He became the heir to the Angevin Empire, which included England and a whole lot of France, including the Aquitaine, which came with Eleanor’s marriage to Henry II. But King Philip II of France, who supported young Arthur’s claim to the throne, was determined to retake Normandy and other regions of France from John. And he succeeded. In fact, in terms of keeping the land he inherited, John was such a failure that he achieved the nickname John Lackland.

In 1205, John had a dispute with Pope Innocent III over who would become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. John had trouble accepting the Pope’s appointment, and his being left out of the process. The Pope responded with an interdict against England, which forbade priests from conducting services. John responded with pressuring the churchmen to do services, so eventually the Pope excommunicated John. Eventually, John capitulated, and an agreement was reached that involved England’s basically paying tribute to Rome. The one advantage John gained was that from that point on he had the support of Innocent III.

John launched a military campaign to try to reclaim Normandy from the French. The campaign, which cost a lot of money, only increased the tensions between John and the barons, particularly those from the northern part of England. The fact that John lost the military campaign made matters even worse. One of the strategies employed by John was this declaration that he was going on a crusade. This declaration guaranteed the support of the Pope and the Church. But the support came too late, and the barons rebelled.

On June 15 of 1215, John met with the barons at a field called Runnymede, near Windsor Castle, and they worked out an agreement: “Little is known about the details of this historic meeting. We do know that King John placed his seal of approval on a document called the ‘Articles of the Barons.’ Over the next few days these articles were rewritten, expanded, and put into the legal language of a royal charter.
“At some point, probably on June 19, King John put his seal on the final draft of what we call today ‘Magna Carta’ or ‘The Great Charter.’ In exchange, the rebellious barons renewed their oath of allegiance to King John, thus ending the immediate threat of civil war” (https://teachdemocracy.org/online-lessons/foundations-of-our-constitution/magna-carta).

This famous document, which was executed in Latin, English, and French, is often considered the beginning of the movement toward democracy, though it was really more about limiting what the king could do in relation to the barons than setting the people free from royal rule. But it was a start. For instance, one of the articles read, “No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [property taken] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimized, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” (ibid.).

Unfortunately, John turned his back on the agreement with the barons almost as soon as he had signed it. He appealed to Innocent III, who denounced the agreement and excommunicated the rebel barons. John’s tergiversation led to a civil war, which John, not surprisingly, lost. He contracted dysentery during the campaign, and he died in 1516.

Today’s image is of the one copy of the original Magna Carta that resides outside of London, specifically in Salisbury Cathedral. You can actually go see the document, though you cannot take a photo of it. By the way, the main body of the cathedral was completed about 1258; think of that next time you see a really old ante-bellum home somewhere in the South.