Today’s word of the day, thanks to the Word Guru’s daily quiz, is uncouth. Uncouth is an adjective that means “awkward, clumsy, or unmannerly” or “strange and ungraceful in appearance or form” or “unusual or strange” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/uncouth). Merriam-Webster gives as an archaic definition, “not known or not familiar to one” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncouth).

M-W adds as an explanation, “Uncouth comes from Old English cūth, meaning ‘familiar’ or ‘known,’ prefixed by un-, giving the meaning ‘unfamiliar.’ How did a word that meant ‘unfamiliar’ come to mean ‘outlandish,’ ‘rugged,’ or ‘rude’? Some examples from literature illustrate that the transition happened quite naturally. In Captain Singleton, Daniel Defoe refers to ‘a strange noise more uncouth than any they had ever heard.’ In William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Orlando tells Adam, ‘If this uncouth forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or bring it for food to thee.’ In Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane fears ‘to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him!’ So, that which is unfamiliar is often perceived as strange, wild, or unpleasant. Meanings such as ‘outlandish,’ ‘rugged,’ or ‘rude’ naturally follow” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncouth).

We cannot really say when the word entered the English language because it shows up as “Old English uncuð ‘unknown, strange, unusual; uncertain, unfamiliar; unfriendly, unkind, rough,’ from un- ‘not’ + cuð ‘known, well-known,’ past participle of cunnan ‘to know’ (see can (v.1)), from PIE root *gno- ‘to know.’ Meaning ‘strange, crude, clumsy’ is first recorded 1510s. The compound (and the thing it describes) widespread in IE languages, such as Latin ignorantem, Old Norse ukuðr, Gothic unkunþs, Sanskrit ajnatah, Armenian ancanaut’, Greek agnotos, Old Irish ingnad ‘unknown’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=uncouth).

Some people find it amusing to use the word couth even though they think that it is not a word, but it is. There was an Old English cuðe, meaning “known,” “past participle of cunnan ‘to know,’ less commonly ‘to have power to, to be able’ (see can (v.1))” (ibid.) and it made it into Middle English as couth.But, “As a past participle it died out 16c. with the emergence of could, but the old word was reborn 1896, with a new sense of ‘cultured, refined,’ as a back-formation from uncouth” (ibid.). And a backformation is exactly what people are making when they jokingly use the word couth because, after all, if there is an uncouth, there must be a couth.

According to the On This Day website, on this date in 1865, Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde) by the German composer and lyricist Richard Wagner (1813-1883) premiered at the National Theater Munich.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a German composer and theatrical director who is famous for his lengthy, complex operas: “Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner).

Wagner grew up in the theater and fell in love with music and drama early on. He wrote his first play when he was just 13. When he was 14, he heard two of Beethoven’s symphonies which influenced his musical development. In 1829, he saw “ dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, who became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben Wagner wrote, ‘When I look back across my entire life I find no event to place beside this in the impression it produced on me,’ and claimed that the ‘profoundly human and ecstatic performance of this incomparable artist’ kindled in him an ‘almost demonic fire’” (ibid.).

Wagner became interested in turning music dramas into national works, so he focused on stories related to Germanic myth and romance. His greatest, or at least best known, work is his Ring cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring of the Nibelung. The cycle is in four parts: Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold), first performed in 1869; Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), first performed in 1870; Siegfried, first performed in 1876; and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), first performed in 1876. The cycle is based upon stories found in the Poetic Edda and the Volsunga Saga, Old Norse works in the heroic tradition.

In between the composition of the second and third parts of the Ring cycle, he composed two operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg), first performed in 1868, and “the tragic love story Tristan und Isolde, first performed in 1865 (ibid.). “Tristan is often granted a special place in musical history; many see it as the beginning of the move away from conventional harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century. Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of ‘the art of transition’ between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines” (ibid.).

One of the problems faced by college students is what to do with foreign words, particularly with foreign names. Do you Anglicize them—in other words, pronounce them as if they were English words? Or do you try to pronounce as they are pronounced by native speakers of the language? Now, Richard Wagner looks like an English name, and I have heard people pronounce it /rɪˈʃɑrd ˈwæg nər/, with the second syllable beginning with the English ch sound and the third syllable beginning with the English w, as in English well. But Wagner was German, and the German pronunciation would be /ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvɑːɡnər/, something like “ree-kart vahg-ner.” Intellectuals consider pronouncing the composer’s name the first way as uncouth. However, the most uncouth pronunciation I have ever heard by was one of those members of the intelligentsia, who pronounced it / rɪˈʃɑrd ˈvɑːɡnər/, half English, half German. In other words, if you are faced with a foreign name, choose one approach or the other.

Today’s image is of “Stuart Skelton and Nina Stemme in the title roles of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 2017 (https://www.wkar.org/arts-culture/2017-04-03/tristan-and-isolde-metropolitan-opera).