A.E.B.

Leeds, July 8. 1850.

News, Noise (Vol. ii., p. 82.).—­I think it will be found that MR. HICKSON is misinformed as to the fact of the employment of the Norman French word noise, in the French sense, in England.

Noyse, noixe, noas, or noase, (for I have met with each form), meant then quarrel, dispute, or, as a school-boy would say, a row.  It was derived from noxia.  Several authorities agree in these points.  In the Histoire de Foulques Fitz-warin, Fouque asks “Quei fust la noyse qe fust devaunt le roi en la sale?” which with regard to the context can only be fairly translated by “What is going on in {138} the King’s hall?” For his respondent recounts to him the history of a quarrel, concerning which messengers had just arrived with a challenge.

Whether the Norman word noas acquired in time a wider range of signification, and became the English news, I cannot say but stranger changes have occurred.  Under our Norman kings bacons signified dried wood, and hosebaunde a husbandman, then a term of contempt.

B.W.

* * * * *

“NEWS,” “NOISE,” AND “PARLIAMENT.”

1. News.—­I regret that MR. HICKSON perseveres in his extravagant notion about news, and that the learning and ingenuity which your correspondent P.C.S.S., I have no doubt justly, gives him credit for, should be so unworthily employed.

Does MR. HICKSON really “very much doubt whether our word news contains the idea of new at all?” What then has it got to do with neues?

Does MR. HICKSON’S mind, “in its ordinary mechanical action,” really think that the entry of “old newes, or stale newes” in an old dictionary is any proof of news having nothing to do with new?  Does he then separate health from heal and hale, because we speak of “bad health” and “ill health”?

Will MR. HICKSON explain why news may not be treated as an elliptical expression for new things, as well as greens for green vegetables, and odds for odd chances?

When MR. HICKSON says dogmatice, “For the adoption of words we have no rule, and we act just as our convenience or necessity dictates; but in their formation we must strictly conform to the laws we find established,”—­does he deliberately mean to say that there are no exceptions and anomalies in the formation of language, except importations of foreign words?  If he means this, I should like to hear some reasons for this wonderful simplification of grammar.

Why may not “convenience or necessity” sometimes lead us to swerve from the ordinary rules of the formulation of language, as well as to import words bodily, and, according to MR. HICKSON’S views of the origin of news, without reference to context, meaning, part of speech, or anything else?