shrift

Have you ever given someone or someone short shrift? And if you have, have you ever wondered what it actually means? No? Oh.

For anyone who’s still here, if you get or are given short shrift, it means you’re treated without sympathy and don’t get much in the way of attention. The word ‘shrift’ is well old, going all the way back to ye olde Anglo Saxons. Back then a shrift referred to the penance you were given by a priest for doing something naughty. That comes from the verb ‘shrive’, which means to hear confession, or give someone penance or absolution. And ‘shrive’ goes all the way back to the Latin word ‘scribere’, which means ‘to write’. I told you it was well old.

Ricky III #nohunchback

But why are shrifts generally short nowadays? As with many of our words and phrases we can thank Shakespeare for that. ‘short shrift’ appears in ‘The Tragedy of King Richard the Third’, first performed in 1594. Lord Hastings, who’s loyal to Ricky’s bro Edward IV, is sentenced to be executed for treason. He’s told to make his pre-beheading confession – AKA his shrift – quick, because the Duke of Gloucester (the Lord Protector of England who’s ordered the separation of H’s head from his body) is hangry:

‘Dispatch, my lord [Hastings]; the duke would be at dinner:

Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.’

It wasn’t long before people took the phrase ‘short shrift’ and started using it to describe giving something little thought or sympathy.

The word ‘shrive’ also gave us the ‘Shrove’ in Shrove Tuesday. That’s because it’s traditionally a day for Christians to be be shriven (or shrove) i.e. do some confessing before Lent. Oh, and eat a load of pancakes at the same time.

charisma

The excellently named Charisma Carpenter – yes, that is her real name – of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame (photo credit: Gage Skidmore – also an excellent name)

Someone who’s charismatic is charming, attractive and often a little bit sexy. But you know that already. But did you know that ‘charisma’ actually has its roots in religion, specifically Christianity? It was only in the early 20th century that it came to have the little-bit-sexy meaning it has today.

‘Charisma’ originally comes from the Greek word ‘kharisma’ (so not much of a leap there) which means ‘favour freely given’ or ‘gift of grace’. Both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles talk about divinely conferred charisma, which is used to talk about someone who’s a favourite of him/her upstairs i.e. who’s received God’s favour. In English, from about 1640 onwards, people used ‘charisma’ to refer to a gift or power bestowed on someone by the Holy Spirit for the good of the church.

So where did the sexy come in? I’m afraid that’s a very unsexy story. German sociologist Max Weber came up with a new definition of charisma some time before 1920 (it was found in an unfinished manuscript after he died), which is generally regarded as having dragged the concept from theological obscurity into everyday use. He described it as:

“… a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person …”