gargoyle

I’m sure you know what a gargoyle is – an ugly little devil-like figure, often winged, that sits high up on the outside walls of churches, cathedrals and other Christian buildings to ward off evil. Well, you’re half right. A gargoyle is one of those things, but only if it has a hole where its mouth is for water to flow out of. That’s because gargoyles actually have a very practical purpose – to channel rainwater through their mouths and away from church walls, so the stonework didn’t crumble. If it doesn’t have any water flowing through it, it’s a grotesque. So all gargoyles are grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles.

‘Gargoyle’ goes back to an Old French word, ‘gargouille’, which means ‘throat’ or ‘gullet’. That comes via Medieval Latin from ‘gargola’/‘gargulio’. It’s the same root as ‘gargle’ – both words echo the sound of liquid gurgling down the throat.

So far, so good. But who decided to gussy up gutters as gargoyles in the first place? Well, we have a French legend to thank for that. The story goes that in 7th-century Rouen, a dragon-like creature called La Gargouille was terrorising the town, breathing fire and flooding it with water (I’m not entirely sure how the fires turned into floods, but let’s gloss over that). When the townspeople finally defeated it, they mounted its head and neck on the town’s church. And that’s apparently the reason why gargoyles came to be carved onto churches as both water spouts and protectors.

(In truth, it was probably just the whimsy of medieval architects and designers – but that doesn’t make for nearly as good a story.)

Gargoyles and grotesques might feel like an olde worlde thing, but they’re still being added to buildings today. Paisley Abbey in Scotland was built in the 12th century and restored in the 1990s. A stonemason hired to replace 12 crumbling stone gargoyles added a grotesque that looks exactly like the xenomorph from the 1979 film ‘Alien’ – great to see a modern movie monster keeping company with its medieval cousins.

Image credit: Colin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

aspersion

Aspersions are critical or mean remarks about someone. They’re almost always ‘cast’, and usually a bit sneaky. But do you actually know what an aspersion is? Nope, me neither.

‘Aspersion’ actually has surprisingly saintly roots. It comes from the Latin ‘aspergere’, which means ‘to sprinkle’ or ‘to scatter’ (see also, ‘disperse’ and ‘intersperse’). In ye olde church services, priests would sprinkle holy water over the congregation – a ritual called, you’ve guessed it, an aspersion.

An AI-generated picture of people casting aspersions on each other

In print, one of the earliest known uses of ‘aspersion’ (in that blessing sense) appears in John Foxe’s 1570 translation of Actes and Monuments, a work of Protestant history and martyrology (sounds like a banger). The exact phrase is ‘the aspersion of the blood of Jesus Christ’. I’m pretty sure this isn’t literal (I hope so, at least – the dry cleaning bills would be a bitch).

You can also find this use of ‘aspersion’ in Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

‘No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall / To make this contract grow.’

So how did we get from a light dousing of holy water to someone suggesting you’re morally bankrupt? Well, by the late 16th century, the OED and other sources record the word shifting meaning. It picked up a figurative use as a ‘bespattering with slander, derogatory criticism’ in the 1590s, losing its literal connection to holy water. By 1749 it was firmly in the negative, as shown in this quote from Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones:

‘… for I defy all the world to cast a just aspersion on my character: nay, the most scandalous tongues have never dared censure my reputation.’

Are aspersions always plural? No, they can be singular – ‘an aspersion was made against me’, for example. But you’ll sound super weird if you say that (and deserve that aspersion).

‘Aspersion’ is a great example of how words evolve – from blessing people with holy water to lightly soiling their reputation. Sprinkle responsibly.