Last week we talked about the origins of ‘anniversary’. To carry on the celebratory theme, I thought this week we’d have a look at why we all shout ‘Congratulations!’ at events involving pulling party poppers and knocking back Prosecco. The good news is that, unlike ‘anniversary’, which has a rather morbid backstory involving martyed saints, ‘congratulations’ is pleasingly wholesome.
Similarly to ‘anniversary’, ‘congratulations’ also comes from Latin. This time it’s the verb congratulari, which breaks down into two rather lovely pieces:
con-, meaning ‘together’ or ‘with’
gratulari, meaning ‘to express joy’ (gratulari’s parent word gratus also gave us ‘grateful’, ‘gratitude’ and ‘grace’).
So ‘congratulations’ basically means ‘Hey, I’m expressing joy with you right now!’. Nice (if weirdly formal), right?
‘Congratulations’ appeared in English in the 1500s. Unlike a lot of Latin words which made their way to our shores via France, it was imported directly by Renaissance scholars. These scholars thought English was too simple or ‘barbarous’ (GASP) to handle certain formal ideas (which included partying, apparently), so they nicked Latin words to plug the gaps. When they were looking for an elegant word for sharing joy, they found the Latin verb congratulari. A little bit of Anglicisation later, and we ended up with ‘congratulate’ and ‘congratulation’.
(Sidebar: These scholar-imported Latin words were rightly mocked at the time as pretentious and unnecessarily fancy. Dissenters calling them ‘inkhorn terms’, a slightly weird insult based on the fact that the scholars inventing these words carried their ink around in small containers made from hollowed-out animal horns and attached to their belts.)
At first, ‘congratulations’ was strictly reserved for writing. You’d stick it in a formal letter with an introductory phrase (like ‘I beg leave to offer you my congratulations’ or ‘Allow me to extend my heartiest congratulations’) rather than shouting it across a room while slopping your drink. Over the next few centuries, we ditched the formal preamble altogether and turned it into the exclamation we use today whenever we hear a cork popping.