Farthingale: A Suggested Derivation

In the course of some study of minor Elizabethan drama, I was led to look up the derivation of the word 'FARTHINGALE'. I found that authorities differ, and that while Skeat, for example, connects it with the idea of verdant, flourishing, introduced directly into England through the old French form 'verdugalle' (literally, provided with hoops) through the old Spanish 'verdugo' (a young shoot of a tree) from Latin 'viridis', green; Brewer, on the other hand, derives along quite different lines from the French 'vertu garde' (a guard for modesty), corrupted later into 'verdugade', and thence into 'farthingale'.1

So much divergence indicates some uncertainty on the part of scholarship, and while the meanings in both derivations are appropriately significant of the purpose of a globular garment designed as covering for the female figure, neither etymology seemed fully convincing. I found myself hesitating especially over the possible conversion of 'gade' into 'gale', since no corresponding example of a similar language change occurred to me. But I naturally associated at once with 'nightingale', where 'gale' is admittedly Anglo-Saxon galan, to sing—connected, of course, with that group of cognate words, gala, gallant, galliard, etc.—for all of which the oldest known root is Gothic 'gailjan', to rejoice, to behave merrily or noisily.

So I turned up 'gale' in the dictionaries, and found the root origin given as Danish 'gal', meaning furious, used particularly of a furious storm of wind at sea, going back, says Skeat, to the older Icelandic 'gala', to enchant, since storms were raised by witches. This intrusion of the witch element leads into new territory which there is not time here to explore, but it seems clear that the Icelandic 'gala' and the Anglo-Saxon 'galan' must be connected, and that the predominant underlying idea in both is a gust of wind, or breath, in the form of storm or song.