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The origin of the term "solecism"




I never realized this before.  Came upon it in some random reading.  

The term "solecism," for ungrammatical speech, comes from the name Solon, the sage and law-giver. 

How?  Well, the City of Soli in Cilicia is said to be named for Solon. Soli is a good distance from Athens -- it is in the southeastern corner of Asia Minor, near Lebanon. And Athenian settlers to Soli gradually lost the purity (as Athenians saw it) of their speech of that dialect of Greek.  Thus: one who speaks in any manner oddly would in time be accused of uttering solecisms. 

I don't know what to do with that fact but I record it here. 
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  1. HenryApril 10, 2025 at 8:05 AM

    Christopher, your post taught me something other than the origin of "solecism"; it taught me its meaning -- or did it? I was surprised by your definition of it as "ungrammatical speech," because I've always thought that it could refer to any error. My 1987 unabridged Random House dictionary (I'd get a more recent one, but I almost always use Google to look up words) gives these three definitions: "(1) a nonstandard or ungrammatical usage, (2) a breach of good manners or etiquette, (3) any error, impropriety, or inconsistency."

    So, we're both right, but your definition is the primary one. But mine encompasses yours, making yours superfluous. Yet yours isn't really superfluous, because "solecism" does not refer to ANY error. If a mistake in wiring causes a fire, I wouldn't call that mistake a solecism. Perhaps a solecism must be verbal -- something one says -- though it can be more than grammatical; it can be factual. Isn't 2 + 2 = 5 a solecism?

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    1. ChristopherApril 11, 2025 at 12:09 AM

      Henry, I would not call 2 + 2 = 5 a solecism. I might call "two plus two equals five" a solecism. In the latter case, it is possible a non-native speaker of English learned the numbers wrong, learned to count "one, two, three, five...." In that case, "two plus two equals five" is the right math, badly expressed. The problem there is neither arithmetic nor grammar of course but what the editors of the Random House dictionary might call a nonstandard vocabulary.

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