By Suman Gupta

Translations

The dominant standard term for ‘catchwords’ in Russian is ‘крылатые слова’ (krylatye slova). If I use Google Translate to translate ‘catchwords’ from English into Russian, that’s what I get. However, if I translate ‘крылатые слова’ from Russian into English, what I get is ‘winged words’. Most Russian academic papers with English abstracts featuring ‘catchwords’ are actually about ‘krylatye slova’. That doesn’t quite work for Bulgarian: by Google Translate ‘catchwords’ comes out as ‘лозунги’, which back-translated comes out as ‘slogans’ (the same as the Russian translation for ‘slogans’). However, ‘крилати думи’ (krilati dumi) is familiar in Bulgarian, i.e., ‘winged words’ in English. Alexandra Bagasheva’s essay suggests that it’s a ‘near equivalent’ for ‘catchwords’ in Bulgarian and argues that there are distinctions in construal. In Russian it is evidently taken as much the same, and I argue in this essay that there’s a significant but not much remarked difference.  

The phrase has been in use in Russian literary and scholarly texts, and later in everyday discourses, as ‘pithy sayings’/’quotable quotes’ or broadly ‘catchwords’ for a considerable while. S.V. Maksimov’s scholarly tome Крылатые слова (1890), an ethnographic study of Russian words, idioms, and sayings, marks a significant step in bringing it into wider usage. Particularly from the 1990s, there’s a well-developed field of Russian linguistic research into ‘krylatye slova’, dubbed ‘крылатология’ (krylatologia) and rendered in English as ‘wingology’ or ‘winged science’. It involves analysing also ‘крылатое выражение’, ‘крылатая единица’, ‘новая крылатая цитата’ – i.e., ‘winged expression’, ‘winged unit’, ‘new winged quote’ – and the like. This could be taken as akin to a field of ‘catchword studies’ in English. Only a tiny number of Russian ‘wingology’ publications are available in English.  

To Anglophone ears, including those of most linguists, ‘winged words’ is unlikely to be immediately meaningful.

Homeric

Only avid readers of Homeric epics in English translation will immediately light up on hearing the phrase ‘winged words’. It is the usual translation of the classical Greek ‘ἔπεα πτερόεντα’ (épea pteróenta), also rendered at times as ‘feathered words’. Homer was fond of the phrase, used it 124 times in the Iliad and Odyssey, and it is indelibly associated with those texts and their author. Classical philologists have given it concentrated attention for several centuries. Their preoccupations appear to me to have a bearing on the uptake of the phrase outside Homeric circles and especially in Russian linguistics research, so a very brief summary is expedient.

One line of enquiry concerns the formulaic nature of the phrase. This has involved debating the argument that ‘épea pteróenta’ was a literary set-phrase or fossilised metaphor from an oral tradition and not necessarily meaningfully nuanced or creatively loaded in the Homeric textual contexts where it is found. The argument was influentially made by Milman Parry (1933, 1937), and has been reconsidered with varying qualifications constantly since. A more consistent line of enquiry has taken it as straightforwardly metaphorical and designedly deployed in the relevant Homeric textual contexts, and tried to unpack it accordingly. A third line of enquiry has focused on whose words are described thus. Since ‘épea pteróenta’ issue exclusively from and for heroes and gods, a certain exalted quality or intent seems imbued in the phrase. [For careful accounts of commentary on the phrase, see Françoise Letoublon (1999) and Steve Reece (2009).] Notably, Parry’s argument about its formulaic character seemed to loosen authorial/creative investment in it and confer a routinised thrust in its usage, similar to what ‘catchwords’ suggest now. But for Parry this issue was nevertheless strictly within a circle of Homeric scholarship, with philological concepts of text/author maintained.

The phrase ‘winged words’ has a smidgen of currency without reference to (but nevertheless due to) Homeric texts. Edmund Spencer employed it in The Faerie Queene V ii (1590). It cropped up as a nice title for poems, essays, and longer prose narratives through the 19th and 20th centuries. Used thus, the phrase does not signify something as common as ‘catchwords’. On the contrary, it’s usually given as a metaphor for particularly effective or impressive sayings and compositions. Outside classical scholarship, the phrase ‘winged words’ is itself not at all formulaic in English.  

Russian definitions

As observed earlier, in Russian the phrase 'krylatye slova’ did acquire the general sense of ‘catchwords’, with a suggestion of formulaic usage, along with greater currency as referring to literary or quotable sayings and pithy expressions. The Homeric provenance of the phrase has been often acknowledged but not delved particularly; it is not regarded as having a specific bearing on the generalised current usage. Andrei V. Rastyagaev and Julia V. Slozhenikina (2021) offer a particularly useful account of the career of ‘krylatye slova’ towards specialist linguistic usage in Russian, to study lexical formations more or less equivalent to ‘catchwords’. They note (91-2) that the generalization of the phrase away from Homer’s epics and Homeric philology was first done in German, and then found its way via Maksimov (1890) into wider usage in Russian. Georg Büchmann’s Geflügelte Worte Vol.1 (Winged Words, 1864) employed it thus to title his popular dictionary of quotations. From there ‘winged words’ has been taken at times as referring to memorable quotations (recently Sax 2023), and used as an occasional technical term in various European languages to describe a category of popular phrases/quotations/idioms (see Grzybek, ‘Winged Words’ in Koch ed. 1994: 293-96). The relatively wider usage of ‘krylatye slova’ in Russian meant that it became the dominant technical term from the 1990s to label certain words and phrases, equivalent to ‘catchwords’ in English. It was given, so to speak, a standardized scientific character.

A succinct account and definition in English of this Russian specialist usage is given by Elena Golovanova (in Manerko et al. eds 2014: 141-60) – in summary:

[…] only at the end of the XX century – the beginning of the XX1 century one can speak about final formation of the content of the scientific notion ‘winged words’. Today, this is a variety of winged words that possesses three main features: 1) link with the source (author, literary, mythological, folk or historical figure; work of art; real event and etc.); 2) repeatability (they are not created in the process of communication but are repeated as ready-made units); 3) stability, steadiness of semantics. The conceptual character of the term is proved on the linguistic level by the presence of precise system of units with general word-formative component: winged word – winged expression – winged unit – wingetics (krylatika) – wingetology. The system represents strictly logically developed structure. Stability of the term winged word in linguistic usage, in our view, is explained by its correctly orienting character: everyday knowledge which is realized in it supports scientific, theoretical knowledge. (146)

This is admirably firmly stated. With a number of such definitions in view, covering publications from 1970 to 2019,Rastyagaev and Slozhenikina (2021) decided that there is no generally accepted linguistic definition of ‘krylatye slova’ (87). There are some overlapping points roughly along the lines given by Golovanova: 1) they are stable and reproducible; 2) they are aphoristic, imagistic, expressive, have emotional content; and 3) they have a well-known source of origin, usually in the mode of a quotation.

Insofar as the term ‘catchwords’ is used and discussed in English – admittedly unevenly in linguistic studies – there’s a slippage there. The Russian linguistic approach to ‘krylatye slova’ insists on an original source, usually a textual or authorial source. For Russian linguists, this appears to be a definitive feature of ‘krylatye slova’ which is seminal for the taxonomies and syntactical observations that follow. This definitive demand is imbued with the air of scientific necessity. That is not only not the case for ‘catchwords’ in everyday English usage, but also not for linguistic (or broadly academic) studies of ‘catchwords’ in the Anglophone sphere.

Philological principles

It seems likely that this insistence on an original source in the Russian ‘scientific’ linguistic approach to ‘krylatye slova’ has something to do with conventional philological principles.

Philological methods that were systematised across humanistic scholarly disciplines by the 18th/19th centuries involved tracking linguistic/literary/cultural developments in terms of origins and genesis. That meant starting from originary points (such as texts/authors or ur-linguistic/cultural formations), then logically inferring progressive branchings and shifts according to available evidence, and thereby comprehending prevailing socio-linguistic practices and cultural formations. Such methods were regarded as scientific and objective, and were structured into academic institutions especially in the course of the 19th century. But these methods came with strong ideological preconceptions and political consequences – some deleterious and simply unrealistic (I have examined the conventional philological system and its political dimensions at some length in Gupta 2015: Part 1, Philology).

Modern scientific findings have generally gone against those preconceptions, and the ideological basis of philology has largely been eschewed in current humanities/social science research. This is notably so in the development of general linguistics. However, some philological methods and convictions remain firmly entrenched in scholarly practice, often at odds with disciplinary first principles. They remain notably embedded in, for instance, sectors of scriptural and classical manuscript/text studies and certain strands of historical linguistics. The insistence on having original sources in ‘krylatye slova’ appears to be such a vestigial philological remnant. It seems to be an instance of the persistence of philological methods and convictions in what otherwise appears to be an area of general linguistics.  

The insistence on original sources in ‘krylatye slova’ might have been encouraged by the fact that the phrase was associated with – seemingly derived from -- Homeric >‘épea pteróenta’. The authoritativeness of the Homeric text as source for the labelling phrase might have suggested that everything encompassed by such a classical phrase must have something to do with a source/author. Ironically, much of the discussion within classical philological circles about ‘épea pteróenta’ has in fact pushed against Homer and his epics as the originating source. The phrase is after all formulaic and therefore not necessarily invested with authorial creativity. Homer cited no source for it and yet Homer was probably not the source for it.

Equally, it is possible that it is not so much the Homeric trace that plays here but the inertia of institutional systems. Perhaps philological subscriptions continue to be institutionally grounded where the linguistics of ‘krylatye slova’ has been studied so far.

Original sin

Be that as it may, let me sharpen the implications of such insistence on original sources in general linguistic enquiries into ‘krylatye slova’.

The first step of a general linguistic approach to studying a distinctive feature of language usage is to observe and describe what that feature consists in insofar as it is in use in a speech community, and then to explain the mechanics of its distinctive usage. Where the feature in question is the catchiness of certain words and phrases, the first step is to describe and evidence the phenomenon of catching (i.e.: Which words and phrases? By what measure of increase in usage? In what contexts and over what periods? …). Then the enquiry proceeds to try and explain the mechanics through which those words and phrases catch over whatever period they can be shown to do so (i.e.: Why do they catch?).

Are the originating sources of such words and phrases a definitive factor in the mechanics of their catching in a speech community over a given period? All the evidence is to the contrary. Those who use them or make them catchwords may or may not be aware of the original source, and that may or may not be the driver of catchiness. Sometimes they are (e.g., when a politician or celebrity comes up with a peculiarly resonant phrase); mostly they are not. Catchwords are often used without knowing where they originated; catchwords are often used with connotations that are significantly different from an original source usage; catchwords often do not have a definitive original source. Users of a given speech community are often oblivious of where their set phrases, idioms, aphorisms, pithy saying originate from, and surprised to discover that there are such originating sources (e.g., English speakers are often amazed at the number of these originating in Shakespearean texts). More obviously, catchwords catch on according to shifts and adaptations in connotations in synch with social circumstances at specific junctures.

Looking for originating sources for catchwords is therefore often irrelevant. Consequently, putting originating sources as definitive for catchwords is a distorting interference of the investigator’s ideology in describing and explaining the mechanics of their catchiness. It messes up the first step of general linguistic enquiry. Insofar as ‘krylatye slova’ in Russian (or ‘krilati dumi’ in Bulgarian) are distinctive because they have wide purchase or because they catch, in general linguistic enquiries their originating sources cannot be a definitive feature.

The desire to have original sources behind such words and phrases as a definitive feature might arise from an investigator’s interest in their cultural specificity, i.e., within homogenously conceived language-culture domains like Russia or Bulgaria (if that pre-conception seems sustainable at all). But then it would be better to pin putative culturally specific characteristics on other definitional factors, such as are amenable to describing generalised usage within those domains.

In their paper on ‘krylatye slova’, Rastyagaev and Slozhenikina (2021) come close to making the point I am pushing here. With Roland Barthes’s influential essay on ‘Death of the Author’ (1977 [1967]) in mind, they observe (somewhat grudgingly) that from a poststructuralist perspective the focus on original sources is absurd. It can only be entertained as a particular sort of historicist interest (93). That could be said not just from a poststructuralist perspective, but from any consistent general linguistics perspective.

The English term ‘catchwords’ does not have any association with original sources. Accordingly, the general linguistic approach to them – uneven as it has been -- is untrammelled by Homeric traces and persistent philological subscriptions. That does not mean that Anglophone scholars are not interested in original sources. Far from it. The format of the Oxford English Dictionary has made attention to the first recorded usage of words customary. Familiar words and phrases which can be pinned to an original author/text are occasionally collected and read with pleasure and profit, as in Paul Dickson’s Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers (2014) – the coinage ‘authorism’ shows that this is really quite a fussy focus. Journals like Notes and Queries have ever been replete with short articles by scholars discovering the original source of some word or phrase. Often, these demonstrate that in current usage that original source has simply been forgotten. Interestingly, a letter published in the February 1892 Notes and Queries IX, 2, p.25 pointed out that in recent exchanges on the origin of the phrase ‘winged words’, correspondents have overlooked the Homeric source and pinned it simply on Georg Büchmann’s ‘Geflügelte Worte’. ‘No way!’, one might think – but that’s the way catchwords work.

In brief, the study of ‘catchwords’ cannot have original sources as a definitive feature of such words and phrases. Nor should the study of ‘krylatye slova’ insofar as that attends to the distinctive feature of catchiness of words and phrases in the general linguistic field of living speech communities.

Patrick Edwin Moran, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons