Apron: The curious case of the disappearing letter
And the less curious case of women throwing off rigid gender roles
One of my fondest childhood memories is of hanging out in the kitchen with my mother as she baked. With 10 hungry mouths to feed, keeping the pantry full was a serious business that kept her occupied for a good part of the day. I would gaze attentively upwards as she expertly blended eggs, flour, milk and sugar for a new batch of biscuits, finally adding a dash of cocoa powder or vanilla extract depending on the particular flavour of joy she was magicking up today.
Sometimes she would mix icing sugar with a splash of water (only a splash, mind) and other ingredients in a separate bowl, ready to be slathered over the slab of deliciousness that was soon to emerge from the oven.
My reward for keeping her company - or, more likely, staying where she could keep an eye on me - was to be handed the spoons and bowls once she’d finished with them. By a stroke of luck, she always seemed to carelessly leave a generous dollop of sweet, gooey mix on them, which I dutifully and gladly removed for her.
Like most women of her generation, my mum always wore an apron in the kitchen. Unknown to both of us, that was about to make her something of an anachronism. Wildly popular in the 1950s, a decade of stifling conformity, by the time I came along in 1958 the apron was already being seen as a symbol of female oppression. As cheaper clothing and better washing machines came along in the 60s, women began casting them off along with their subservience to male views on female roles.
The word apron derives from the Old French naperon, meaning small cloth. When it first made its way into the English language in the 1400s, it became anglicised as napron. And so it stayed for 150 years or so, before becoming apron.
So where did the n disappear to? Did it, like domestic aprons of the 60s, fade into quiet obsolescence?
It did not. It simply shifted to the left, as you can hear when someone talks about wearing an apron.
This phenomenon is called false splitting or rebracketing, and it’s occurred more than once. For example, a ninkling became an inkling, a nauger became an auger, and that most English of snakes transformed from a nadder to an adder (thank heavens: Blacknadder just doesn’t sound the same, does it?).
Mediaeval scribes didn’t help. They wrote words so close together that it was often hard to tell where one ended and a new one started. Only an itwit would do that today.
The process can also work in reverse, with n being added to words that didn’t originally have one. If you have a nickname, there was a time when what you had was an eke name (eke means additional – hence “eke out a living”). That amphibious little beastie called a newt was originally an eute.
Even proper names aren’t exempt. Ned and Nellie are both thought to have emerged from the fond phrase “mine [insert object of affection’s name here]”. This led to mine Ed becoming misheard as my Ned and likewise with Ellie to Nellie. But who would call someone “mine x” in the first place? Someone from before the 13th century is who. Until then, people didn’t say my anything – it was always mine (mine wife, mine husband, mine hovel, etc). When my became popular, mine was still reserved for use in front of words beginning with a vowel – just as we use an versus a today. But listeners began hearing it as my. If they hadn’t, today we’d be lauding the Australian folk hero, Ed Kelly, and Eskimo Elle would be the one celebrated in that famous (and largely unprintable) epic poem.
As for the apron itself, the days of it being a symbol of anything gender related have surely passed, and so useful is this modest piece of fabric (or leather or polyvinyl), that after a hiccup in the 60s, its popularity rightly underwent a minor renaissance which has never really faded. While no longer the essential domestic wear it once was, it’s worn by people in a host of dirty, dusty, wet and barbecuey environments with no social stigma attached.
As a teenager, I donned a thick polyvinyl apron most mornings and evenings in preparation for helping milk our family’s herd of cows. It was a small and meaningful ritual for me, marking the transition from teenager just arrived home from school to someone who’d mastered a specialist skill and had earned the kit that goes with it. Any time I don an apron these days - which isn’t often at all - that feeling kicks right back in.
There’s also a small act of remembrance for my mum taking place. She taught me how to bake - one of those small yet wonderful gifts that cause such bittersweet pain when our parents are gone - and, in her non-judgemental listening, a deep regard for allowing others to be any way they are.
Heartfelt thanks to you, Mum. Mine ewsletter this week is dedicated to you.
Bits and specious
Susan Muncey is a London-based fashion historian. Here’s a brief history from her of the apron’s role in keeping women in their place.
Is it a tsunami? No, it’s a wall of fog.
I’m reading One Summer, Bill Bryson’s 2013 book on the amazing year that was 1927 in America. In it he briefly discusses Herbert Hoover who, he says, was totally lacking in humour. But he knew a thing or two about aprons: while head of the US Food Administration, he regularly went about in a full length one that overlapped at the front and was secured by a tie around the waist. Today it’s known as the Hoover Apron.
Bryson’s claim notwithstanding, it’s possible that Hoover was simply wry. Asked the reason for his electoral loss to Roosevelt in 1932, he replied, “as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side.” Following the birth of a granddaughter, he quipped, “I’m glad she doesn’t have to be confirmed by the Senate.”
Bits and specious
Domesticity has to mean nesting. Otherwise, six months go by, and you don’t know where your underwear is.
Many Elizabeth Mastrantonio
My mum was similarly careless with those bowls. Could have been a generational thing.
Japan is one of the last bastions of apron usage; when I first moved here I was shocked to see that not only were they sold in every department store, but many women seemed to have an endless supply in their homes for specific tasks - the baking apron must never be confused with the cleaning apron. This became even more apparent when I started working with kindergartens and elementary schools. The teachers there, women and men alike, would don aprons for anything arts and crafts related (which just makes sense) but also for dishing out lunch and for cleaning up at the end of the day. The only thing more disconcerting was the sight of a schoolroom full of twelve-year olds dutifully pulling on their lab coats for science class. Anyway, I'm off to have my "an itwit" t-shirt printed.