Peace: The curious case of a lexical chasm

And a mild rant on a too-cute-by-half modern trend

Our house has an ornament hanging in the room that most lends itself to sitting and observing things for minutes at a time, made up of a string of letters which spell out

P

E

A

C

E

It’s not my favourite household trinket, but given the modern puke-inducing fad for placing artwork instructing one to E-A-T in the kitchen and
L-O-V-E in the bedroom, I suppose things could be a lot worse.

What I really want to say, though, is that as I sat pondering this object the other day, it occurred to me that peace is an orphan, the only five-letter word in English ending in -eace. You can test this for yourself or go to ChatGPT, as I did, which will confirm what I say. In fact, there are no commonly used words of any length besides peace that end -eace.

I find that remarkable. Eace is everything a commonly used syllable should be, isn’t it? Short, easy to pronounce, and very English sounding. So I ask you, English language, what the heck?

It’s not because we took the word from anywhere unusual. Peace entered English in the twelfth century as pes, drawing on the Old French pais, which drew on the Latin pacem or pax. That, as I’m sure you know, is a well-trodden path for words to take on their journey into our vocabulary.

Its meaning has changed little over time. At first it was restricted to the notion of an absence of civil disorder. A century on, the meaning had expanded to include peace between individuals (remember that?), followed by spiritual peace, aka peace of mind, and, finally, the peace that nations everywhere profess to be committed to while placing weapons orders faster than arms factory CFOs can count.

The trinket in question. I’ve decided to give it a chance.

Believe it or not, there is a branch of linguistics dedicated to the rules around possible phoneme sequences in a language. It’s called phonotactics and it’s dripping with specialist terms that can leave the layperson - in this case me - feeling staggeringly inadequate. My favourite may be yod-dropping. Consider the word cue and the y in its pronunciation (cyoo). Now consider that you don’t include that sound in blue or true or flue (bloo, etc) and in so not doing, you are engaging in yod-dropping. (That hyphen is surely redundant, but that seems to be how linguists spell it, and I’m not about to pick a fight with them.)

Why you drop the yod in blue, true and flue is because including it would create three consonants before the first vowel, a privilege that English generally grants only to words beginning with s followed by t, p, or k (which can show up as any of c, k or qui when written). Think words like stew, spew and squirrel.

This rule is not universal. Spanish and French blithely ignore it and seem to be no worse off for that.

But back to the orphan-like status of peace. Linguists, who hate leaving even the most trivial of phenomena unnamed, call a missed opportunity allowed by a language’s phonotactic rules a lexical gap. Similarly lonely words include month, purple, empty and silver.

The modern peace sign, which features on the Kombi van above, was designed in 1958 by English artist Gerald Holtom. Originally intended as the logo for the nuclear disarmament movement, it was soon appropriated by peaceniks far and wide as the symbol we all recognise today. Not to be outdone, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has since modified the symbol by inserting a broken nuclear warhead through it and, as if to emphasise their primacy, secured themselves a Nobel Peace Price to boot. Take that, hippies!

The other peace sign, made by raising two fingers with palm facing outwards, began as V for Victory during WWII (while Churchill made it famous, credit for its invention probably belongs to a Belgian, Victor de Laveleye). Richard Nixon made ample use of the sign during his presidential campaigns - before promptly facing his palm inwards during the Watergate scandal - as did Eisenhower before him. But during the 1960s, the peace movement co-opted this sign also for its own nefarious ends.

In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, calling themselves Plastic Ono Band, wrote and recorded the wonderfully anarchic Give Peace a Chance in their Montreal hotel room, hauling in a who’s who of famous lefties to help them. Much to his later regret, Lennon initially credited Paul McCartney as his co-writer - it was his first post-Beatles song and at least one Lennon biographer says it was his way of thanking McCartney for earlier helping him record The Ballad of John and Yoko at short notice.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what the peace movement, aka Burglars Anonymous, went and did with this song too.

Peace movements (there’s never been just one, despite the way I’ve been talking) are far from new. The Council of Charroux, convened in 989, declared a Pax Dei or Peace of God, intended to quell violence against monasteries. A later Truce of God in 1027 limited the days of the week and times of year when the nobility was allowed to employ violence. If that’s not high-minded, what is?

The Reformation saw the emergence of churches dedicated to the ideal of peace, among them the Religious Society of Friends - better known as the Quakers - the Amish and the Mennonites. Mahatma Gandhi repudiated violence as a political tool, professing passive resistance instead. Later followers of his work included Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

The threat of nuclear war and the actual existence of the Vietnam War and the post-war baby boom gave rise to the 1960s peace movement, the leaders of which have influenced much public policy since, some of them going on to form green parties that share power in many democracies. Despite taking the piss out of peace movements for appropriating other people’s stuff, I’m proud to belong to a country that in 1985 refused entry to a US warship that was suspected to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons. (The US government had a “neither confirm nor deny” policy on the matter.) In 2003, our government took another principled stand when it refused to swallow stories about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction or provide troops for the US-led invasion of that country. In these times of rampant me-first behaviour from politicians everywhere, I dearly hope New Zealand maintains its status as a country where decency dictates at least some of our most important decisions, even at the cost of friendships with bigger nations who like to throw their weight around.

I’m also proud to say I’ve made my peace with the peace ornament in our bathroom. If anything, I’m even a little fond of it, which I find mildly concerning. It’s only a matter of time now before I’m overcome by an irresistible urge to buy an E-A-T wallhanging for the kitchen and a N-A-P wallhanging for my office.

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Bits and specious

Another disquisition on the use and alleged (but not actual) abuse of literally. From linguist Valierie M Fridland, no less, so there.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global home decor market was worth US$747 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a little over 4.5% for the next seven years.

This week’s Lingwistics is dedicated to two of my favourite musicians who passed away recently. Marianne Faithfull cracked my world open in 1979 with the bitter, grief-laden Broken English, sung in a voice that had no sweetness left to give and with lyrics laced with defiant profanity. She belongs on the same pedestal as Patti Smith and Amy Winehouse, in my view. Garth Hudson, keyboardist for The Band, was Faithfull’s opposite - a quiet, gentle soul who never sought the limelight the other Band members revelled in. Yet if you want to know where The Band got its wild yelpiness from on songs like Rag, Mama Rag, listen to that organ playing. Another giant, gone.

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Quote of the week

The Japanese Prime Minister has apologized for Japan’s part in World War II. However, he still hasn’t mentioned anything about karaoke.
David Letterman