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ALLAY,
to alleviate, assuage. (E.) [The history of this word as given
in the first edition of this work is here repeated, but requires correction; see
Errata.] The word itself and its sense is purely French, but its
form is English, due to confusion with an older English word now
obsolete. I first trace the sense of the word and its origin, and
afterwards account for its change of form. ➩
[To make the confusion still worse, the word now spelt alloy was formerly spelt
allay, but we need not here do more than note the fact; see further under
Alloy. The modern form of the word should have been
allege, but it
has nothing to do with the word now so spelt; see Allege. Putting
aside alloy and allege, we may now proceed.] α.
Allay (properly allege) is the M.E. aleggen, to alleviate, and is really no more than a (French)
doublet of (the Latin) alleviate, q.v. 1. 'Aleggyn, or to softe, or
relese peyne, allevio;' Prompt. Parv. p. 9. 2. 'To allege thair
saules of payne' = to allay their souls with respect to pain; Hampole, Pricke of
Conscience, 3894. 3. 'Alle the surgyens of Salerne so sone ne
couthen Haue your langoures allegget' = all the surgeons of Salerno could not so
soon have allayed your langours; Will. of Palerne, 1033. 4. 'The
sight only and the sauour Alegged much of my langour;' Rom. of the Rose, 6625;
where the original has 'Le voir sans plus, et l’oudeur Si m’alegeoient ma
douleur.'—O.F. alegier, aleger (mod. F. alléger), to alleviate, lighten,
assuage, soften.—Lat. alleuiare, to lighten (Brachet). See
further under Alleviate. β. The confusion of
form appears so early
as in Gower's Confessio Amantis, iii. 273, where we find 'IF I thy peines mighte
alaie.' Here, instead of alegge, he has written alaie, which is a
variant of the obsolete M.E. aleggen, to lay down, the direct descendant
of A.S. álecgan, to lay down; a word in which the gg is hard, as in
beggar, not softened as in the O.F. aleger, to alleviate. Cf.
aleide
= alleged, id. i. 91. It so happened that this pure old English
aleggen was sometimes used in the sense of to put down, to mitigate, as in 'to
allegge alle luther lawes,' i.e. to put down all bad laws, Rob. of Glouc. p.
422. γ. It is now easy to see how the confusion arose.
We English, already possessing a word aleggen (with hard gg) = to put down,
mitigate, &c., borrowed the O.F. aleger (with soft g) = to alleviate,
lighten, soften. The forms and senses of these verbs ran into each
other, with the result that the English form prevailed, just as English grammar
prevailed over French grammar, whilst the various senses of the French word
became familiar. δ. The word is, therefore, truly French in
spirit,
and a doublet of alleviate, whilst overpowered as to form by the A.S. álecgan, a
verb formed by prefixing the A.S. á- (= G. er-, Goth. us-), to the common verb
lecgan, to lay. The confusion first appears in Gower, and has
continued ever since, the true sense of A.S. álecgan having passed out of
mind. ¶ Observe another passage in Gower, C. A. iii. 11, viz. 'Which
may his sory thurst alaye.' [※] ERRATA Instead
of calling this (F.,—L.), it is much better to mark it as (E.)
The M.E. alaien (also aleggen) is precisely the A.S. álecgan,
to lay down, hence to put down.—A.S. á- (prefix); lecgan,
to lay; see Lay
(1). Note particularly: 'Thy pryde we wolle alaye,'
i.e. put down, Arthur, ed. Furnivall (E.E.T.S.), p. 219.
The confusion with the O.F. derivative of L. alleuiare is duly noted by
Mätzner, who gives several examples. My account above confused and
misleading.
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