Want to remove ads? Log in to see fewer ads, and become a Premium Member to remove all ads.

Origin and history of poet

poet(n.)

"one endowed with the gift and power of imaginative invention and creation, attended by corresponding eloquence of expression, commonly but not necessarily in a metrical form" [Century Dictionary, 1895], early 14c., "a poet, an author of metrical compositions; one skilled in the art of making poetry; a singer" (c. 1200 as a surname), from Old French poete (12c., Modern French poète) and directly from Latin poeta "a poet," from Greek poētēs "maker, author, poet," variant of poiētēs, from poein, poiein "to make, create, compose."

This is reconstructed [Watkins] to be from PIE *kwoiwo- "making," from root *kwei- "to pile up, build, make" (source also of Sanskrit cinoti "heaping up, piling up," Old Church Slavonic činu "act, deed, order").

A POET is as much to say as a maker. And our English name well comformes with the Greeke word : for of [poiein] to make, they call a maker Poeta. [Puttenham, "Arte of English Poesie," 1589]

It isn't what [a poet] says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity. [William Carlos Williams, 1944]

It replaced Old English scop (which survives in scoff). It was used in 14c., as in classical languages, in reference to all writers or composers of works of literature. In 16c.-17c. often Englished as maker.

Poète maudit, "a poet insufficiently appreciated by his contemporaries," literally "cursed poet," is attested by 1930, from French (1884, Verlaine). For poet laureate see laureate.

also from 1895

Entries linking to poet

laureate(adj.)

"crowned with laurels" (as a mark of distinction), late 14c., earliest reference is to poetic distinction, from Latin laureatus "crowned with laurels," from laurea "laurel crown" (emblematic of victory or distinction in poetry), from fem. of laureus "of laurel," from laurus "laurel" (see laurel (n.)).

Laureat poete is first found in "Canterbury Tales" (in reference to Petrarch — Fraunceys Petrak); it also was used in Middle English of Aesop and, by early 15c., of Chaucer. Inverted form poet laureate, in imitation of Latin word order, is from c. 1400 in English); the first official one probably was Ben Jonson (1638), though the first recorded one was Dryden (1668). Extended 1947 to Nobel prize winners. As a noun, 1520s, from the adjective or from a mistaken reading of poet laureate. Related: Laureateship (1732), laureation.

scoff(v.)

mid-14c., "jest, make light of something;" mid-15c., "ridicule, mock," from a noun meaning "contemptuous ridicule" (c. 1300), which is from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse skaup, skop "mockery, ridicule," Middle Danish skof "jest, mockery;" perhaps from Proto-Germanic *skub-, *skuf- (source also of Old English scop "poet," Old High German scoph "fiction, sport, jest, derision"), from PIE *skeubh- "to shove" (see shove (v.)). Related: Scoffed; scoffing.