Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 19 Aug 2018, 21:40
“But where are the snows of yester-year?” popped into my head for some reason.
This famous refrain is from Rosetti's translation of the Ballade des dames de temps jadis by Villon. You can find several translation of the poem collected at a rather nice site http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/snows_of_yesteryear.html
But what intrigued me was finding that Rosetti invented 'yester-year’ to translate the French ‘antan’.
'Antan' is from Latin 'ante annum' and so probably meant 'before the year' = 'last year', and so Rosetti's translation is rather glorious. 'Yester' seems to have had an original sense of recent or close in time, and there are several English compounds. Apart from 'yesterday' we have 'yestermorn', 'yestereve' and so on. But before Rosetti’s coining 'yester-year' doesn't seem to have been recorded.
Nowadays both 'yesteryear' and 'antan' have acquired the wider meaning of times gone by, not just last year, presumably influenced by the wistful nostalgia of Villon's brilliant line.
'Yester' is interesting because it seems to have the same origins as Latin 'hesterno' and ancient and modern Greek χθες (pronounced something like 'ch' in 'loch' followed by 'thez'.)
Greek for tomorrow is αύριο, avrio. Once I dined with a Greek priest and he told me this anecdote.
“Some American tourists were here last week. They asked me if Greek has word corresponding to the Spanish mañana. 'Of course', I replied. 'But not so definite'”.
The Snows Of Yester-Year
“But where are the snows of yester-year?” popped into my head for some reason.
This famous refrain is from Rosetti's translation of the Ballade des dames de temps jadis by Villon. You can find several translation of the poem collected at a rather nice site http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/snows_of_yesteryear.html
But what intrigued me was finding that Rosetti invented 'yester-year’ to translate the French ‘antan’.
'Antan' is from Latin 'ante annum' and so probably meant 'before the year' = 'last year', and so Rosetti's translation is rather glorious. 'Yester' seems to have had an original sense of recent or close in time, and there are several English compounds. Apart from 'yesterday' we have 'yestermorn', 'yestereve' and so on. But before Rosetti’s coining 'yester-year' doesn't seem to have been recorded.
Nowadays both 'yesteryear' and 'antan' have acquired the wider meaning of times gone by, not just last year, presumably influenced by the wistful nostalgia of Villon's brilliant line.
'Yester' is interesting because it seems to have the same origins as Latin 'hesterno' and ancient and modern Greek χθες (pronounced something like 'ch' in 'loch' followed by 'thez'.)
Greek for tomorrow is αύριο, avrio. Once I dined with a Greek priest and he told me this anecdote.
“Some American tourists were here last week. They asked me if Greek has word corresponding to the Spanish mañana. 'Of course', I replied. 'But not so definite'”.