The Vocabularist: Loopholes were just for looking through
- Published
Budget time always brings the word "loophole" back into vogue, as calls arise for various tax avoidance routes to be blocked, writes Trevor Timpson.
This year loopholes brought to George Osborne's attention included TV presenters setting up as one-person companies, and property magnates opting to pay their taxes in Crown dependencies.
The meaning of loophole as a clever scheme, often caused by a defect in a law or rule, was in use as early as October 1648.
The London newspaper Mercurius Pragmaticus was commenting on a law stating that certain people shall only be allowed to sit in the Scottish parliament "upon discretion".
"This clause 'upon discretion' is a fine loop hole to let in Duke Hamilton, after a little time," said the paper.
A nicely built loophole - but is it big enough to escape through?
Like many confident newspaper predictions since, it was wrong - the imprisoned James, Duke of Hamilton, was beheaded the following March.
"Loop" meaning a small gap in a wall to look or shoot through, appears in English in the 14th Century - in Langland's Piers Plowman the devils rush to block up the walls of hell to stop heavenly light coming in "at louer ne at loupe".
"Louer" is the modern word "louvre" - meaning vents in a building.
In Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece (1594) the eyes of the besieged Trojans are "through loop-holes thrust, gazing upon the Greeks with little lust".
Milton's Comus (1637) has the morning star peeping "from her cabin'd loop-hole".
A predicted "loophole" didn't do the Duke of Hamilton any good
This sense of loop appears to be borrowed from Dutch, and related to a number of German and Dutch words connected with spying and stalking, perhaps originally meaning to watch with screwed-up eyes - among then gluipen in Dutch meaning to sneak, and glupen in German meaning to look at slyly.
"Hole" is from old English, related to "hollow". The primary meaning is a cavity (like a pothole), but from medieval times it has also meant an aperture (such as a loophole).
Is there a link between loophole and the other sense of loop, meaning a turning back in a rope or a journey? It is impossible to say, because the origin of the latter is so obscure.
Prof Walter Skeat, 19th-Century father of English etymology, thought at times that the word for a "loop" in a rope came from Celtic, at others that it was Scandinavian. The Oxford English Dictionary thinks neither of his explanations is certain.
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