Comments on: Hocus pocus! And a fantastic etymology appears!

By: Seeing only Trees

Seeing only Trees — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:15:18 +0000

I think the transubstantiation derivation is the explanation demanded by Occam’s Razor here – the semantics are fairly close, but even more importantly, the ’slang’ form would resonate across most of the civilized world and the vignette is perfect – changing or transforming something mysteriously and ‘magically’. For many year, the church actively propagated the foundation upon which the tongue-in-cheek ‘hocus pocus’ stands. Knowing or seeking an airtight provenance for the expression is an exercise in speculation, I’d say.

By: Traditionalist

Traditionalist — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:59:25 +0000

The word “enim” was not just thrown into the Words of Consecration without a reason. It is actually found in the Last Supper narrative in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Hic est enim sanguis meus novi testamenti” (Matt 26:28). It is likely that the author of the Roman Canon (fourth century) thought it fit that “enim” be in the Words of Consecration of the Body, since “enim” was already present in the Words of Consecration of the Blood in Matthew.

By: Jordanes

Jordanes — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Tom, before we could give your assertions any credence, we would first have to find out when the Roman Missal is known to have rendered it “Hoc est enim corpus meum” rather than “Hoc est corpus meum.” I’m pretty sure “enim” was already there by the late 1500s when St. Pius V promulgated the Roman Missal for the entire Latin Rite, but we have no evidence that “hocus pocus” was known until the early to middle 1600s.

By: Tom Brown

Tom Brown — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:25:56 +0000

The thing that tends to support the belief that “hocus pocus” is derived from the Latin Mass, is the fact that the church — at some point in history –decided to throw in the virtually meaningless and superfluous word “enim” to break up the “hoc est corpus” phrase that was so common and so ridiculed as a magical incantation over the centuries. “Hoc est corpus” was too easy to turn into “hocus pocus” — so the Church made it “Hoc est enim corpus” to break up the rhythm of the phrase.

By: Bill Brohaugh

Bill Brohaugh — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:35:12 +0000

Good points, Joshua. Yes, lacking proof of definitive origin, we can allow the possibility of various other explanations, and I'll grant you that my post declaring the etymology to be false in the absolute should have been qualified as "likely false" or "almost assuredly false." I'll turn to a source I respect for further explanation of why those declarations are likely true: Dave Wilton, author of Word Myths, writes:

Some contend that hocus-pocus is a play on the words in the Latin mass hoc est corpus. While this seems very plausible, there is no evidence to support it and the other Latin words in the mass do not match with those given in Ady’s 1656 account of the juggler’s patter [which Wilton reprints].

From this standpoint, probabilities are different from guesses, and homonyms and near rhymes are different from genealogies. Regarding your final point, I would argue in return that to attribute the words to any source—the clerical or the nonsensical or some third, fourth or fifth possible derivation—begs the question of why they stuck. A partial and possible primary explanation of sticking is that rhyme and meter and have staying power (see my post on that). Add in the natural tendency for creation and acceptance of reduplicative words (dilly-dally, flimflam, hocus-hocus-bo-bocus-banana-fanna-fo-focus-fee-fy-fo-mocus-pocus! as examples), and the creation of hocus-pocus in a puff of magician's smoke becomes all the more believable.

By: Joshua Valle

Joshua Valle — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:54:17 +0000

It seems to me you are trusting the OED too much. I might agree that your conclusion may be the best guess that one can make but ultimately it seems to be just that, a guess. We don’t know for example that the jugglers and magicians didn’t replicate the nonsense syllables they heard in the incantation at mass. Tillotson’s apparent lack of methodology does not make his conclusion false, it just does not lend any evidence to it. You can cite Tillotson as the source of a folk-etymology, but you should not use him for evidence against “hoc est corpus” as the most basic source for “hocus pocus.” I don’t deal with English etymology, but it seems to me what you need to do is to give some evidence for an alternative explanation which traces the the use of these words in such a way that rules out an origin in the mass. To attribute them to non-sense syllables which “stuck” somehow, begs the question of why they stuck.