On the Word : Vote

The word "vote" comes from the Latin verb "vovere" meaning "to promise, or dedicate." The modern meaning of the verb which most quickly comes to mind to the author, however, is "to decide or choose" which, unsurprisingly given the nature of etymologies, differs substantially from the ancient, original meaning. It is noteworthy that the modern meaning cited above is an expression of free will, if one assumes that being forced to make a particular choice does not nullify the definition of 'choice;' while the ancient meaning need not imply that the active agent wishes to fulfill the promise. In literature the last use of the original meaning in English, when not involving a votive offering to a god, appears to occur in 1602, in Warner's Albion's England, in which the Queen is "voted, even in her better part, to the love of Aeneas." Here one can see how this sense of the word ("dedicated") eventually becomes represented by the word "devoted," a process which had already started by 1586, in the writings of Angell Day. When involving votive offerings the word "vote" continues to be used in the original sense, apparently up until 1859 in Ingraham's Pillar of Fire: or, Israel in Bondage : "To enumerate what met my eyes in the vases, which the common soldiers in their piety voted to the god, praying for a successful campaign, would fill the page on which I write."

The modern meaning of the noun form of the word includes, not surprisingly, "an opinion given for or against a course of action." This is clearly related to the modern verb form previously mentioned (i.e. "to decide"). This form of the noun apparently first appears in 1629, in Hobbes's translation of The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

There have of course been many different meanings for this word over the span of time; the Oxford English Dictionary lists 55 of them, though many are subtly related to one another, such that I would prefer to refer to many of them as actually having the same meaning, but used in different ways. For example, that dictionary lists "a declaration of approval or support" as a separate meaning, which I view to be essentially subsumed within the modern noun form mentioned previously (i.e., "an opinion given for or against a course of action").

I often find that obsolete uses of a word are the most interesting. Up until 1723 the word could mean "an opinion or point of view." This form of the noun is used by Glanvill in 1681, when he writes: "That a thing should be, and yet not be any where in the whole Universe, is so wild and mad a vote..that it cannot be said by any man in his wits." The quote is from Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions: In two parts. The first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence. Would that our current crop of literary output have similarly wonder-inducing titles.

Another obsolete use of the word is the meaning "an ardent wish or desire" which possibly last appeared in literature in 1667. Shortly before that, in 1640, Habington uses it in his History of Edward IV as follows : "Nothing was more in the vote of the English; then to preserve King Lewys safe in his estate at home."

Concerning idioms which use the word 'vote,' the first which comes to my mind is "to vote with one's feet." This means "making a choice by taking action," often in the form of leaving an establishment or location, or even an entire country in the sense of emigration. Michael Carter claims that the use of this phrase becomes much more common during the civil rights era of the 1960's in the United States. A contributor to Wiktionary, however, believes that the phrase gains prominence in the US in reference to those fleeing East Germany between 1945 and 1961, when the Berlin wall was erected. Gary Martin traces the origin of the phrase back to ancient Rome, with the phrase "pedibus in sententiam ire," which he finds in Leighton's 1878 A History of Rome : "The senators who had not held a curule office were styles [should be 'styled'] senators pedarii because they assented to the opinions of the consulates, praetorii, etc., and when the division was taken voted with their feet." The Latin for foot is pes, plural pedes. Unfortunately it is not clear to me, when reading the relevant passage in the book, what exactly the word 'division' means in this context, nor exactly what these senators do when they actually 'vote with their feet.' I assume they are crossing a threshold of some sort such that the group of senators are divided into two groups, with each group representing those who voted the equivalent of 'yay' or 'nay,' but I have not found evidence to back this assumption.

Gary Martin also points out that the phrase can mean "a process involving events, in which each event leads to another but eventually leads back to the original event, such that no benefit is gained." He points out this passage from Henry James' Notebooks of 1892 : "The whole situation works in a kind of inevitable rotary way – in what would be called a vote with their feet." Strangely, the writers behind literarydevices.net quote exactly the same source differently when describing the origin of the phrase "a vicious circle," as follows : "The whole situation works in a kind of inevitable rotary way – in what would be called a vicious circle." Furthermore, exactly the same strangeness occurs on the same two website pages involving an otherwise identical quote from the 1792 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Unless there are different printings of James' 1892 work in which one phrase was replaced with the other, and at the same time two different printings of the 1792 article in the encyclopedia with exactly the same replacement, this might be evidence of a blunder involving the use of "global replace" in a word processor, on the part of either Gary Martin or literarydevices.net. A search of the actual text of Notebooks reveals that "vicious circle" is the original phrase; at least in the printing saved by the Internet Archive.

Note : the text of this post will appear in my book Mindspillage, which can be pre-ordered.

Sources :

https://www.etymonline.com/word/vote, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_v?tab=meaning_and_use#1291785890, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_v?tab=meaning_and_use#15490639, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/devote_v?tab=factsheet#6887627, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_v?tab=meaning_and_use#15490639, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#1285858880, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Meanings?textTermText0=vote&textTermOpt0=WordPhrase&textTermExactMatch0=true&dateOfUseFirstUse=false&page=1&sortOption=AZ, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#15489442, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#15490063, accessed 2024-11-04

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/vote_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#15489157, accessed 2024-11-06