Today's podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try it free for 45 days by following the link www.gotomeeting.com/podcasts To bungle something is to make a clumsy job of it. Although the word has a fairly modern feel to it, it goes back about 500 years.
The Oxford English Dictionary hasn't yet updated its entry for bungle from the second edition so maybe there's a change coming, but the entry currently claims bungle to be onomatopoeic. That's to say that the word bungle may have been formed based on some sound or other that represents some clumsy ham-fisted performance. I imagine dropping a large pot or something and having it bong and rattle as it tumbles across the kitchen.
Merriam-Webster's Unabridged dictionary suggests that the etymology might be Scandinavian pointing to a Swedish word bangla with much the same meaning. Etymonline says this Swedish word came from an Old Swedish bunga meaning “to strike” and I think he gets that from a note in the OED saying that Walter Skeat—that great etymologist of 100 years ago—had pointed this out.
Merriam-Webster 's also points to an Icelandic word banga meaning “to hammer” so perhaps it's this banging sound that gives bungle its onomatopoeic root. I mentioned that the word goes back 500 years in English and the person who first wrote it down was a fellow named John Palsgrave in 1530. The work it appeared in was something called Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse .
“Wait a minute” I hear you thinking. “That doesn't sound much like a work of English writing. That sounds sorta French.” You'd be right about that. But John Palsgrave was not assigning the title to his book for marketing purposes. The title translates as “the clarification of the French language” and the book itself was actually written for English readers.
These days the marketing department wouldn't have let Palsgrave get away with a title that his most likely buyers couldn't understand. But Palsgrave was already a bit of a brand name himself among the rich and educated so he probably didn't care about the marketing department much. Palsgrave got his big break when King Henry VIII assigned him the task of teaching Mary, the King's sister, French. Mary thought Palsgrave was a great teacher and she must have learned something because she ended up marrying King Louis XII of France.
I just want to touch on Palsgrave's first use of bungle since it brings up a word we don't use anymore. Palsgrave gives sentences in English and then their equivalent in French. The bungle sentence says “a man may bongyll it up in a senyght but he canne nat make it parfyte in lesse than a moneth.” A senyght is a “week”; seven nights.
