Transpire: A checkered career

In the Elizabethan period, Renaissance English enjoyed a vigorous and robust growth, with numerous neologisms introduced to the reading public.¹ One of the words coined was transpire, which has since survived, though it has had a checkered career.

It belongs to the group of -spire words, as in inspire, perspire, conspire.

From Google we have:

tran·spire
/tran(t)ˈspī(ə)r/

verb
1. occur; happen. "I'm going to find out exactly what transpired"
synonyms: happen, occur, take place, come about, come to pass, crop up, turn up, arise, chance, ensue, befall, be realized, take shape...
2. BOTANY (of a plant or leaf) give off water vapor through the stomata.

From the Online Dictionary of Etymology:

transpire (v.)

1590s, "pass off in the form of a vapor or liquid," from Middle French transpirer (16c.), from Latin trans "across, beyond; through" (see trans-) "spirare" to "breathe" (see spirit (n.)). Figurative sense of "leak out, become known" is recorded from 1741, and the erroneous meaning "take place, happen" is almost as old, being first recorded 1755. Related: Transpired;transpiring.

Related Entries

- trans-
- spirit
- transpiration

From the Oxford Dictionary of English edited by Angus Stevenson:

tran·spire
/tran(t)ˈspī(ə)r/

Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense ‘emit as vapor through the surface’): from French transpireror and medieval Latin transpirare, from Latin trans -- "through" + spirare "breathe." Sense 1 (mid 18th century) is a figurative use comparable with "leak out."

According to Boswell's Life of Johnson, the dictionary compiler had an aversion to transpire, specifically downgrading it when used to mean: "To escape from secrecy to notice; a sense lately innovated from France, without necessity." Boswell adds, "The truth was Lord Bolingbroke, who left the Jacobites [who rebelled in 1715], first used it; therefore it was to be condemned. He should have shown what word would do for it, if it was unnecessary."

Samuel Johnson was evidently in error, as we see that modern experts have tracked the word to the late 16th century. I was unable to find a first usage citation online, although I found in a book² on etymology, this example, sans citation:

So many were in the gunpowder plot [of 1605], that it was almost certain to transpire by the day fixed.

Note that the writer of this passage is using the word in Bolingbroke's sense.

From the foregoing, we see disagreement among experts of the past and today about correct usage. Modern dictionaries generally follow usage -- even occasional usage -- rather than any particular standard, as we see from the Google dictionary, which puts out what many hold to be poor usage as a proper definition. In other words, dictionaries tend to be no help in resolving concerns about correct usage.

In my estimate, transpire makes good sense as a technical term, as in this example:

EARTH MAGNETOSPHERE
How trans-polar arcs transpire above

Margaret M. Moerchen

Science 19 Dec 2014

Back in the early 1960s, however, the word was a favorite of police officers who wanted to spruce up their reports in order to sound more professional. They used it to mean "happen," "occur" or "take place." Woe betide the cub reporter who let that bit of police-ese slip into his copy. No city editor or copy reader worth his or her salt would ever permit such a locution to transpire into the newspaper.

In fact, I must admit that there is no particular logical reason to eschew transpire in that sense. It could be that in a hundred years the word will be favored while, say, "happen," falls into disuse. I can hear it now: "That ain't gonna happen."

From a philosophical viewpoint, the word could be justified as a synonym for "happen." What is an event, if not at least the observation of some defined change? So, as Hegel notes, how does one get from one change to the next? Through some sort of holism, in which the thesis and the antithesis come together in the synthesis. Also, the observation of an event always comes through a medium or media, which is to say the news of it transpires into one's brain/mind.

So when an event is apprehended by the observer -- the only event that really counts -- it is a form of transpiration. In addition, if one does not accept materialism or Cartesian dualism, then the universe is composed of mind-stuff, AKA spirit. We are all puffs of smoke transpiring in a Great Spirit, by that view.

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1. A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1951). Saved at 1:52 PM

2. A Manual of Etymology: Containing Latin & Greek Derivatives : with a Key By Anne C. Webb (Published 1879).