Butterfly Thoughts

A typically luminous post on Patrick Kurp's Anecdotal Evidence has got me thinking about butterflies (it doesn't take much these grim winter days). The wonderful Janet Lewis poem that Kurp quotes is called The Insect (and it is indeed the right title). It could have been worse; until well into the 19th century - in the time of Grimaldi's collecting, for example - butterflies were generally known just as 'flies', a name not only unappealing but downright confusing. The word 'butterfly' has been around for a millennium and more ('buterflie' in Middle English, 'butorfleoge' in Old English), yet it seems to have taken a long while to become the definitive term for our fluttering friends. Why butterfly? As I've noted before (though I can't for the life of me find the post to link to), there's no easy answer to that one... It's certainly true that English is the only language that gives lepidoptera a name that has anything to do with butter. The ancient Greeks got it right first time by naming the butterfly 'psyche' - the breath or soul (in modern Greek, it's the almost as beautiful 'petaloudia', relating to words for petal, leaf and opening out). The Latin 'papilio' has been the most fruitful butterfly word, giving us the French papillon among others, and spreading its wings to become 'pavilion'. But for once it is the Germans who have the most beautiful word - 'schmetterling', which perfectly evokes a buttterfly's dipping flight and the faint swish of passing wings.