MED Magazine - Issue 28 - March 2005

Know your rights – and your lefts
by Jonathan Marks

(Many thanks to Kati Süle for contributing the paragraph about Hungarian.)

"When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded" is a joke that relies on an ambiguity. Right is, of course, the opposite of left, but here it's also part of the idiom 'no one in their right mind would do something', which according to the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED) is used for saying that someone would have to be crazy to do something (e.g. No one in their right mind would go out with him).

Right – a versatile word

Of course, right is an extremely versatile word which has a whole range of meanings, and can be an adverb, adjective, noun, interjection or verb. Among the categories of meaning in the 'menus' for the word right, MED includes:

As a verb, right is used to say that you correct something, or return it to its proper position.

Although there is indeed quite a range here, these meanings do seem to occupy two main areas: one to do with the right-hand side, i.e. the opposite of left, and another to do with various kinds of positive evaluation: what's correct, proper, normal, acceptable, approved, desirable and so on. Examples of the latter meaning would include:

You did it right the first time.
'Am I late?' 'No, you're right on time.'
Does anyone have the right time?
It wasn't right of her to take advantage of you.
She hadn't been feeling right for weeks.
Harry's definitely the right person for the job.
in the right place at the right time
right and wrong
equal rights
animal rights
After the way you've been treated, you have every right to complain.
They wanted revenge, to right the wrong that had been done to them.

The derived words righteous, rightful and rightly also occupy this second area of meaning.

But it turns out that even these two apparently quite different areas of meaning are actually closely related.

Right vs. left

The word right has a Germanic pedigree, and has come down to us from Old English riht (straight, lawful, true, genuine) but is also cognate with Latin rctus (straight, right), regere (keep straight, guide, rule, govern), rgula (rule), rx (king) and
rgnre (reign). From these original Latin forms, and from their derivatives in medieval Latin and Old French, we get a whole dynasty of words including regal, royal, regent, rule, regiment, reign, correct, direct, erect, rector, rectum, rectify, rectitude, regular and regulation.

Here again we can see shared broad underlying meanings of things that are physically straight, or proper, or as they should be; of keeping things under control; and of behaviour that doesn't stray away from the straight and narrow.

The meaning 'right as opposed to left' is first recorded in the 12th century (though of course it may have been in use long before that), the motivation being that for the right-handed majority of people, the right hand is the proper one for carrying out most tasks. The earlier Old English word for 'right as opposed to left' is swþra, meaning 'stronger'. Left, on the other hand (!), is descended from Old English lyft (weak), the association being that for the majority of people, the left hand is the weaker. And not only the hand: if someone can't dance properly, we can say they've got two left feet – not two right feet!

The tendency is clear: right has positive associations, and left has negative ones. The word left has nothing of the wide range of meanings that right has, but further evidence for the general tendency is supplied by loan words. The French word for left, gauche, originally had the meaning 'awkward', and is used in English to mean 'behaving in a rude or unsuitable way in a social situation'. From French droit (meaning 'right', but also, significantly, 'law' – and cognate with direct) we get maladroit – literally 'bad on the right' – meaning 'clumsy', whereas adroit is 'clever or skilful'. From Latin dexter (right, skilful) we get dextrous, and the noun dexterity. Ambidextrous, i.e. with equal skill in both hands, means literally right-handed in both hands! All these words are also ultimately related to orthodox, dogma, doctor, decent, decorate, dignity and docile, among others. And from Latin sinister (meaning 'left') we get our word sinister with all its connotations. Sinistra is the modern Italian word for left, and in English dexter and sinister are used with the meanings 'right' and 'left' in heraldry, where 'bend sinister' indicates illegitimacy.

In the history of the English term for the left-hand side, there's further evidence of the association between left, misfortune and unfavourable omens. Left is first recorded in the 13th century. Earlier, the word used was winestra, meaning 'friendlier' (cf. Old English wine, meaning 'friend'), in an act of sympathetic magic to appease unfavourable forces. Older forms of German had a similar term, and the same etymology survives in the modern Swedish word for left, vänster, related to vän (friend), and in similar forms in Danish and Norwegian. Nevertheless, vänster itself has taken on negative associations: vänsterknäck is what people earn 'on the side' (cf. extraknäck, an informal term for extra income), and vänsterprassel is an extra-marital relationship (prassel is literally a rustling sound). The adjective right in Swedish is höger, which is etymologically the more convenient or more suitable.

A glance at a few other languages

What about other languages? As you'd expect, Romance languages have plenty of Latin-derived forms such as:

In German, as in English, there's an explicit association between the right-hand side and 'correct, proper':

	recht	right (not left)
	Recht	law
	gleiche Rechte	equal rights
	rechtfertigen	justify
	Gerechtigkeit	justice
	richtig	correct
	aufrichtig	sincere
	errichten	erect
	Richter	judge
	Gericht	court of law
	Richtung	direction
	das geschieht dir recht	it serves you right

Conversely, the left-hand side is 'die linke Seite'. The word link also means 'underhanded', 'low-down'. 'Jemand link behandeln' is to mess someone around. 'Die linke Seite' of a piece of material is the wrong side. Linkisch is clumsy or awkward (cf. Swedish linka, to limp). 'Linke Geschäfte' are dodgy business activities, probably conducted by a 'linker Vogel' (Vogel is literally 'bird').

In Slavonic languages, the parallels with English are less apparent, but words for right and left nevertheless have similar connotations. These examples come from Polish:

	na prawo	on the right
	prawo	law
	mie prawo do czego	have the right to do something
	prawnik	lawyer
	prawda	truth
	sprawiedliwo	justice
	prawdziwy	real, genuine
	prawidowy	correct, proper
	poprawia	correct, rectify
	sprawno	dexterity
	na lewo	on the left
	kupi, sprzeda na lewo	buy, sell under the counter (literally 'on the left')
	lewy	phoney
	lewe interesy	dodgy deals
	wstawa lew nog	get out of bed on the wrong side (literally 'on your left leg')
	na lewej stronie	inside out, back to front (literally 'on the left side')
	mie dwie lewe rce	be clumsy (literally 'have two left hands')

Interestingly, if we take a look at Hungarian, a language outside the Indo-European family, we can observe similar differences between the meanings associated with right and left. The word for right in Hungarian is jobb, literally meaning 'better', and a derivative of the adjective jó, meaning 'good, proper, suitable'. The phrase 'valakinek a jobb keze' (be someone's right-hand man) could be translated literally as 'be someone's better hand'. On the other hand, the Hungarian word for left, bal, has a completely different set of connotations, e.g. baljós (sinister), kétbalkezes (clumsy, literally 'have two left hands'), kétballábas (clumsy, literally 'have two left feet'), balül üt ki (turn out badly), bal lábbal kel fel (get up on the wrong side of the bed, literally 'on your left leg').

A bit of politics

Finally, the terms right and left in politics are used in lots of languages and are generally thought of as representing a purely conventional seating arrangement in parliaments. But it turns out that even this arrangement has its origins in the cultural practice of assigning greater value to the right than to the left. According to the Oxford English Dictionary 'this use originated in the French National Assembly of 1789, in which the nobles as a body took the position of honour on the President's right, and the Third Estate (i.e. those not belonging to the nobility or clergy) sat on his left.'

There's no getting away from it: the left/right distinction is fundamental to the way we regard not just our own bodies, but also the visible and invisible world around us, and it turns up repeatedly in the vocabularies of our languages. And there's no doubt that the right occupies the position of honour.

Further reading

Etymological dictionaries vary greatly in the amount of detail given and the breadth of reference across languages. One which is easily accessible and gives a moderate amount of detail is www.etymonline.com.

In Hans Biedermann: Knaurs Lexikon der Symbole (1989) there are brief examples of the left/right duality from various cultures and religions, showing that the right has usually – though not always – been regarded more favourably.