So snood you think you are? (From The Northern Echo)

So snood you think you are?

10:37am Saturday 4th December 2010 in Chris Lloyd

WELLIES on. Hat on. Scarf on. Gloves on. We’re going out in the snow. Oh, and please don’t forget to put your snood on.

Last Saturday night, Match of the Day reintroduced us to the snood as, according to pundit Mark Lawrenson, these tubular neck warmers are suddenly fashionable among foreign footballers, led by Manchester City ‘s Carlos Tevez.

Snood is a fine word. When you say it, you can taste that it is as old as our hills. But Mr Lawrenson’s etymological knowledge is as accurate as his football punditry, because to our female Saxon ancestors a snood was a hairnet, fastened behind the ears by a band.

They wore snoods even before 725AD, keeping long hair tidy and, if they stuck a coloured ribbon in their snood, advertising their availability for marriage– a custom that survived in the North into the 20th Century.

During the Second World War, the snood was popular as its minimal usage of material showed its wearers backed the war effort.

As well as “snood”, the Saxons would have recognised “hat” among our cold weather words, although not coat, which didn’t arrive until the 14th Century.

“Scarf” wasn’t said by an English tongue until the mid-16th Century, when it was stolen from the French, where escharpe is a neck-sling for a wounded arm.

Therefore, properly, the plural of scarf is scarfs. Words that end in f and have been pilfered from other languages – like roof and hoof, which have Dutch origins – just add an s to show there is more than one.

Only native English words, like half, grow “ves” to become halves.

However, the English liked their new word scarf so much that, by the 18th Century, they were pretending it was one of their own, and boasted that they owned “scarves”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, scarf is the only non-native noun to make this magical change and become scarves.

OUR ancient ancestors would not recognise wellies, which has been short since the Sixties for Wellington boots.

They bear the name of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, who left nothing to chance. He instructed his tailor, Hoby of St James’ Street, London, to make the traditional Hessian military boot more comfortable for his men.

Hoby made it close-fitting out of softer, lighter calfskin which was waxed until waterproof.

The boot looked so good that a military man could wear it on the battlefield by day and in the ballroom by night.

The Wellington boot, as well as Wellington ‘s sober genius, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo on June 18, 1815.

During the First World War, the North British Rubber Company made 1,185,036 pairs of Wellingtons out of vulcanised rubber for soldiers marooned in the mud of the trenches, and the Wellington became a common item of everywetday wear.

But it is not just boots named after Wellington.

He was a Beckhamesque dandy in his day, nicknamed “The Beau”. So, after Waterloo, the must-wear items were the Wellington hat, the Wellington coat, the Wellington trousers, as well as the Wellington boots.

Warships and waterfalls were also named after him, and streets galore – 57 of them in London alone But what would this military hero make of footballers who take to the snowy pitch in socalled snoods with the manufacturer’s logo suspiciously prominent?