68
Old English Hwæt
b. And spak unto his wyf, and seyde anon,/ “ What! Alison! Herestow nat
Absolon,/ That chaunteth thus under oure boures wal?” (1387– 1400
Chaucer, CT A.Mil. 3365– 67)
‘And spoke to his wife and said at once, “What! Alison! Don’t you hear
Absolon that sings thus under our bower’s wall” ’
c. Provost: What ho , Abhorson! Where’s Abhorson, there? (1604– 05
Shakespeare, Measure for measure IV.ii.18)
d. Prince: Will they not hear? What ho , you men, you beasts ... (1594– 95
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I.i.80)
e. Titinius: What , Pindarus! Where art thou, Pindarus? (1599– 1600
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar V.iii.71)
f. Isabella : What ho! Peace here, grace and good company! (1604– 05
Shakespeare, Measure for measure III.i.44)
g. Mistress Ford: What , John! What , Robert! (1600– 01 Shakespeare, Merry
wives of Windsor III.iii.1)
This usage is not found in Present- day English, except in jocular form. The last
example given in the OED is mid nineteenth century, though COHA suggests
that it lives on into the 1920s.
Combinations of hwæt with the primary interjections eala or la are not
found beyond Old English. The interjection eala occurs only in very early
Middle English; the MED (s.v. eal ā – e , interj.) lists only three examples from
the twelfth century (cf. Mustanoja 1960 and Taavitsainen 1997 , who do not
include eala among ME interjections). The interjection lo(o) continues in
Middle English (MED: s.v. l ō , interj., def. 2). It functions as an emphatic par-
ticle and is particularly common in Biblical style, sermons, and religious trea-
tises as well as in other genres (Taavitsainen 1997 : 588– 592).^35 Despite the
continued existence of lo , a search of the MED database yields only one exam-
ple of what lo(o) (and two examples of twelfth- century hwæt la ):
(25) What, lo , my cherl, lo, yet how shrewedly/ Unto my confessour to- day he spak!
(1387– 1400 Chaucer, CT D.Sum 2238– 39)
‘What lo, my fellow, lo, yet how shrewdly he spoke today to my confessor’
An interesting non- interrogative use of what in Present- day English is its
occurrence in front of a numeral, as in We paid, what three times that? (2015
Southern Review [COCA]). Dehé and Kavalova ( 2006 ) argue that its pragmatic
function here is “to ease the process of interpretation and to ensure that the
hearer reaches the contextual assumptions necessary for the most faithful inter-
pretation of the speaker’s thoughts” (291). They identify what in this usage as
parenthetical: It does not function as a constituent with the host clause (though
35 The OED (s.v. lo , int.^1 ) suggests two origins for ME lo : a direct inheritance from OE la and
from shortening of imperative l ō ke. Mustanoja (1960) and Taavitsainen ( 1997 ) seem skeptical
of the latter suggestion (cf. Sauer 2012 : 167, 169).