August 2, 2000

ghetto

A friend and I were talking about the Warsaw ghetto during World War II and speculated on the origin of the word. I've heard there was an area of Venice called Gheto, to which the Jews were confined, but I also thought the word might originate from the Latin iactare 'to throw'. Any information?

Actually, the commonly accepted theory for the origin of ghetto involves both of your ideas. The Venetian word ghetto means 'a foundry for artillery' and comes from the verb ghettare 'to throw', which comes from the Vulgar Latin *jectare. Ghetto as the walled and gated area in which Jews were required to live was first used for a section of Venice in 1516, and scholars believe that the word comes from an iron foundry in the neighborhood. Jews were forcibly segregated from the 13th century on in some areas, but the word ghetto wasn't used until the 16th century.

Other theories for the origin of ghetto involve either Italian Egitto from Latin Aegyptus 'Egypt' or Italian borghetto 'a small section of a town' from borgo 'town'. Although the spellings are similar, the pronunciations are very different, so the connection is quite a stretch, and these theories are generally discounted. A derivation from Hebrew chatsor 'enclosure' has also been proposed, but there is no evidence for this.

The first appearance of ghetto in English was in 1611: "The place where the whole fraternity of the Jews dwelleth together, which is called the Ghetto" and "Walking in the Court of the Ghetto, I casually met with a Jewish Rabbin that spake good Latin" (Thomas Coryat, Coryats Crudities).

It wasn't until the end of the 19th century (after the ghettos for Jews in European cities had been abolished) that ghetto came to be used for a crowded and poor section of a city in which members of a minority group live. Israel Zangwill wrote in Children of the Ghetto in 1892: "The particular Ghetto that is the dark background upon which our pictures will be cast is of voluntary formation." In 1908 Jack London wrote: "They dismounted and plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto" (Martin Eden).

Ghetto began to be used as a verb meaning 'to put in a ghetto' in the 1930s: "Jews, who are ghettoed under the racial legislation" (Times of London, 1936). More recently, an article in the Austin American-Statesman notes that "The last decades have been described as a time when the country split between 'gated or ghettoed'" (January 5, 2000). And, in a rather startling extension of meaning, here's a writer for the Jerusalem Post: "I would probably feel just as generous toward ancient situation comedies if they were appropriately ghettoed onto a single cable channel..." (June 2, 2000).

Georgia