Language
The motto is French for literally "God and my right" (a fuller version of the motto is also quoted as "God and my right shall me defend"). The word droit was formerly spelt droict (from the Latin directum, dirigere, to head, to point in the right way); the c was later dropped in accordance with modern French orthography. A better translation referring to the divine right of kings would be "My divine right", this being an example of hendiadys.
For the Royal coat of arms of the Kingdom of England to have a French rather than English motto was not unusual, given that Norman French was the primary language of the English Royal Court and ruling class following the rule of William the Conqueror of Normandy and later the Plantagenets. Another Old French phrase also appears in the full achievement of the Royal Arms. The motto of the Order of the Garter, Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Spurned be the one who evil thinks"), appears on a representation of a garter behind the shield. Modern French spelling has changed honi to honni, but the motto has not been updated.
Read more about this topic: Dieu Et Mon Droit
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Though language forms the preacher,
‘Tis “good works” make the man.”
—Eliza Cook (1818–1889)
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)