A friend insists on pronouncing the penultimate letter "r" ever so slightly My generally wishy-washy dictionary disappointed me again by ambivalently promulgating the irresolute triad of a muh-kah-bruh, b muh-kahb, and c muh-kah-ber. Oi vei! Such weasly waffling bothers me immensly. Oi vai iz mir, what dither. May I ask would the original proponents have prounounced the "r" or not? Should we? Thanks, in advance, for your astute advice, Emily.
Same for Latin. Since when has English pronunciation of anything any relationship to the original, except if accidentally? Looking deeper than the French supposed origin, I've found macabre perhaps to really be of Jewish origin Macabree was thought by Lydgate to be the name of a French author, but in fact he misunderstood the Old French phrase 'Danse Macabre', 'the Dance of Death,' a subject of art and literature.
The macabre element may be an alteration of Macabe, 'a Maccabee. Today macabre has no connection with the Maccabees and little connection with the Dance of Death, but it still has to do with death. However, I'd like to know what others, more learned than I, suggest? Thanks, in advance, for your advice, Emily. Yeah, all that and more BS was duly considered in the response where the probability of an etymon in Arabic maqber was definitely higher.
As for Lydgate etc, totally irrelevant, as he took it from the Fr. If you have relevant data to defend the other side of the etymology discussion, bring them by all means, but avoid BS. Macchabeus for investigation of the range of forms and spellings attested in Middle French for both the present word and for words and expressions independently derived from the biblical proper name.
George for email. Which remains irrelevant to any English pronunciation anyway. One thing, though: That "there is no evidence to support" is pure unadulterated bullshit. There was never a special level of proof required to show intermediate forms of arabic and syriac words appearing with fitting phonetics in Western languages during the th centuries. There is no evidence to support any of the other theories, either now that the mention of a chor[e]a macchabaeorum seems to be posterior to the mentions of danse macabre.
