Canada election 2015: Linguistic roots of Tories, Liberals and NDP

Canada's big political parties have just spent millions of dollars branding their names, but sadly for them a cheap trip to the etymology section of a dictionary reveals them to be nothing but amoral outlaws leading the people astray.

Amazing history of the Tories

A Conservative starts out respectably enough. The party name comes from conserve, a melding of two Latin words: con, meaning together, and servare, meaning to keep. So a Conservative is a person who respects traditions and believes if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You might think that "Tory" is just a shortening of Conservative, but you'd be wrong. The word predates the Roman conquest of Europe, back to the days when the Celts dominated the Continent. Their word toworet meant something like "running," and Old Irish later borrowed it as toirighim, meaning "I pursue."

And what exactly did a toirighim pursue? Your money. In 1566, the word was defined as "one class of Irish robbers noted for outrages and savage cruelty."

Jump ahead a century and toirighim meant Irish Catholics dispossessed from their land and forced to become outlaws. Some people sneeringly called a supporter of the Catholic Duke of York a toruighe. But then the duke became Britain's King James II and everybody wanted to be a toruighe. A new political party sought to ride his coattails by calling themselves the Tory party.

The British Conservative Party formed in 1830, and it kept the old Tory as a nickname. Canada's Tories borrow both names.

Freedom's just another word for a Liberal

Liberals are related to liberty, both of which build on the Latin root liber, meaning free. The word was first prominently used in a political setting during the French Revolution, when the cry, "Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!" was heard from rebel throats.

Their rage fuelled the Terror that decapitated the old ruling class — those people who respected France's traditions.

Backers of the revolutionary cause wore the hat of liberty, a red conical cap formerly given to freed Roman slaves.

But when liberals go too far, they become libertines, people who behave "without moral principles or sense of responsibility."

The Liberals can also be the Grits, and that name comes from sturdy southern Ontario farmers who in 1849 formed the Clear Grits because they sought members who were "all sand and no dirt, clear grit all the way through." That's the kind of good product masons wanted, and it stood to represent "gritty" people.

The Clear Grits merged with the Reform Party (not that Reform Party) and became the Liberal Party.

Power to the people — or the Democrats

The New Democrats spurn the Latin roots of their rivals for ancient Greek. Democrat is a variant of democracy, and that word fuses two Greek terms: demos, meaning the people, and kratia, meaning power. So it literally means the People Power Party.

But when the democrat leader uses popular prejudices, lies and emotional appeals to rile up the mob, she becomes a demagogue. That word joins demos, the people, with agogos, the leader.

The election started when the writ was dropped, so let's dig into those two words.

A writ is an Old English word and it just means something written. It's been used in that sense for at least 900 years. It's "dropped" in the sense that you "drop a line" to someone. In this case, it's the formal order telling the returning officer in each electoral district to hold an election to pick an MP.

Finally, if you gripe that your MP is all talk, shame on you. He's only doing his job. A "parliament" comes from the French parler, meaning to speak, so etymologically, a parliament is a talking shop.

Let's hope our new Parliament honours the nobler roots of their party names and saves us from any outlaws, libertines and demagogues who want to run our country.

Word for Word is the CBC's monthly etymology column. Got an idea for a topic? Tweet me. Sign up for Word for Word to have it delivered into your inbox.