Argal

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. An archaic word meaning therefore or for that reason, a corruption of the Latin ergo that Shakespeare gives to a gravedigger in Hamlet
2. An old-fashioned term for consequently or as a result, used in early modern English and famously mocked in the grave-digging scene of Hamlet
3. A obsolete conjunction signifying that something follows logically, sometimes used humorously in Elizabethan drama to sound learned

Etymology: "Argal" is a word that exists only because a gravedigger in a play talked nonsense. In "Hamlet," the First Gravedigger uses it while arguing that Ophelia's drowning was a deliberate act, and his reasoning is a parody of legal sophistry. Shakespeare based it on "ergo," the Latin word meaning "therefore," which courtroom and scholastic arguments had used for centuries to draw conclusions. The gravedigger's version is a corruption of that Latin word, mangled into something that sounds like a legal pronouncement but means nothing more than "therefore." Shakespeare's audiences would have heard the comic distortion immediately, since educated playgoers knew "ergo" well. The joke works because the speaker sounds authoritative while garbling his Latin. Because the word was coined for a single comic moment, it never spread into everyday English. It survives today almost entirely as a quotation from Shakespeare, and it is most often recognised as the gravedigger's mistake rather than as a term anyone uses seriously.

Synonyms: therefore, hence, thus, consequently