Gramere

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic term for learning or scholarship, especially knowledge of Latin grammar ; the secret or occult lore of magic and sorcery
2. An obsolete word for book learning, particularly the study of Latin grammar ; a name for esoteric wisdom and the arts of enchantment
3. Old-fashioned term meaning formal scholarship, chiefly of Latin grammar ; a term for magical knowledge and the occult arts

Etymology: Medieval scholars who could read Latin seemed almost magical to people who could not, and that impression shaped this word. It comes from Latin "grammatica," from Greek "grammatike," the art of letters. The word passed into Old French as "gramaire" and then into English as "gramere" or "gramarye," meaning learning in general, especially learning found in books. Over time its sense narrowed to the kind of learning that seemed uncanny, namely occult knowledge, sorcery and enchantment. Its best-known relative is "glamour." In Scots, "gramar" was a variant of "grammar" that came to mean a magical spell. When the Scots form was taken into English, it kept that sense of enchantment, and it is now the surviving descendant. The two words are doublets: they share a source but took very different paths, and only the one that drifted from scholarship into sorcery is still in everyday use.

Synonyms: syntax, linguistics, morphology, philology