In a Word: Unveiling Vexillology

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

Last week, Deborah J. Schildkraut’s article “What’s in a State Flag?” got me thinking. Large-word lovers (and Big Bang Theory fans) like myself know that the study of flags and flag symbolism is called vexillology, but I didn’t know why. I also wondered, as you might be wondering right now, whether vexillology is somehow related to the shorter word vex “baffle or irritate.”

To sate my unflagging curiosity, I pored through multiple resources for answers. I found a veritable rabbit hole of oddities, surprises, and unexpected connections.

I started with the smaller word: To vex (originally vexen “to anger or upset”) traces back to the Latin verb vexare “to shake, toss violently,” which goes even further back to vehere “to draw or carry.”

Simple enough. On to vexillology.

I was surprised by how relatively young the word vexillology is; it doesn’t even appear in my unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary from 1966! The word was coined in the late 1950s and must not have had enough currency to convince Merriam-Webster’s lexicographers to include it.

I imagine a group of postwar flag aficionados, gathered around a table for drinks and nerdiness, complaining, “If specialists in stamps, coins, and butterflies get their own multisyllabic Latinate names” — philatelists, numismatists, and lepidopterists, respectively — “why not us?”

Of course, the -ology suffix we see all over the place to indicate “the study or discipline of.” The first half of the word traces back to the Latin vexillum “flag, banner, or military ensign,” but often more specifically the square flag of the ancient Roman cavalry.

In 1591, mathematician and Bible translator Henry Savile coined (we believe) the word vexillary in his translation of Tacitus, in which he uses vexillary souldiers and vexillary cohorts to describe the Roman soldiers who carried the standards. Vexillary also became a freestanding noun for a standard-bearer. So the vexill- combining form had a solid history by the time the 1950s rolled around.

Vexillum is a form of the word velum “sail or curtain.” You can easily how we get from a sail to a flag, and if you guessed that this is the source of the English word veil, you’d be right! Velum is still used today to describe an organic membrane that resembles a veil or curtain.

So vexillology traces its history back to sails and then to Roman military flags, and it’s not etymologically related to vex at all.

When I reached the Latin velum “sail,” I thought I had landed on a word I already knew, one I recognized from bookmaking — primarily from book-binding. And connecting from “sails” to “book pages” seemed obvious enough.

Reader, I was wrong.

As it turns out, bookmakers used a two-L vellum, which is completely unrelated to the one-L velum. Vellum is a type of parchment made from the skins of young cows, sheep, and goats. Because it was so often made from the skins of calves, eight centuries ago it was called vel or veel in Old French.

And what do we call calf meat when it’s prepared for consumption? Veal!

So, in summation, vexillology is related to veil, vellum is related to veal, and vex isn’t related to any of them.