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2006 Jan 10 (Tue)

The Merchant of Venice is an awesome comedy and I enjoyed reading it the farther along I got. Besides being very entertaining, I also noticed some interesting linguistic elements, too. The one that interested me the most is in Act III, Scene 2, when Portia is talking to Bassiano right before he openes the caskets:

I speak too long, but 'tis to peise the time, To eke it and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election.

I had only heard of the phrase "pass the time", so at first I thought "peise" was an old spelling for "pass". Fortunately, when I looked in the (meager) glossary that came with the play, it has an entry for "peise the time":

peise the time, (i) weigh with deliberation each precious moment, (ii) weight the time that it may pass slowly; whichever interpretation we adopt, 'peise' was the regular name for the weights used in winding.

The OED has entries (and quotations) under both pass (v.) and time (n.) for "pass the time", and here are some of the pertinent quotes:

under pass (v.):
1836 A. A. PARKER Trip to West 165 Two Indians..halted within a few rods of us, stared a moment, and then civilly passed the time of day.
under time (n.):
1680 BUTLER Rem. (1759) I. 114 To pass his Times of Recreation In choice and noble Conversation.
1851 MAYHEW Lond. Labour (1861) II. 489/2 The police..they're very friendly, they'll pass the time of day with me.

Since The Merchant of Venice was written about 80 years earlier than the first citation (from 1680), and since the glossary accompanying the text suggests that "peise the time" has a similar meaning to "pass the time", it appears to me that "pass the time" is actually an eggcorn. I don't think it is very surprising that hearers re-interpreted (the now obsolete) "peise" for the very common "pass", especially since their pronunciations (cf. OED) are so similar.

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