Pylimitics

Words often change meanings over time. This happens in different ways. The word “deer” for example, today means a specific type of animal. But back in Old English, when the same word was “doer,” it meant any kind of animal. “Enthusiasm” changed in the opposite way; it comes from Greek and originally meant something very specific: a religious feeling of fervor; being possessed by a god. Nowadays it just means any kind of passionate motivation. 

The meaning of “callow” has changed in a more unpredictable (and thus more interesting!) way. Today it means inexperienced and even naive. It’s not used that often any more — you most often see it in the phrase “callow youth.” “Callow” comes from Old English, where for some reason someone wrote a book in the tenth century now called the Exeter Book — it’s full of riddles, of all things. Riddle number 40 starts with this line:

“I do not have on my head elegantly curled blood locks, but I am very bald…”

The word for “bald” in Old English? “Callow” (it was spelled “calu” at that point, but Old English spelling was a pretty casual pursuit). So how did “callow” change from meaning “bald” to “inexperienced”? It all has to do with birds. 

“Callow” kept its original “bald” meaning all during the Middle English period, but around the late 1500s people started to use it to refer to birds that hadn’t grown their adult feathers yet. There’s a 1580 passage (about birds) that reads:

“I blush to thinke of some, that weene themselves as fledge as the rest, being God wot, as kallowe as the rest.”

By 1604, a guy named Philemon Holland was translating some ancient Roman works and put one line this way:

“Young callow birds which are not yet feathered…”

And there you have it — right there is the beginning of the phrase we still use: “callow youth.” And since it’s a great deal more entertaining to complain about kids today (no matter what day it is) than to talk about baby birds, the meaning of “callow” as “inexperienced” was, before long, the only meaning anybody remembered.