The song I’ve Been Working on the Railroad includes something unusual. The first two lines are:
“I’ve been workin’ on the railroad,
All the livelong day…”
“Livelong“? As far as I can recall, that song is the only place I’ve ever seen that word appear. What does that mean, and where did it come from?
It turns out to be quite an old word, first recorded in a poem (written in Middle English) by Henry Lovelich in the early 1400s: The History of the Holy Grail. Lovelich uses “livelong” in relation to the day:
“And thus vppon the yl stood Nasciens there Al the livelong day In this Manere.”
(And thus upon the hill stood the nations there all the livelong day in this manner.)
And just in case you were thinking it must have to do with sunshine, he also uses it this way:
“Al that leve longe Nyht Into the Se he loked forth Ryht”
(All that livelong night he looked directly into the sea.)
Yes, he changed the spelling right in the middle of his own poem. But hey, they didn’t have spell checkers back then; give the poor guy a break. Anyway, the date of the poem (written around 1410) is a clue to where the word ‘livelong’ comes from. ‘Live’ isn’t from ‘living’ or ‘life.’ In those days, not nearly as far removed from Old English as we are, Lovelich would probably have known the Old English root “leof,” which meant dear or beloved. It’s the same root as the English word “love,” rather than “live.” So “livelong,” particularly in these contexts, is probably serving the same purpose as the emphasis in this old-fashioned slangy phrase:
“I kept working the entire ever-loving day”
“Livelong” is intensifier used to make clear that it’s the whole day (or night) and not a second less!
In the 1800s the word “lifelong” appeared, meaning a lifetime. You still see this one sometimes, as in “she was a lifelong singer of that children’s song about working on the railroad.” Supposedly “livelong” is sometimes used when “lifelong” is meant (although I’ve never run into that), but it’s really just a mistake. As for mistakes in language use, you have to watch for them all the ever-loving, livelong day.
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