By Betty Kirkpatrick
August is usually part of the silly season as far as the media is concerned, but this year it broke with tradition. Several hard news stories raised their heads in August, not least those recounting tales of panic on the stock market.
Panic is not an unusual human response. It can arise in any situation where a crowd of people are affected by an overpowering sense of fear which often makes them start acting unthinkingly or irrationally. The origin of the word panic is, however, most unusual.
The word panic has its origins in the Greek god Pan. You might think that Pan is an unlikely source of mass alarm. After all, he was the god of nature, pastures, groves, flocks and that kind of thing – and, indeed, it is highly possible that his name is derived from the Greek word paein, meaning pasture. It all sounds very peaceful, positively idyllic, and certainly not an obvious cause of panic.
However, Pan was not a pretty sight. He had the torso of a human but the hind legs, ears and horns of a goat, and one look at him would certainly frighten the average observer. Pan was all too aware of the effect of his frightening appearance and he would apparently leap out at unsuspecting travellers with a view to terrifying them out of their wits. Innocent nymphs were likely to be particularly terrified as Pan, as the god of fecundity, had the reputation of being exceptionally lustful. No nymph was safe from him.
It was not, however, just the sight of Pan or the thought of his lustful leanings that inspired fear. The ancient Greeks believed that he made noises, not the musical noises that he produced on his famous Pan pipes, but scary noises. He was wont to run around making rustling noises in the bushes and trees, without revealing his presence, once again terrorising travellers.
He was also considered to be the source of more non-specific scary noises. These were strange sounds that from time to time reverberated around the woodlands and countryside of ancient Greece, nature’s equivalent of night-time creaking noises in old houses. Being otherwise without explanation, these noises were attributed to the god Pan. Apparently these nameless noises caused instant, infectious terror in the populace and sent them into what we would now call panic mode. Animals were often similarly affected.
The word panic originally entered the English language in the early 17th century as an adjective and made its entrance via the French word panique. This, in turn, has its origin in Latin panicus, derived from Greek panikos, "of Pan". Thus did the god Pan bring us panic and it has been well-used ever since. Think of him next time you press the figurative panic button.
Betty Kirkpatrick is the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. She is also the author of several smaller language reference books, including The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés published by Bloomsbury, and a series of Scots titles, including Scottish Words and Phrases, Scottish Quotations, and Great Scots, published by Crombie Jardine.
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