Table talk

Q: News articles often say an issue is “on the table,” meaning being considered. But “tabling” the issue means putting it off. Can you shed light on these opposite meanings? A: Both meanings of “table” ultimately come from tabula, classical Latin for a board used to write on, play on, hold sacred offerings, and so on. When the word “table” first appeared in Old English as the noun tabul, the term referred to a tablet used for votive offerings. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an Old English translation (circa 900) of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), an eighth-century Latin church history by the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede: “Hæfdan hio mid him gehalgude fatu, & gehalgadne tabul” (“They had with them consecrated vessels and a consecrated tablet”). The noun “table” developed many other meanings in Middle English, including a piece of furniture to work or eat at, but we’ll skip ahead to the early Modern English…