There has been much talk about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament for the second time in two years - to suspend its operations without actually dissolving it and therefore forcing an election. He may have used prorogation to avoid answering questions at committees about Afghan detainees, or to put off business until he had stacked the Senate with enough Conservatives to outnumber the Liberals in that house.
Or maybe he wanted to see how many plays on "prorogue" the language could come up with. The best of that bunch has been that Harper is "going prorogue," a play on the title of Sarah Palin's recent memoir, Going Rogue. It's possible that others have described the Prime Minister as a prorogue elephant, or said his favourite meal is prorogue-ies, or written that suspending Parliament is entirely his prorogue-ative. It is also possible that they have not.
Certainly critics have blasted him for deferring any formal discussion of who in his government knew that Afghan authorities were or might be torturing prisoners handed over by Canadian soldiers. If this was Harper's aim - his government denies it - there is an interesting contrast in word origins.
Prorogue derives from the Old French proroguer, based on the Latin prorogare, meaning to prolong or extend, made up of pro (forward, out in front of) and rogare (ask). Detain derives from the Old French detenir, from the Latin detinere, made up of de (away, aside) and tenere (to hold). In other words, someone who prorogues is pushing something forward. Someone who detains is holding something back. It's a tug of war in philological as well as political terms.
Prorogue does not mean to be in favour of rogues, the origin of which is uncertain. It is known that in the 1500s "rogue" was thieves' slang, or cant, for a vagrant, the sort who might have implored passersby in Ireland for a brass coin known at the time, coincidentally, as a harper, and worth one penny. Vagrancy acts used the phrase "rogues and vagabonds" to cover the objects of the law's wrath, including itinerant fortune tellers. Itinerant fortune tellers are those folks on television panels predicting whether Harper will suffer any political damage or enjoy good political fortune for having suspended Parliament.
Although it is possible that "rogue" derives from rogare (to ask), it may also have come from roger, thieves' cant for con artists who posed as poor students in order to separate sympathetic citizens from their cash. Slang authority Eric Partridge also suggested that "rogue" might be related to the Middle French rogue, meaning arrogant or offensive, which in turn apparently derived from the Old Norse hrokr, meaning arrogant. Not that anyone would suggest any of the players in the current imbroglio is arrogant.
Since an earlier paragraph made a pun on prerogative, allow me to note that this word has a political origin. It derives by way of Old French from the Latin praerogare, combining prae (before) and rogare (ask). The praerogativa were a select bunch invited to vote in elections for state officials before anyone else had a chance, a privilege that led to the more general sense of prerogative as a right to precedence. The second definition in The Canadian Oxford Compact Dictionary is "the right or privilege exercised by a monarch or head of state over all other people, which overrides the law and is in theory subject to no restriction." The prerogative in the current case was that of Governor-General Michaëlle Jean, who accepted Harper's request for prorogation. Prorogation is distinct from peroration, which means a forceful speech, such as The Globe's recent front-page editorial on the proroguing controversy.
As a footnote, Partridge records that in the late 1600s and early 1700s, "a rogue with one ear" was a chamber pot. This has, of course, no bearing on the government's treatment of the chamber known as the House of Commons.