Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Contested Etymologies of Some English Words in the Popular Register

2008; Routledge; Volume: 80; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00393270802083059

1651-2308

William Sayers,

Lexicography and Language Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. C. T. Onions (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 2nd ed., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press), ⟨http://dictionary.oed.com/⟩, will be generally taken as point of departure for the discussions that follow and summary assessment of the dictionary with regard to its treatment of the popular register will conclude this article. In the interest of retaining focus, my remarks are then not intended as directly applicable to The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, a standard reference and companion work. Yet it is of interest to note that a “Publisher's Note” (ODEE, 2nd ed., 1966, p. xiv) salutes the contribution of C. T. Onions, the chief editor of the etymological dictionary, and calls attention to his pre‐eminent status as “the last of the editors of the original Oxford English Dictionary”. This said, there is no explicit statement as to the relationship—past, present, or future—between the ODEE and the etymological entries of the OED, which will be the chief concern in the following. 2. An earlier edition of the Paston letters from mid‐fifteenth century Norfolk contained the gerund frekynge in a letter of January 1451 that William Wayte wrote to his employer John Paston on the progress of litigation; James Gairdner (ed.), The Paston Letters, ad 1422–1509, 6 vols (London: Chatto & Windus, 1904), II.211. From the context, Middle English Dictionary assigned the provisional meaning ‘capricious behaviour, whims’; Hans Kurath et al. (eds.), Middle English Dictionary, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2002). This would seem to fit well enough with the semantics of freak, but the reading has now been emended to spekynge, invalidating the dictionary entry. See, now, Norman Davis (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–), I.63. 3. John Milton, Milton's ‘Lycidas’: edited to serve as an introduction to criticism, Scott Elledge (ed.), (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 8, v. 144. 4. See Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (ed.), Íslenzk orðsifjabók, (Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, 1989), p. 206, s.v. frekna; and Julius Pokorny (ed.) Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2 vols., (Bern: A. Francke, 1959), I.996ff., s.v.v. (s)p(h)ereg‐ et al., ‘scatter, sprinkle, spurt’. 5. The Knight's Tale, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., Larry Benson (gen. ed.), (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), v. 2169. 6. Edward III introduced Flemish weavers into Norfolk so that England would not be a simple exporter of wool. Yet the Germanic freckle words have no attested reflex in Middle Dutch. English fleck and Germanic reflexes, e.g. Middle Dutch vlecke, may have played a role in the semantic development of freak in the textile sense, and we note that, vocalism aside, there is only the difference of a liquid. Dutch frik ‘member; penis; (disparagingly) schoolmaster’ does not seem in play here. 7. Josiah Flynt, “The American Tramp”, The Contemporary Review 60 (London, 1891), pp. 253–61. 8. Ellensburgh Capital, 28 November 1889, p. 2, col. 2; cited from OED, s.v. hobo. 9. Ellensburg Public Library website, ⟨http://epl.eburg.com/history.htm⟩ (accessed 9 January 2007). 10. H. L. Mencken, “The Language Today”, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed., Raven I. McDavid (ed.) (New York: Knopf, 1963), p. 234, listed several alternative explanations, without a preference. Nicholas Klein, “Hobo Lingo”, American Speech 1 (12) (1926), pp. 650–53; and Charles Samolar, “The Argot of the Vagabond”, American Speech 2 (9) (1927), pp. 385–92, support the hoe boy option, as does J. E. Lighter (ed.) The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, (New York: Random House, 1994–1997), albeit with reservations. Similarly within the range of the plausible is Robert K. Barnhart (ed.), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1995), with a derivation from hawbuck ‘clumsy fellow’. But hoboes were not agricultural workers and were never classified as rustics. Eric Partridge (ed.), A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: colloquialisms and catch phrases, fossilized jokes and puns, general nicknames, vulgarisms, and such Americanisms as have been naturalized, 8th ed., (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) favours the Ho! Beau! derivation; on the Ho! Bozo! alternative, see Wilder P. Scott, “Concerning the Etymology of ‘Hobo’”, Trains 45 (1984), p. 74. The self‐styled hobo writer A No. 1 [Leon Livingstone] in Hobo Camp Fire Tales (Erie, PA: The A‐No. 1 Pub. Co., 1911), sees an intentional, gradual, hypocoristic abbreviation from “Hello Boy” to “Ho Bo”; Gerald Cohen, “Slang bozo ‘fellow; fool, buffoon’, With a Look at bo, hobo”, Comments on Etymology (Rolla, MO) 22 (2) (1982), pp. 9–19, concurs, while Robert L. Chapman (ed.), Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), sees in “Ho, boy” a call to mail carriers on the railroad. Curiously, Frederic G. Cassidy (ed.), The Dictionary of American Regional English, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), has no entry for the simplex hobo, only for noun phrases. The editors of America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America, David K. Barnart and Allan A. Metcalf (Boston: Houghton‐Mifflin, 1997), p. 146, favour a loan from Latin American Spanish jobo, a word with a wide variety of meanings, depending on speech community. 11. Jack London, in the story “Local Color”, in Moon‐Face and Other Stories (New York: Regent, 1906). 12. See, for example, Ramon Adams, The Language of the Railroader (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), and James H. Beck, Rail Talk: A Lexicon of Railroad Language (Gretna, NE: James Publications, 1978). 13. “He [Satan] wiþ his felawis … out of heuene in‐to helle hoblide faste” (‘With his fellows he hobbled quickly out of heaven into hell’); William Langland, Will's Visions of Piers Plowman and Do‐Well: The A Version, George Kane (ed.), (Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1988), pp. l, 112f. 14. The white harts are allegorical figures in this early fifteenth‐century piece of estates satire in the Midlands dialect known as Richard the Redeless; in: Mum and the Sothsegger, M. Day and R. Steele (ed.), (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 2.23 and 3.15. 15. Pierce the Ploughmans crede (about ad 1394), Walter W. Skeat (ed.), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), l. 106. 16. The earliest attestation in Middle English is, however, in the poem Sir Tristrem (c.1330) in the account of Tristrem's voyage to Ireland: “Tristremes schip was yare … The haven he gan outfare … Niyen woukes and mare He hobled up and doun” (‘Tristrem's ship was ready … he sailed out of the harbor … nine weeks and more he bobbed up and down’); Sir Tristrem, in Alan Lupack (ed.), Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem, (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1994), vv. 1155–61. Here reference is to the movements of a boat and the meaning is ‘rock’ or ‘bob’. Hobelen has no sure antecedent in Old English but there is cognate in Middle Dutch: hobbelen. The earliest example, from the fifteenth century, is in good accord with the use in Sir Tristrem, with the meaning ‘toss, rock’. But latter attested meanings in Dutch are also ‘jolt, lurch; be bumpy, lumpy’ (cf. English dialect hobbly ‘rough, uneven’, of a road). See, inter alia, Gerard van der Schueren, Teuthonista, Heinz Eickmans (ed.), (Köln: Bohlau, 1986), s.v. wyntelen. Despite the impact of Dutch on American English—some 2500 loans are attested—it seems unlikely, in view of the semantics of Dutch hobbelen (the way walked rather than the way of walking), that hobo is derived from this source. For English hobbly, see Joseph Wright (ed.), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols. (London: H. Frowde; New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1898–1905), s.v. hobbly. 17. None of the varieties of English that one might judge most likely to bequeath a specialized term to the Americas, e.g. the dialects of northern or southern Ireland or lowland Scotland, nor any of the most distinctive examples of regional speech in America, e.g. Appalachian, have an agent noun suggestive of hobo, even though they do provide evidence of continuity from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century of the cluster of meanings around hobble. To cite but one new reference work, C. I. Macafee (ed.), Concise Ulster Dictionary, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 173, has a thorough but, for present purposes, unremarkable entry for hobble and related. 18. Shelta language, ⟨http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta⟩ (accessed 9 January 2007). Cockney rhyming slang relies on comparable wordplay. 19. New Orleans Picayune, 19 August 1848, cited in America in So Many Words, p. 146. 20. See the discussion in William Sayers, “Malarkey and its Etymology”, Western Folklore 61 (2002), pp. 209–12. Alternatively, Shelta may be left out of the picture. Hiberno‐English makes widespread use of the English particle a‐, historically prefixed to past participles, but also with other verb forms, as in the expression “I'll be a‐goin”. Thus “going a‐boyo‐ing” could, in a North American linguistic environment, be reformed as “going hoboying”>“hoboing”, with the noun hobo then a back formation from the verb. 21. For the present status of hobo as a historical and critical term, see, for example, James M. Boehlen, “We Turned Hobo: A Depression Tale Recovered”, Midwestern Miscellany 25 (East Lansing, MI, 1997), pp. 19–27; Mary Paniccia Carden, “The Hobo as National Hero: Models for American Manhood in Steam Train, Maury Graham's Autobiography”, A/B: Auto/Biography Studies 11 (Whitewater, WI, 1996), pp. 93–108; Stephen Ennis, “The Circuit Rider's Wife and the ‘Hobo Novelist’: The Corra Harris/Jack London Correspondence”, Resources for American Literary Study 15 (University Park, PA, 1985) pp. 197–204; Richard W. Etulain, Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1964); Frederick Feied, No Pie in the Sky: The Hobo as American Cultural Hero in the Works of Jack London, John Dos Passos, and Jack Kerouac (New York: Citadel, 1964); and Camille Pierre Laurent, “The Schoolboys and the Hobo: Black American Culture between Orality and Literacy”, Cycnos 4 (France, 1988), pp. 22–42. 22. American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), s.v. boondocks, concurs in this derivation. The apparent origin in US slang originally seems to have discouraged British lexicographers from seeking an origin nearer home; Old Norse bóndi is reflected in Shetland and Orkney boond ‘farmer’ and might have been imagined the basis for our term. 23. Charles A. Wynn, “The Smoothest Production Line”, in Clyde H. Metcalf (ed.) The Marine Corps Reader, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Son, 1944), pp. 139–150, at p. 139. OED has a slight error; the original reads “Parris Island”. 24. Harvey L. Miller, Word Study 21 (1) (1950), pp. 6–7; he claims that the loan of Tagalog bundok ‘mountain’ dates back to the early 1900s but I prefer to see it at most as overlaying a pre‐existent military term focused on the notion of a base or camp in a remote environment (see below). 25. Leon Uris, Battle Cry (New York: Putnam, 1953), p. 127. 26. New York Times Magazine, 10 June 1951, p. 39. 27. Here I expand on Dinneen's gloss “act of taking liberties or making free with”, authorized by his cross‐reference to buannacht; Patrick S. Dinneen (ed.) Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla: An Irish–English Dictionary, (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1927). 28. “RAF Sculthorpe”, ⟨http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculthorpe⟩ (accessed 1 December 2006). 29. Robert Greene, A Notable Discovery of Coosenage, … (London: John Wolfe, 1591), frontispiece. 30. The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004) differs from OED as concerns origin: “Middle English coni, from Old French conis, pl. of conil, from Latin cuniculus, possibly from cunnus, cunus, female pudenda”. See, also, Paul Imbs (ed.), Trésor de la langue française, (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1971–1994), s.v. connil. 31. “Il n'aime point piau de conin”; Aimé Petit (ed. and trans.) Le roman d'Enéas: édition critique d'après le manuscrit B.N. fr. 60, (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1997), v. 8649. The allusion figures in a characterization of the Trojans as homosexuals. 32. Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide, Mario Roques (ed.) (Paris: H. Champion, 1966), vv. 1999f. and 6607–09, respectively. 33. “Poema Morale”, in Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century, ed. R. Morris (London: N. Trübner, 1873), 365. 34. W.W. Skeat, “Nominale sive verbale”, Transactions of the Philological Society 1*–26* (1906), p. 711. 35. C. B. Hieatt and S. Butler (eds.), Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 22. 36. The first instance of the former meaning is in a satirical context, in Mario Roques (ed.) Le Roman de Renart, Branches XII–XVII, (Paris: H. Champion, 1960), v. 14568, from about 1195–1200. French lapin ‘rabbit’ is a later development, first appearing in the mid‐fifteenth century; Trésor de la langue française, s.v. lapin. 37. Sir Tristrem, l. 2254. 38. Welsh gwain, OFr. gaine<Lat. vagina, and other reflexes might be thought to have affected these developments, but the basic meaning is ‘sheath’ and the anatomical designation was not part of popular speech. 39. E.g. Nathan Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum: or a more compleat universal etymological English dictionary (London, 1730), s.v. Cony, Tom‐Cony: ‘(with the Vulgar), a very silly fellow’. 40. New Orleans Picayune, 21 June 1849, 1/4: ‘“Well, then”, continues the confidence man, “just lend me your watch till to‐morrow”’. 41. Hermann Melville, The Confidence‐man: His Masquerade (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co. Melville, 1857). Did the author judge that the term still required a gloss? 42. Dictionary of American Regional English, s.v. coney. 43. An ascription traced to a single individual. American Heritage Dictionary makes Robert H. Link of Rochester the originator of the term, surely a simplification. For the subsequent argument, it will be important to note that the North American Scout lanyard was not worn around the neck, as is the modern item by that name, but fastened to the shirt, as a reserve resource for situations in which a length of leather cord might prove handy. 44. Robert T. Oliver, “Electionisms of 1936”, American Speech 12 (1) (1937), pp. 3–9 at p. 6. 45. E. G. Quin (gen. ed.) Dictionary of the Irish Language, (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1913–1976). 46. R. J. Thomas (ed.), Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: Dictionary of the Welsh Language, (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1950–2002; Gareth A. Bevan and Patrick J. Donovan (eds.), 2nd ed., 2003–); Xavier Delamarre (ed.) Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: une approche linguistique du vieux‐celtique continental, 2nd ed., (Paris: Editions Errance, 2003). 47. The possible interaction with tuggle and apparently related terms is not pursued in the present context. 48. The contribution of impressed Irish seamen to English nautical language remains a largely uncharted area. See Sayers, “The Etymology of queer”, in n. 49 below. Their numerical presence in British crews was considerable, particularly after the Act of Union in 1707 and throughout the eighteenth century. 49. Significantly, the dictionary continues to use the term “Anglo‐Irish” when “Hiberno‐English” is to be preferred. Examples of the impact of Celtic on everyday English are explored in several of my earlier notes: “Scones, the OED, and the Celtic Element in English Vocabulary”, Notes and Queries 52 (2005), pp. 447–50, “The Etymology of queer”, ANQ 18 (2005), pp. 15–18, and “The Etymologies of dog and cur” (forthcoming in The Journal of Indo‐European Studies, 2008), which address origins in Scots Gaelic, Irish, and Brittonic (Late British), respectively. Class bias seems evident in the OED's reluctance to investigate underclass slang and jargon. Chiv(e), n3 is identified as ‘knife’ in “thieves' cant” (a definition which may send some dictionary users to another entry) and instances from as early as 1673 are cited. There is no etymological commentary at all. North Americans will here recognize the shiv of the underworld, or at least of movies about it. Yet a first step in one of the most likely directions soon turns up Romani chiv/shiv ‘knife’ (the word was also assumed into the Shelta jargon of the Irish travellers). Cove, according to the OED “slang (orig. Thieves' cant)”, meaning a chap, fellow, North American guy, now perhaps most widely known from historical novels, is also called of obscure origin. It is the Romani masculine demonstrative pronoun. 50. Richard Stanyhurst's Description of Ireland as published in Raphael Holinshed, The firste volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (London, 1577), Book 2, p. 102. The passage is somewhat more readily located in Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols. (London: J. Johnson, 1807–1808), 6.305. 51. E.g. hypothetical forms based on cuirm ‘ale, beer’ or múcna ‘surly’, or corrmedon as ‘short‐torsoed, squat’.