"jail fever", 1720

[Laurence Horn]

On May 8, 2013, at 2:37 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 5/8/2013 02:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> Is this really "goal fever" rather than "gaol fever"?   I know the
>> latter from Oscar Wilde, and I'm pretty sure by then it wasn't "The
>> Ballad of Reading Goal", which sounds more like a paean to an
>> educational public television show.
>
> Or to British schoolboy football, a la Casey?
>
> You could check for yourself (while I did neglect to say Google
> Books, I did say even minions ought to find it).  But I'll be kind
> and say, yes, I just did reconfirm it.
>
> If you read colonial newspapers of the early 18th century, you'll
> find "goal" frequently, perhaps more so than "gaol".
>
> Joel

I'm sure you're right.  I've always wondered how "gaol" ended up spelled that way (despite the velar softening), and now I have a second wonder about "goal".  Curious that, as you note below, the OED seems unaware of "goal" as an alternate spellling of "gaol" (as an alternate spelling of "jail").  I can just imagine the colonial-era newspaper headlines following the guilty verdict and sentencing:

GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LH

>>
>> On May 8, 2013, at 1:43 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>> > This will obviously be discovered by the OED minions when they reach
>> > this entry -- provided they are aware enough to look for "goal" :-)
>> > -- but anyhoo ...
>> >
>> > "Our common Prisons afford us an Instance of this, in which very few
>> > escape, what they call the Goal Fever, which is always attended with
>> > a Degree of Malignity in proportion to the Closeness and Stench
>> of the Place."
>> >
>> > Richard Mead. "A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion,
>> > and the Methods to be used to Prevent it."  The Fourth
>> > Edition.  London: Printed for Sam. Buckley, 1720.
>> >
>> > [Despite this being the 4th ed., I don't think there are any editions
>> > of an earlier year.  However, if "they" already call it the Goal
>> > Fever, perhaps it will turn up earlier, such as in the Burney
>> > newspaper collection.]
>> >
>> > Antedates OED2 "jail fever", [1750]--..
>> >
>> > Joel
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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