[Ads-l] "old boy" = the devil + OED antedating of "Old Roger".

Fri Sep 16 13:22:08 UTC 2016

Ah, I must have misread you. I was simply slightly puzzled as to why you picked
the second rather than the first date.

While I can understand (and respect) your lack of interest in Old Nick, I
thought that contextualising the term you originally drew attention to might be
useful. I think in this case, you may have misunderstood me -- the sites I
pointed to don't simply deal with Old Nick, but with terms referring to the
Devil in general.

I found it interesting that the term “old boy” emerges not simply at a
particular time (as you point out) but in a particular place, Salem, and that
it's not only a subset of a particular set of terms, but a geographically-tagged
member of that subset.

Which might raise two further queries:

Why does it emerge in America, in particular? and Why is it the least common of
such terms? It doesn't seem to have gained nearly the same traction as “Old
Nick” had in England, or “Auld Hornie” had in Scotland.

At least, I'm assuming the term didn't gain traction, indeed might simply be a
nonce-usage. Or am I wrong, and it is, or was, actually the preferred term in
America?

Antedatings are useful, as we both recognise, but I've become, over the last few
years, more and more interested in exploring the point at which terms drop out
of favour. This is usually signalled in dictionaries, if it's noted at all, as
"obs.", but that doesn't really tell us much.

I could go on, and perhaps point out how the appearance of the term “wheedle” in
a poem in the _New Canting Dictionary_ not only demonstrates that it was written
at a much later period than the editor seems to imply (it's not Jacobean, as are
the poems which the editor groups it with) but locates it in a particular
context, since the sense of “wheedle”, meaning to blab to a justice, drops out
of use much more quickly than the other sense at the time, meaning to cheat or
inveigle someone out of something.

I could go on, but I better not, as I've already wandered even further from your
original point than when I started.

And yes, you're quite right to point to the significance of “old cratten” -- it
adds another ingredient to pot of terms. But why “cratten”? I could understand
“cratter” (later in America, “critter” from “creature”) as that would fit the
pattern of the other examples of Devil-naming. Is “cratten” perhaps a misprint,
or a misreading or mishearing by someone at the time, of “creature” or some
dialectical variant thereof?

Best,

Robin

> On 16 September 2016 at 05:26 Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
> 
>     I'm not really interested in "old nick", I just meant to remark that it
> antedates 1692 and that "old cratten" seems very interesting.
>      
> 
> 
> 
>     ---------------------------------------------
>     From: Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
>     To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>     Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 9:47 PM
>     Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "old boy" = the devil + OED antedating of "Old
> Roger".
> 
>     Are you discounting the first OED cite, Joel?
> 
>           a1643 in J. W. Ebsworth Merry Drollery (1875) App. 394 For
> Roundheads Old
>     Nick stand up now.
> 
>     Anatoly Liberman in "Multifarious Devils, part 2. Old Nick and the
> Crocodile,"
>     accepts it:
>           http://blog.oup.com/2013/06/old-nick-etymology-word-origin/
> 
>     See also:
> 
>     The Virtual Linguist: Old Harry and other nicknames for the Devil
> 
> 
>        http://virtuallinguist.typepad.com/the_virtual_linguist/2010/07/old-harry-and-other-nicknames-for-the-devil.html
> 
>     "Old boy" is actually a relatively late (and predominantly American) entry
> into
>     the "Old [Someone]" as a (nick)name for the Devil stakes.
> 
>     See also, in less detail:
> 
>     English Language & Usage Stack Exchange: "Why is the English devil “old”?"
> 
> 
>        http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/161974/why-is-the-english-devil-old
> 
>    http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/161974/why-is-the-english-devil-old
> 
> 
>     ... which has the following succinct summary:
> 
> 
>     "Old Harry is a nickname for the Devil. The Devil has many nicknames, many
> of
>     which include the adjective Old, a reference, as the OED says, to the
> Devil's
>     primeval character. Examples include: Old Ned, Old Nick, Old One, Old
> Roger, Old
>     Scratch, Old Horny (or more likely the Scottish spelling, Auld Hornie),
> old boy
>     (US term, according to the OED), old gentleman, old gentleman in black,
> old
>     serpent, old smoker, old dragon, old enemy, old adversary, Old Billy, Auld
>     Cloots (or Clootie) and old gooseberry."
> 
>     The _New Canting Dictionary_ (1725) gives both "Old Nick" and "Old Roger",
> but
>     both (especially "Old Nick") are certainly earlier.
> 
>     The _NCD_ provides the OED with its first citation of "Old Roger", but the
>     editor of the _NCD_ probably took it from _The Prison-breaker_, written
> (though
>     never performed *) shortly after Jack Sheppard was hanged in September
> 1724.
>     The date on the frontispiece of this is 1725, but I'd guess at a late-1724
> date
>     of composition and an early-1725 date of publication.
> 
>     There we find, Enter Jack Sheppard, singing:
> 
>           But as I have liv'd to come out again,
>               If the merry old Roger I meet,
>           I'll tout his Muns, and I'll snabble his Poll,
>               As he pikes along the Street.
> 
>     Curiously enough, 1724 is also the date of the first citation in the OED
> for
>     "Jolly Roger"
> 
>     In the lines above, Jack Sheppard is parodying an earlier song, called "On
> the
>     Budge", where "a Hick" rather than "old Roger" is met with.
> 
>     Robin Hamilton
> 
>     * Strictly, "Never performed as written."  It was performed, in a
> hacked-about
>     version, as _The Quaker's Opera_ in 1728, in the wake of the success of
> John
>     Gay's _Beggar's Opera_.
> 
>     ** Better known, for reasons I won't go into, as "The Budge and Snudg
> [sic]
>     Song".  However, somewhat anachronistically, the young Jack Sheppard in
> Harrison
>     Ainsworth's novel (1839), has the text from  the _New Canting Dictionary_
> tacked
>     to his wall, where it's called "The Life and Death of the Darkmans Budge".
>  Just
>     how young Jack has access to a text with a title which didn't appear till
> the
>     year after he died ...
> 
>     RH.
> 
>     >
>     >    On 16 September 2016 at 01:08 Joel Berson <berson at ATT.NET
>     > mailto:berson at ATT.NET > wrote:
> 
>     >
>     >
>     >    This -- which I have not seen -- does supply a date for Nichals's
>     > deposition.  I wonder on what additional evidence.  However, I do think
>     > I've
>     > read that Rosenthal et al.'s work is well-reputed.
>     >
>     >
>     >    Note that this places Lidia's deposition before Abigaille's June
>     > examination.  Which is not unreasonable, if Lidia was one of Abigaill's
>     > original accusers.
>     >
>     >    "Old nick" is slightly earlier than 1692 (OED).
>     >
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     The American Dialect Society -http://www.americandialect.org/
> 
> 
> 

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