galiant effort

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Galliant" was a relatively common pronunciation in 19th C. ballads.  For example, in the pugilistic song of "Heenan and Sayers," as collected by Frank and Anne Warner in upstate New York around 1940:

It was in the merry England, all in the bloom of spring,
When Britain's noble champion stood stripped all in tbe ring
To meet our noble Heenan, the galliant son of Troy,
To try his British muscle on our bold Benicia boy.

The bare-knuckle, heavyweight fight between Englishman Tom Sayers and the Irish American John C. Heenan (from Troy, N.Y., via Benicia, California)  was famous in its day. It took place in Hampshire in April of 1860 and ended in a draw, though Heenan suffered visibly less damage.

JL


"Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
Subject: galiant effort
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I heard "he made a galiant effort" today in a sports context. Google =
shows plenty of hits.

This is not an egghorn but I'm not sure what you call it. It seems like =
it might be contamination, which is what I've seen as the term for =
changes like that that led femelle > female in English. So gallant > =
galiant by contamination with the semantically similar valiant or =
valiant > galiant by contamination with vallant.

-Matt Gordon

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