galiant effort

Paul Frank paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU
Wed Jun 22 17:51:35 UTC 2005


> Poster:       Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Most of these examples indicate a variant pronunciation of 'gallant'. What
> I'm suggesting for the examples of "a galiant effort" is that the word has
> been reanalyzed and semantically is closer to 'valiant' than to 'gallant'
or
> maybe a semantic blend of the two.
> I'm not too google savvy but you get many examples of "a galiant effort"
and
> few if any of "galiant" in other contexts which suggests to me that
> 'galiant' has come to substitute for 'valiant' and not for 'gallant'. In
the
> original example I noticed the commentator was describing an outfielder's
> jump to try to catch a home-run ball as it went over the fence - that's
more
> valiant than gallant, isn't it? Actually I have weak intuitions about
these
> since both words are pretty rare for me and they have a lot of semantic
> overlap. Also google shows a lot of "gallant efforts" as well as "valiant
> efforts".

Here's one example of galiant, though it may also simply be a variant
pronunciation of gallant:

After satisfying themselves that the traitors had fled, the  galiant Grays
proceeded to possess themselves -- each man -- of a rifle and a pair of
revolvers, the remainder being placed, together with a large number of
pikes, &c., upon a large new wagon, (purchased a few days before, by Smith,
or Capt. Brown, as he is now known,) to which the captors harnessed a, pair
of fine horses they caught grasing In the enclosure, and conveyed their
valuable prize Into town, where they were received with loud cheers by the
citizens and military.
        James Redpath, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, Thayer and
Eldridge, 1860, p. 269.


Paul
_________________________
Paul Frank
Chinese-English translator
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
www.languagejottings.blogspot.com



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