Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma

[Jonathan Lighter]

Me too. Perhaps the bear was indeed originally a _*grisly bear_ ; OED provides an elephant described as "grisly" in 1788.

  No very early cites supporting this usage are to hand, however, and OED, for reasons unknown, does not mention "grisly" in its "grizzly" entry. Dickens mentions a "grisly bear" in _Household Words_, perhaps under the influence of Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armor" (1842); that "grisly bear," however, is located on the Baltic, an indication that Longfellow was a little hazy on grizzlies.

  Whatever the case, grayish-blondish bears appear to be those that typify the "grizzly bear" to nonspecialists of the lower 48, plus Hawai'i, today. I don't know if this color variation turns up in _U. a. horribilis_. It would be nice if it did, though.

  JL
sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma
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>Isn't the most prevalent current sense of the adjective "grizzly" (other
>than the ursine epithet) something like "ghastly, grim, horrible"--for
>instance, "I saw a really grizzly wreck on the interstate this morning"?
>That sense has no entry in the OED, though it may be implied in an 1864
>quotation (illustrating "grizzly" a.1): ". . . the next town,.. grim and
>grizzly,..looked drearier."
>
>Could that sense have evolved, by a sort of folk etymology, from the
>legendary ferocity and destructiveness of the grizzly bear? Or, was the
>sense already established--connotatively, at least--perhaps influencing
>the designation of the fierce animals when English speakers discovered
>them in the early 19th century (they could, instead, have been called
>"silvery bears" or something)?
>
>--Charlie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Am I missing something here? It looks like a simple misspelling for "grisly."

The ursine grizzly is called that just because of its color, not its
nature. (My family once had a cat named "Grizzle" for the same reason.)
AM

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