Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma

[Wilson Gray]

What was the color of the now-extinct California *golden" bear? Judging by
the California state "bear flag" and Monterey's famed Bear-Flag Inn on
Cannery Row, it was just plain brown. But "grayish-blondish" seems more
likely to have struck peolple as "golden."

-Wilson

On 8/2/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Evidently the grayish-blondish color in question does frequently appear in
> _horribilis_ :
>
>   "Grizzlies vary widely in body shape, colour and in the shape of their
> heads. The tundra grizzly is often creamy yellow on the back with brownish
> legs and underparts. In the Rocky Mountains, the 'silver-tip' phase is
> dominant." [http://raysweb.net/wildlife/pages/04.html]
>
>   What this seems to mean is that in nonscientific (i.e., original and
> popular) usage, both {grizzly bear} and {grisly bear} may refer to either
> _horribilis_ in any color, make, or model or the American black bear in its
> "grizzled" variety.
>
>   In either spelling, popular usage presumably could refer to any very
> large, very ferocious individual bear (other than the unmistakable polar
> bear or, perhaps, the black "black bear") seen in the North American West,
> including Alaska, as well as in other northern climes.
>
>    JL
>
> Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Charles Doyle
> Subject: Re: Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In fact, so many early (and later) instances of "grisly" refer to persons,
> other beings, or scenes that are old, pale, spectral, dim, or (in the case
> of the 1788 elephant!) GRAY, I wonder if "grizzly" ('gray') wasn't already
> influencing the use and perception of the etymologically unrelated "grisly"
> ('horrid, causing an onlooker to tremble') long ago.
>
> Take, for instance, the OED's 1551 quotation at "grisly," from Ralph
> Robinson's translaiton of More's Utopia. (I have expanded the quotation):
> "But a certain friar, . . . a man of grisly and stern gravity, began merrily
> and wantonly to jest and taunt." The narrator is comically ridiculing the
> friar, whose merry jesting and taunting hardly reveal him to be HORRID or
> TERRIFYING; we may more easily envision him, merely, as being old and GRAY.
>
> (All that, obviously, by way of rationalizing my unawareness that
> "grizzly" and "grisly" are separate words! And, yes, historically each
> lexeme has been spelled both ways.)
>
> --Charlie
> ________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:28:10 -0700
> >From: Jonathan Lighter
> >Subject: Re: Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> >
> >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 wrote:
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> >Sender: American Dialect Society
> >Poster: sagehen
> >Subject: Re: Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >>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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