Whadda hell?

[Charles Doyle]

The OED's entry for "Hobson's choice" gives the name of the famous Cambridge "carrier" as "Tobias Hobson."  I wonder why?  His name was Thomas.

The "inflexible stable-keeper Hobson (c. 1544-1631)," was not quite "an otherwise unremarkable and minor figure in history" (I'm quoting from Arnold's "ECDB" article).  John Milton memorialized Hobson's death with two comical elegies, and fellow Cantabrigians wrote others.  Hobson's long career as carrier (!) between Cambridge and London became something of a byword for traveling much but not GETTING ANYWHERE.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:37:07 -0700
>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Whadda hell?
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>On Oct 10, 2006, at 3:41 PM, Chris F Waigl wrote:
>
>> George Thompson wrote:
>>
>>> ... a Hobbesian dilemma...
>
>>> .
>>>
>> Google has something. I remember having exchanged a few e-mails with Mark Liberman about this some time ago -- it seemed to me that users were grasping for an English equivalent of the French choix cornélien, different from the classical Hobson's choice between something sub-standard and nothing at all. Googling... here's the Language Log posting

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001909.html .
>
>even better, the entry on chris's own ecdb (written by me, with references to liberman's Language Log piece and our discussion on ADS-L):
>
>   http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/593/hobbesian/
>

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