quare

[Douglas G. Wilson]

> [the perp] said that he had always been a "quare" man until this morning, when he got drunk and took to the cross.
> New York Morning Express, January 21, 1846, p. 7, col. 1
>
> The OED has 2 meaning for quare (adjective): the first = "queer" -- this cites Brendan Behan's play The Quare Fellow, along with earlier passages, but does not mention that Behan explains (somewhere) that in English or Irish prisons, a "quare fellow" was a man awaiting his hanging (if I remember correctly, 40 years after reading it); the second evidently applies here, meaning "good, excellent", with the earliest citation coming from 1880, and the only citation that applies the word to a person is from 1996.
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What does "took to the cross" mean? In isolation I might guess something
like "embraced Christianity" or "entered the ministry", but I suppose
here (given the limited context) maybe more like "resorted to swindling".

Certainly I would presume "a quare man" (in isolation) = "a queer man",
with the odd spelling pointing to an Irish or dialectal-US
pronunciation. There are various published examples of this "quare" from
appropriate dates.

Assuming that "taking to the cross" is something disreputable, one might
consider the possibility of "quare" being a typo. for "square" here.

Is more information available from extended context?

-- Doug Wilson

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