quare

[Hillary Brown]

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1998/09/21/1998_09_21_080_TNY_LIBRY_000016384

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: quare
>
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>
> > [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.
> -
>
> 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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