quare

[George Thompson]

>
> 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".
>>
> Is more information available from extended context?
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

There has been an off-line clamor for the full context,  which I will check later today.  For now, I will say that there is a more common underworld expression meaning "to be a criminal", and that is, "to be on the cross".  I suppose that "take to the cross" is a related expression.  I don't recall what this poor lad got arrested for, but, at the least, it wasn't for going to Mass.

Stay tuned.

"Quare" is certainly a dialectal pronunciation of "queer", but since it has appeared in writing as "quare" for about 160 years, it deserves the separate treatment it got in the OED.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 0:23 am
Subject: Re: quare
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> > [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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org