quare -- back by popular demand

[George Thompson]

Theft of Alpaca.  -- A man named Edward Lawson was this morning brought in . . . , charged with stealing 10 yards of Alpaca worth $5. . . .  He was very much down at being caught, and 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

So:  If this is a typo for Square, it at least isn't my typo.  And since the OED's second meaning for Quare more or less fits here, I suppose that it isn't a typo.
JS -- nothing in the paragraph indicates that the speaker was Irish, though he may have been.
JL -- the poor lad would have been unlucky indeed if he had found you on his jury.  Maybe he was a slang lexicographer who had taken to the bottle.

Also: "took to the cross" did not mean that he had become a crusader and had been arrested for smiting a infidel.

Quotation marks as in the original.

GAT

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

----- Original Message -----
From: George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 10:56 am
Subject: Re: quare
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> >
> > 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
> > >
> > > 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

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