quare -- back by popular demand

[Wilson Gray]

Is 1846 also early for an example of this use of _down_?

-Wilson, still occasionally down in the 21st c.
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:02 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: quare -- back by popular demand
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Theft of Alpaca. Â -- A man named Edward Lawson was this morning brought in . . . , charged with stealing 10 yards of Alpaca worth $5. . . . Â 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: Â If this is a typo for Square, it at least isn't my typo. Â 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. Â 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, Â which I will
>> check later today. Â 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". Â I suppose that "take to the cross" is a related
>> expression. Â 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
>

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