"Black Man", 1849

[Jonathan Lighter]

I didn't think H. was original.  I still believe he was archaic.

How much does the archaic use of "Black Man" to mean "the Devil" to do with
the claim that 24% of self-declared Republicans consider the President of
the United States to be a possible incarnation of the Antichrist of
Revelation?

How many of the Antichristers can are even familiar with the term? IMO, few
indeed.

Unless some websites are trying to bring it back....

JL

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Black Man", 1849
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5/1/2010 05:49 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> >On Sat, May 01, 2010 at 02:37:28PM -0400, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > > "Black Man" also appears in Hawthorne's "Main Street":  "Most of them
> > > have one huge chimney in the centre, with flues so vast that it must
> > > have been easy for the witches to fly out of them, as they were wont
> > > to do, when bound on an aerial visit to the Black Man in the forest."
> > >
> > > This 1849 instance antedates the OED2's earliest citation of 1851 for
> > > singular "black man",   "2. An evil spirit; also, the evil one, the
> > > devil; also, a spirit or bogey invoked in order to terrify children".
> > > Its only two earlier citations are:
> > >      [1591 in Pitcairn Crim. Trials Scotl. (1833) I. 246 {Th}e
> > > Dewill start vp in {th}e pulpett, lyke ane mekill blak man, with ane
> > > blak baird stikand out lyke ane gettis baird.] 1658 tr. Bergerac's
> > > Satyr. Char. xii. 48, I send the Goblins..the nightbats,..the black
> men.
> >
> >We now have 1656, 1727, and 1751 singular examples of this
> >sense.
> >
> >Jesse Sheidlower
> >OED
>
> 1)  Once again, I'm too late  :-)
>
> 2)  Hawthorne was not as original (or archaic?) as Jon imagined and I
> had hoped.
>
> 3)  The OED has recognized the existence of the 18th century  :-)
>
> Joel
>
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