Dialect Notes 1903: Word-List from East Alabama

[Baker, John]

        "Snipe hunt" does not appear to be in the OED.  Is this not a
practical joke used in the UK?  I've never come across one in real life,
but references to them are common enough that I expect most Americans
have heard of them.  The earliest I see on Google Books is from 1893 in
the Pacific Medical Journal, a passing reference to "all the admirable
and trusting confidence and sang froid as well as that dogmatic
perseverance that characterizes the bag holder in the midnight snipe
hunt."  There are some other references to snipe hunts from this period,
suggesting that they first became popular in the 1890s.

        World Wide Words, at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lef1.htm, has a different
explanation for "left holding the bag":  "It actually dates back to the
middle of the eighteenth century in Britain. The original version was to
give somebody the bag to hold, meaning to keep somebody occupied or
distracted while you slipped away. Figuratively, it meant to leave
somebody in the lurch, to let them stay around to take the blame for
something that had gone wrong."


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 8:32 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Dialect Notes 1903: Word-List from East Alabama

Snipe (or is it "snipes"?) are common in Iceland.  They squeak during
the
so-called "night" with a sound not distinguishable from a rusty hinge.

The "snipe hunt" is the only expanation I've ever encountered for "left
holding the bag."

JL

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 9:14 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Dialect Notes 1903: Word-List from East Alabama
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>
> On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "If it's new to me, and I heard it in this
> > offbeat area, it's probably peculiar to the area."
>
> "I reckon that y'all done caught the the old coon, this," to borrow
> the punchline of and old joke. I've been taken from the path of
> righteousness in making a number of such assumptions. That why I
> thought that the 1903 use from E 'Bama was worthy of note. Around the
> time that the expression was hip, there was an article in Language
> that indicated that, back in the Herman-Melville-Moby-Dick,
> wooden-ship, whale-hunting days, harpooners and their associates
> ofttimes discussed the exact moment at which the harpooner should
> "sock it to" a whale. So, I was fully aware that the, IMO,
> somewhat-irrelevant usage cited from Eastern 'Bama was no kind of
> antedating.
>
> It merely struck me as trivially interesting, though *much* less
> interesting than the author's description of "snipe-hunting," wherein
> the chump is "left to hold open the bag into which the snipes are
> supposed to run" or some such. Being in fact not much more than an
> interested bystander here, I have no idea whether such is really the
> source of the expression, "to leave someone holding the bag," or
> whether the cite constitutes an antedating. But, I certainly find it
> interesting and it makes perfect sense of a heretofore totally-obscure
> idiom. I've wondered for years what sense there was to be found in
> that expression. How and why is it a bad thing "to leave someone
> holding the bag"? Is there something in the bag that's bad,
> embarrassing, or what? Now, the essence of the expression seems
> crystal-clear.
>
> As fate would have it, I've known since childhood that "snipe-hunting"
> was some kind of trick. I once saw a movie in which some inconvenient
> character was gotten rid of by being sent on a "snipe-hunt." But,
> aside from the the fact that the movie made clear that "snipe-hunting"
> was a fool's errand, nothing was said about what "snipe-hunting"
> involved. This movie was somewhat more confusing because I knew that
> there exists an actual bird called a "snipe." So, why is it that going
> to hunt them should mark a person as some kind of fool?
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> ---
> 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
>
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