Whet the hell is this?, pts. I & II

[George Thompson]

Once again I misuderestimated the extraordinary range of HDAS, which so often goes far beyond what I think of as slang.  I had not looked there, though I had checked DARE.

My bed-time curses have been directed at Oxford University Press for some time now, and won't stop until I have the final volumes of HDAS in hand.

Actually, if my bed-time curses had any effect, the political and cultural landscape of this country would be quite different from what it is now, but I keep on trying.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.  Working on a new edition, though.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, April 14, 2011 4:53 pm
Subject: Re: Whet the hell is this?, pts. I & II
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> A "huckleberry above one's persimmon" used to mean something that was
> just a
> little bit better or more extraordinary, etc.
>
> In HDAS from 1840, s.v. "huckleberry."  So 1838 is kind of an antedating,
> even if it's backwards.
>
> JL
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:37 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: Whet the hell is this?, pts. I & II
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I had no problem searching for "moonraker" (no hyphen):
> >
> > >  1. A native of the county of Wiltshire, in England.
> > >  2. Naut. A sail set above the skysail. Cf. moonsail n. at moon n.1
> > Compounds 2, raffee n.
> >
> > WIktionary is substantially the same but with more detail:
> >
> > > 1. Someone from Wiltshire. (After a story in which some Wiltshire
> > peasants, seeing the reflection of the moon in a pool, tried to rake
> it
> > out.)
> > > 2. (nautical) A small, light sail located high on a mast (above the
> > skysail) and used for speed.
> >
> > Infoplease likely sheds more light on this:
> >
> > > 1. Also called moonsail. [key] Naut.a light square sail set above
> a
> > skysail.
> > > 2. a simpleton.
> >
> > The second one fits here. Unsurprisingly, Dictionary.com nets the same
> > pair--both use Random House Unabridged, but InfoPlease relies on 1997,
> > which Dictionary.com claims to be current (2011).
> >
> > Online Etymology D adds a bit more detail, connection Wiltshire with
> > "simpleton":
> >
> > > a name traditionally given to Wiltshire people, attested from
> 1787, is
> > from the stock joke about fools who mistook the reflection of the
> moon in a
> > pond for a cheese and tried to rake it out. But as told in
> Wiltshire, the
> > men were surprised trying to rake up kegs of smuggled brandy, and
> put off
> > the revenuers by acting foolish.
> >
> > Peevish.com (UK slang glossary):
> >
> > > A person from the town of Middleton, Manchester. Occasionally derog.
> >
> > VS-)
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 4:15 PM, George Thompson
> > <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > I: [a stage coach is robbed near Patchogue, L. I.]
> > > We have heard of moon-rakers about Rockaway Beach, but no land
> pirates in
> > the interior of the island since the revolutionary war.  Evening
> Star, April
> > 13, 1838, p. 2, col. 3
> > > The on-line OED says it has never heard of "moon-raker", but I really
> > thought that the print OED I looked at when I found this gave as
> meanings 1)
> > one of the higher sails on a sailing ship (cf. sky-scraper) and 2) a
> > confederate of smugglers who digs up contraband buried in the sand.
> (These
> > were in some dictionary, at least.  Neither helps much, unless we
> suppose a
> > link of "smuggler's confederate" > "smuggler" > "pirate".)
> >
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>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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