"sable [gentry]"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 21, 2011, at 1:47 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> I suspect searching for "sable" with other terms
> besides "gentry" would turn up many more
> instances in the early 19th century.

Indeed, but I was looking specifically for “sable gentry”, partly because I was making the case (to myself, at least) that the OED entry for “sable” should have an entry for that collocation along with that for “his sable excellency”, “sable majesty”, and such.  In fact, the entry doesn’t include any cites for “sable gentry”, much less an actual subentry for it.

My own preferred sable is the eponymous smoked fish, which isn’t even the appropriate color.  (It was alternately known in our family as “chicken carp”, which just seems weird.)


>  (I think I
> once complained to Jesse that the use to refer to
> people seemed more than merely "joc.”)

Exactly.  Jocular to whom?  I was impressed by the acumen of that passage ("that false elevation of language, a preposterously inflated lexis, deliberately employed to mock”) from Meredith in the 1840s.

LH
>
> In Hawthorne's "Old News I", written probably in
> 1828-1829 and first published in 1835, he uses "sable" twice:
>
> "There was a coachmaker at this period, one John
> Lucas, who seems to have gained the chief of his
> living by letting out a sable coach to funerals."
>
> "The sable inmates of the mansion were not
> excluded from the domestic affections: in
> families of middling rank, they had their places
> at the board; and when the circle closed round
> the evening hearth, its blaze glowed on their
> dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children."
>
> Joel
>
> At 7/21/2011 12:10 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>> On Jul 21, 2011, at 10:39 AM, George Thompson wrote:
>>
>> > ...
>> > *Breach of the Marriage Promise*. -- A
>> gentleman from Ulster county, who was
>> > present at the trial of the sable gentry
>>
>> Talk about your euphemistic avoidance—"the
>> sable  gentry”.  Apparently this was not
>> uncommonly used at the time (judging from Google
>>
>> OED has this for adjectival “sable":
>>
>> 2. gen. Black. Chiefly poet. and rhetorical.
>> a. Of material objects, persons, animals, etc.
>> At one time applied joc. to black people.
>>
>> his sable majesty (also his sable excellency):
>> applied to a dark-complexioned potentate; spec. the Devil.
>>
>> Jocular in origin, no doubt, but "sable
>> gentry" seems to have become a
>> conventionalized euphemism with or without
>> intended jocularity.  (The OED lacks any
>> specific entry for this collocation.) There are
>> 187 hits in Google books, most or all
>> exemplifying or citing 19th c. usage.  In one
>> book, Louisa Anne Meredith, who recorded her
>> travels in Tasmania in the 1840s, characterizes
>> "sable gentry" as an instance of "that false
>> elevation of language, a preposterously inflated
>> lexis, deliberately employed to mock".
>>
>> LH
>>
>> > for a breach of the marriage
>> > promise, the report of which originally appeared in this paper, says, that
>> > when the jury awarded ten dollars damages, Cuff darted out of court -- shot
>> > the pit as the fancy call it -- and was pursued through the village by Coon
>> > Crook, the constable, and half the boys, when he was caught and brought
>> > back. Cuff has been admitted to the privileges of the limits at Big
>> > Sopus. *N.Y.
>> > Nat. Adv*.
>> >
>> > A I 4 ∫*c.* to shoot the pit : of a fighting cock, to rush out  of the
>> > cockpit from cowardice. Often *fig.* *Obs.*
>> > 1675    A. Marvell *Let. to Sir H.
>> >
>> Thompson<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/178501?rskey=7roKNU&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
>> > *,   He hath a month ago shot the pitâ•¥he hath thought convenient to passe
>> > over into Holland.
>> > 1681    *Heraclitus
>> >
>> Ridens<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/178501?rskey=7roKNU&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
>> > * 30 Aug. 2/2   Two or three more such
>> stroaks will make them shoot the Pit.
>> > *a*1734    R. North
>> >
>> *Examen<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/178501?rskey=7roKNU&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
>> > * (1740) ii. v. â™—19 327   Which made the whole Party shoot the Pit and
>> > retire, as not caring to be pointed at with ill-favoured Reflections.
>> > --
>> >
>> > GAT
>> >
>> > George A. Thompson
>> > Author of A Documentary History of "The
>> African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
>> > Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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