egress/ingress

[Laurence Horn]

Victor, I'm surprised you got through your whole review of "egress"
(and "ingress") without touching on the classic (and I hope not
apocryphal) tale of how P. T. Barnum would put up a large sign at his
side show declaring "THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!", luring the
suckers...er, customers to walk through the velvet curtains and find
themselves out on the street.

LH

At 4:57 PM -0400 6/12/11, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>A pair of old words (15th century or earlier). A somewhat fancy way of
>saying "enter" and "exit", especially in the context of transportation.
>
>This is sort of the basics... I had always heard it in the context of
>"egress the vehicle" [v]--whatever the vehicle might be--or [point of]
>ingress and egress a highway [n]. The definitions vary somewhat between
>OED, MWOL(11) and AHD(4). Two points [I found interesting] from the OED
>ingress v.: 1) the verb is listed as "now US" (no such comments under
>noun); 2) the second verb definition essentially lists it as an
>expression for entering sexual relations (but expressed somewhat
>differently):
>
>    +2. trans. To enter, invade; spec. 'to go in to' carnally. Obs.
>    a1631    J. Donne To C'tess Bedford on New-yeares Day in Poems
>    (1633) 89   Yet he as hee bounds seas, will fixe your houres,
>    [Which] pleasure, and delight may not ingresse.
>    a1631    J. Donne Progr. Soule xxi, in Poems (1633) 11   Men, till
>    they tooke laws which made freedome lesse, Their daughters, and
>    their sisters did ingresse, Till now unlawfull, therefore ill.
>
>What brought this minor inquiry on was a comment from a [proudly]
>Bostonian airline "hostess" telling the passengers on a JetBlue flight
>how to best "ingress and egress [your] seat".
>
>MWOL and AHD don't list the verb at all (at least, the online editions).
>AHD adds "ingression" for "A going in or entering". Macmillan (online)
>also lists noun only and adds "very formal". In fact, of all the on-line
>dictionaries, only Webster's 1913 (and those citing it) had a definition
>for the verb, aside from the OED. In contrast /every/ dictionary had a
>definition for both noun and verb "egress". This is a somewhat odd
>asymmetry, but it does reflect my experience as I hear "egress" much
>more frequently than "ingress".
>
>The particular usage with respect to the seat did give me a raised
>eyebrow, as I would have expected the verb or the noun to be more
>applicable to the row, the "door", the airport--anything that has an
>entrance and an exit. But seats don't really have an entrance and an
>exit point. So, in my amateur estimate, it's the frequent usage in other
>transportation contexts that prompted this woman to apply
>"ingress/egress" to assigned seats as well. YMMV
>
>     VS-)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org