"sable" = "black" (person)

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/2/2011 09:25 PM, you wrote:
>OTOH, "sable" is regarded as pretty cool, very likely because of its
>being associated with the expensive animal fur and/or with Point du
>Sable (in't it the French word for "sand," as it occurs in that name,

"Sable" -- as adjective -- was used to denote blacks in the 19th
century.  (As the OED notes, hesitatingly about the past and perhaps
somewhat out of date with the present (sealskin?),  "some difficulty
is presented by the fact that the fur of the sable, as now known, is
not black but brown.  Some have conjectured that it may have been
customary to dye sable-fur black (as is now often done with
sealskin), perhaps in order to heighten its contrast with ermine,
with which it was often worn. ")

The OED has for the adj. "2. gen. Black. Chiefly poet. and
rhetorical.  a. Of material objects, persons, animals, etc. At one
time applied joc. to black people."  (But I wonder if jocular is
really accurate.)  Hawthorne used it in "Sunday at Home:" --
observing out of his attic window people coming to church, he writes
of three "here, with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable
ladies and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear, the minister,
who softens his severe visage, and bestows a kind word on each."  The
OED has one quotation from 1815 ("sable archbishop"), another from
1890 ("sable crowd").

Joel

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