shell-bark

[Joel S. Berson]

"Shell-bark" is in the OED from 1769, s.v. "shell, n.", as "short for
shell-bark hickory (occas. shell-bark walnut), a North American tree,
Carya (formerly Juglans) ovata, having a rough shaggy bark consisting
of long narrow plates loosely adhering by the middle; also C.
laciniosa (Thick Shell-bark); also, the nut produced by one of these
trees."  An intriguing and puzzling figurative extension.  Any
relationship to Old Hickory, prominent at around the same time?

The "Forcible Argument" is in the Morning News (New London), 1844
Nov. 15 (EAN).  "Hoosier" became "hosier", there are some changes in
pronouns, and instead of "and that I'll be squatawa'd if I'll stand
it anyhow" the Morning News has the more understandable (?) "and that
I'll stand any how".

Joel

At 2/6/2012 09:51 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>      The Forcible Argument. -- "Gentlemen of the jury," said a hoosier
>lawyer, addressing a real shell-bark jury, "I say that ere magnanimous sun
>shines in the heavens, though you can't see it, kase it's behind a cloud;
>but you know it, though I can't prove it; so my client, who rises airly and
>hunts coons like an honest man, has a good case, though he can't
>prove it.  Now
>if you believe what I tell you a bout the sun, you are bound on your bible
>oaths to believe what I tell you about my client's case, and if you don't
>then you call me a liar, and that I'll be squatawa'd if I'll stand it
>anyhow; so if you don't want to swear false and have no trouble, you'd
>better give us our case."
>
>      New-York Daily Express, August 11, 1837, p. 2, col. 5
>
>
>"Shell-bark" seems not to be in the OED; I think it is in DARE.
>"Hoosier" is in the OED from 1826, but note the typo in the quotation:
>1826    in *Chicago
>Tribune<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/88346?rskey=rFElqc&result=1&isAdvanced=true>
>* (1949) 2 June 20/3   The Indiana hoosiers that came out last fall is
>settled from 2 to 4 milds of us.
>"squatawa'd" --- ???
>
>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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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org