Hobson's choice

Charles C Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Sat Jul 6 19:06:00 UTC 2013


I suspect a (labored) pun is in play:  Hobson's job description, in addition to assigner of horses from the livery stable to students, was "carrier."  He carried the mail between Cambridge and London.  Some of the epitaphs refer to him as "Hobson the Carrier."

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Joel S. Berson [Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2013 2:14 PM-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 7/5/2013 08:11 PM, Dave Wilton wrote:
>EEBO has a cite of "Hobson's choise" from 1659.
>
>Anon, "A Word to Purpose: Or, A Parthian Dart," 1659, n.p.
>
>pp. 13-14:
>
>"But is it not meant a Free State, that every one shall be free to do that
>which is good in his own eyes, or that every one shall be free to do what he
>hath power enough to do, or that every one shall be free in Hobson's choise,
>to take, enjoy, or have what the Army will suffer us to take, enjoy, or
>have, or nothing? or Free in paying the Souldiers, or Free to doe what the
>Army would have us."
>
>
>And yes, that epitaph does appear to reference his letting out only one
>horse at a time, expressing irony that six horses are pulling his coffin.

At first, I thought that six "carriers" -- coffin bearers, humans --
would be unlikely to be compared to the one horse of Hobson.  But
then I remembered that the verb "carry" once meant "convey,
transport" -- so the six "carriers" are likely the horses, as Dave suggests.

Joel

>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>ADSGarson O'Toole
>Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 4:08 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Hobson's choice
>
>I meant to say: OED has a citation for the phrase Hobson's choice in
>1660 and that seems to be the earliest currently known. ...
>
>On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 3:57 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole
><adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> > OED has a citation from Hobson's choice in 1660 and that seems to be
> > the earliest currently known. Back on 2009 Fred sent a message to the
> > ADS list about the term when he was searching Early English Books
> > Online. The 1660 cite was the earliest cite in EEBO in 2009. Has
> > anyone searched EEBO or other appropriate databases recently?
> >
> > I was asked to explore this term and have a question for list members.
> > The book below contained several epitaphs for "Hobson the Carrier".
> > Further below is one epitaph. Do you think this epitaph might refer to
> > the choice of a single horse (or carrier) that was offered by Hobson?
> > Does the phrase "Six Carriers" refer to the group carrying a coffin
> > (i.e., pallbearers, though the term was no yet in use, apparently)?
> > Alternatively, could it refer to a team of horses?
> >
> > Year: 1640
> > Title: Witts recreations: Selected from the finest Fancies of Moderne
> > Muses: With A Thousand out Landish Proverbs
> > Author: George Herbert; William Marshall
> > Publisher: London : Printed by R[ichard] H[odgkinson and Thomas Paine]
> > for Humphry Blunden at the Castle in Corn-hill (The above
> > bibliographic data is from WorldCat)
> >
> > http://books.google.com/books?id=j7_bpWjze40C&q=carriage
> >
> > [Begin excerpt]
> > He that such carriage store, was wont to have, Is carried now himselfe
> > unto his grave:
> > O strange! he that in life ne're made but one, Six Carriers makes, now
> > he is dead and gone.
> > [End excerpt]
> >
> > Garson

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