Q: "Whale [and ghost printer]" in 1707?

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Here is a layperson's guess: In the context a whale printer might be a
printer of remarkable and/or improbable tales.

The OED has a relevant slang sense, but it is attached to the full
phrase "very like a whale" used by Shakespeare and later used
allusively. There is also the extraordinary Biblical tale of Jonah and
the whale.


[Begin excerpt]
whale, n.
5. Allusive, proverbial, transf., and fig. uses of sense 1.

a. Prov. phr. (to throw out) a tub to the whale : see tub n.1 9b
very like a whale (after Shakespeare Hamlet iii. ii. 398): see quot.
1859.

1859   J. C. Hotten Dict. Slang 115   Very like a whale, said of
anything that is very improbable.
[End excerpt]

Here is a link to a reprint of the passage, I think:

http://bit.ly/1qe0Qs7

http://books.google.com/books?id=d5UTAAAAQAAJ&q=%22whale+and+ghost%22#v=snippet&

Garson


On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Q:  "Whale [and ghost printer]" in 1707?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> What is "whale" in "Jerry Scandal, Whale and Ghost Printer in
> White-Friars, had plagued the Town above Ten Years with Apparitions,
> Murders, Catechisms, and the like Stuff"?  1707, "Works of Thomas Brown".
>
> Joel
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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