[Ads-l] an early "high fluting" (1838)

[George Thompson]

I'm struck by the noun "wholesome" in the sentence "To be sure, you say
Polly's a nice girl, and so she is, and I guess it wouldn't be good for
anybody's wholesome, to gainsay it."

The OED has only one sense for "wholesome" as a noun, supported by three
quotations.

Wholesome things.  In first quot. in a canting use (? suggested by fulsome).

1738  Swift Compl. Coll. Genteel Conversat. 158   Bring me a Dram after my
Goose; 'tis very good for the Wholsoms.

It seems to me that in both the sentence from Swift and the one from
Solomon Corncob the word "wholesome" could be replaced by "well-being" but
not by "wholesome things".  The second and third quotation in the OED
support its definition of "Wholesome things".

GAT

On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 8:53 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:

> From the Crib of Solomon Corncob, Buttermilk Hill.
>
> Odds, flour barrels, and meal bags! Mr. Editor! What's got into you...to
> be writing and printing such nonsense about Polly and me! I did'nt
> altogether like it, to have Polly's name figuring about in the newspapers,
> without my leave. To be sure, you say Polly's a nice girl, and so she is,
> and I guess it wouldn't be good for anybody's wholesome, to gainsay it;
> but, Sir, if Polly's name is to be in the paper, I don't know why it may
> not be in poetry, as well as Corinna and Jemima and the other high fluting
> names you have rhymed off on your first page....JACK POOR MOUSE
>
>
> Hudson River Chronicle [via AmHisN] 08-28-1838 v.1 issue 45 p.3 col. 2
> Ossining, NY.
>
>
> Stephen Goranson
>
> http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org