[Ads-l] Antedating of "Great Game"

[Laurence Horn]

That could well be, but my initial point was that introducing the concept of a free-for-all among (some of) the great powers of Europe for dominance over the region (whether Southwest Asia, Central Asia, or the Indian subcontinent and adjacent areas) by suggesting that you (sc., those powers) “now have a great game on your hands” does *not* presuppose an established referential connection between “great game” and that political and military contest that since 1841 has been referred to as the Great Game (upper-cased or not).  Compare the situation in which the sub-assistant to the dynastic ruler of the Chinese emperor contemplates the horizon and inscribes a journal entry “This would an excellent site for a great wall”.  I assume this would, if confirmed, appear in square brackets within a putative OED entry for Great Wall.  (I see that there’s actually no entry for Great Wall, but only one for Chinese Wall, so mutatis mutandis.)

LH

> On Jun 24, 2024, at 3:13 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> But the geopolitics of Central Asia WAS the geopolitics of India at the
> beginning of the 19th century.
> DanG
> 
> 
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2024 at 8:57 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Since the context of the 1804 citation is the geopolitics of India rather
>> than the geopolitics of Central Asia, Larry is probably correct that the
>> 1804 citation should be placed in square brackets.
>> 
>> Fred Shapiro
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
>> Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2024 8:08 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Great Game"
>> 
>>> On Jun 23, 2024, at 5:32 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Great Game (OED 1841)
>>> 
>>> 1804 Arthur Wellesley _Letter to Colonel Murray_ 2 May in _The
>> Dispatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington_ (1837) 3: 297-8
>>> 
>>> You now have a great game on your hands.
>>> 
>>> Fred Shapiro
>>> 
>> Should this be bracketed? I’m wondering about the context of “a great
>> game” rather than one in which “the great game” (or “the Great Game”)
>> clearly involves the presupposition that it refers to the skirmishes about
>> the major powers over control of Southwest Asia…
>> 
>> LH
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