[Ads-l] toboggan (as a cap), antedating to ca. 1886

Tue Jan 7 21:26:54 UTC 2025

Thanks Bonnie, this all makes sense.  When I mentioned loss of transparency ("toboggan cap” ‘cap worn while tobogganing’ > ’toboggan variety of cap’, licensing subsequent reanalysis of “toboggan” as the name for the cap) I was thinking of cases like “tuition” deriving from orig. “tuition fee” ‘fee for instruction’.  I know there are many other examples of such shifts but I can’t pull them up at the moment.  It’s not that different from “adequation” as in the etymology of “bead” for ’small spherical object' (orig. ‘prayer’) or “horn” for a type of wind instrument (orig. just 'bony protrusion from animal’s head’).  Did Gustav Stern invent that term or just (attempt to) popularize it?

LH 

> On Jan 7, 2025, at 4:14 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake <b.taylorblake at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I do think that there was a bit of tobogganing craze in the Northeast
> and Upper Midwest (and Ontario?) in the mid-1880s, with toboggan hats
> becoming popular winter-wear elsewhere in the country, even in places
> generally deprived of snow. (And some of the things I ran across
> indicate that lightweight knit hats called "toboggans" were also worn
> by babies and women, even when it wasn't cold.)
> 
> BTW, for anyone interested, here are some early examples of toboggans
> worn in the Bronx in the winter of 1888:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleetwood_Park_Racetrack#/media/File:Tobogganing_at_Fleetwood_Park,_1888.jpg.
> (Growing up with the term in the '60s and '70s, I'd always equated the
> toboggan with simple beanies or stocking caps, so the notion that
> these were elongated, with tassels or pom-poms, was new to me.)
> 
> As for formation, I wonder whether we might compare the standalone
> toboggan -- which I think must've derived from "toboggan cap" and
> "toboggan hat" -- with the "boater," which apparently emerged not that
> long before the "toboggan."
> 
> Originally a "boater hat" (or "boaters' hat"; after people who boat),
> then clipped to "boater" and embraced by the non-boating public
> outside the realm of boating.
> 
> Not quite the same, and not a great addressing of polysemy, but it
> occurred to me that there may have been a similar evolution in naming.
> 
> -- Bonnie
> 
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2025 at 1:48 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I remember discovering that usage many decades ago in Wisconsin—the New York and New England toboggan is always sense 3 in the DARE entry reproduced below.  Seems like a weird isogloss, as well as a weird polysemy. Anyone want to speculate on how that happened? Sense #3 is evidently (< OED) from a native term borrowed into English in eastern Canada.  Not sure how we got from there to senses 1 and 2, much less in the southeast.  Maybe (via toboggan cap/scarf) a clothing item worn while tobogganing (in sense 3), then a loss of transparency.
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>> toboggan, n  <https://www.daredictionary.com/view/dare/ID_00059577?rskey=mqtthE&result=2>
>> often toboggan cap , toboggan
>> 
>> 1 often toboggan cap, ~ hat; also aphet boggan, boggin; rarely tobogganing cap: A stocking cap. chiefly South <https://www.daredictionary.com/search?rcode=region.Sth>, South Midland <https://www.daredictionary.com/search?rcode=region.S%20Midl>; also Inland North <https://www.daredictionary.com/search?rcode=region.Inland%20Nth>
>> 2 usu as toboggan scarf: A long winter scarf. esp North <https://www.daredictionary.com/search?rcode=region.Nth>
>> 3 A single bobsled or a double-runner. <https://www.daredictionary.com/view/dare/ID_00015986#ID_00015986>New England <https://www.daredictionary.com/search?rcode=region.NEng>
>> <https://www.daredictionary.com/view/dare/ID_00010689?rskey=mqtthE&result=3>
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 7, 2025, at 12:04 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake <b.taylorblake at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>> 
>>> As a native North Carolinian, I sometimes feel the need to stick up
>>> for the often-mocked "toboggan" as a thing you wear on your head in
>>> winter. This regionalism (Midwest, Southeast) has shown up on the list
>>> before, but I can't find that anyone has gone looking for early
>>> usages.
>>> 
>>> OED has pushed back the standalone "toboggan," with the meaning of a
>>> knit cap (originally with a sort of "tail"), to 1907. (The solitary
>>> "toboggan" for hat was preceded by "toboggan hat" and "toboggan cap.")
>>> 
>>> You'll find some earlier examples below.
>>> 
>>> I should mention, though, that not all of the following are slam-dunks
>>> for standalone "toboggans" as hats. I can't rule out that at least one
>>> or two of these appearances aren't shorthand for "toboggan suits,"
>>> "toboggan costumes," "toboggan jackets," and the like, though I think
>>> that those abbreviations might have been very rare. (Tobogganing seems
>>> to have become a big thing in northern climes in about 1885.)
>>> 
>>> Although predominantly popular in winter, early toboggans (hats) were
>>> all-year things. Babies seem to have been early adopters of toboggans:
>>> millinery shops were selling toboggans (even lace ones) for small
>>> children as early as 1887. At the same time, their mothers were
>>> wearing a style of "crush hat" known as a toboggan in the warmer
>>> months.
>>> 
>>> -- Bonnie
>>> 
>>> ------------------------
>>> 
>>> All the best people down that way are now wearing toboggans. ["Of
>>> Interest to Buffalo Tobogganists," The Buffalo Evening News, 9 January
>>> 1886, page unnumbered, but presumably the third;
>>> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-buffalo-news-wearing-toboggans-hats/162409019/.
>>> Originally published in the Detroit Evening Journal.]
>>> 
>>> A very handsomely decorated team of black horses were attached to a
>>> double cutter and wore little toboggans between their ears, ornamented
>>> with ribbons. ["Elegant Equipages," Daily Globe (Saint Paul,
>>> Minnesota), 5 February 1886, p. 1;
>>> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-saint-paul-globe-toboggans-on-horses/162406262/.]
>>> 
>>> Babies lace toboggans are the latest novelties in the millinery
>>> stores. [Monmouth (Illinois) Review, 29 April 1887, unnumbered page,
>>> but presumably fourth;
>>> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-monmouth-review-babies-lace-toboggan/162446763/.]
>>> 
>>> KNIT GOODS
>>> Toboggans and Hoods in all new designs.
>>> [In an advertisement in The Quincy (Illinois) Herald, 22 December
>>> 1887, p. 8; via newspaperarchive.com.]
>>> 
>>> The plug hat rage has died out altogether and the young bloods are
>>> thinking of wearing toboggans. ["Additional Local," The Journal (Falls
>>> City, Nebraska), 23 December 1887, page unnumbered, but presumably the
>>> eighth; https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-falls-city-journal-toboggan-hat-1/162409319/.]
>>> 
>>> WOULD like the acquaintance of young lady dressed in red, wore
>>> toboggan, who loaned gent opera-glass Sunday afternoon at three
>>> o'clock performance. [Advertisement in The Enquirer (Cincinnati), 13
>>> February 1888, p. 8;
>>> https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-cincinnati-enquirer-toboggan-hat/162406413/.]
>>> 
>>> No one need wear Toboggans or Sunbonnets during the Hot Summer days
>>> when you can buy Straw Hats at 25, 30, 40, 50 & 75 cents each. [In an
>>> advertisement in The Frontier (O'Neill City, Nebraska). The Library of
>>> Congress says that this appeared in the 25 April 1889 issue of that
>>> newspaper; https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010270509/1889-04-25/ed-1/seq-8/.]
>>> 
>>> How that boy suffered! The younger boy, who wore a toboggan and a
>>> melancholy expression, was soon affected in a like manner. ["Chat and
>>> Comment," Indiana (Pennsylvania) County Gazette, 9 December 1891, p.
>>> 4; https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-indiana-gazette-toboggan-hat-129/162407671/.]
> 
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