LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 11.NOV.1999 (03) [E]

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Etymology

Ted Harding wrote:

>In UK English (if not elsewhere) there is a slang verb "to welsh" with a
specialised meaning (of a bookie at a racecourse) to make off with the money
to avoid paying out to winners and, more generally, to cheat or to
deliberately avoid an obligation (especially financial).

>Chambers 20th C English Dictionary gives "origin obscure" for this sense of
"welsh". Maybe it has come to us via a Lowlands connection?

>Be that as it may, I'll bet the majority of UK English, if they think about
it at all, will see "welsh" as derived from our brethren in Wales (whose
"Welsh", according to Chambers, apparently comes from the Anglo-Saxon for
Britons etc., from the name of an ancient Celtic tribe, the "Volcae").

>Where did the pejorative sense (cheat, thief, etc) come in and is there
indeed a connection with some ancient view of the Celts which may have been
held by the Lowlanders of former times?<

I think it may be relevant to the question of origins that "welsh" is only
recorded from 1857 and "welch" from 1867 (Chambers Dictionary of Etymology).

As regards "Volcae", CDE says that "Welsh" and older related forms are "all
from a Celtic name represented also by Latin Volcae an ancient Celtic tribe
in southern Gaul". A common Celtic origin for "Welsh" and "Volcae" seems
more plausible than the Chambers Dictionary idea that OE took from Latin the
word for a tribe living hundreds of miles and centuries away whose connexion
with the Welsh/Britons of their own time would have been unknown to them.
(If both these dictionaries were "true" Chambers productions we should be
denied the difference of opinion.)

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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