Revisiting Peregrine Pickle at present. Smollett, who was a ship’s surgeon in his youth, is a dab hand at nautical terminology, and uses it with gusto whenever Commodore Trunnion, Hatchway and Pipes enter the stage.
The particular term I’m posting about is from this passage:
For my own part, d’ye see, I was none of your Guinea-pigs; I did not rise in the service by parliamenteering interest, or a handsome bitch of a wife. I was not hoisted over the bellies of better men, nor strutted athwart the quarter-deck in a laced doublet and thingumbobs at the wrists. Damn my limbs!
I was taken aback by the usage at first, taking it in the modern sense and not quite seeing how it was apt. OED soon cleared up my confusion. First cite for the modern sense of “.... person or thing used like a guinea-pig as the subject of an experiment.” is 1920, with an earlier 1913 cite from Shaw referenced as developmental.
[1913 G. B. SHAW Quintessence of Ibsenism Now Completed 135 The..folly which sees in the child nothing more than the vivisector sees in a guinea pig: something to experiment on with a view to rearranging the world.] 1920 U. SINCLAIR Brass Check xviii. 102 Say to yourself that Upton Sinclair is a guinea-pig.
Smollett was using the term in an earlier nautical sense:
2. Naut. a. A midshipman in the East Indian service. b. An inefficient seaman.
1747 Adv. Kidnapped Orphan 69 He sent his nephew, at the age of fourteen, on a voyage as a Guinea-pig. 1748 SMOLLETT Rod. Rand. xxiv, A brave fellow as ever crackt bisket; none of your guinea pigs. 1840 MARRYAT Poor Jack xxvi, The midshipmen, or guinea pigs, as they are called. 1867 SMYTH Sailor’s Word-Bk., Guinea-pigs, the younger midshipmen of an Indiaman.
Back now to the story and Gamaliel Pickle’s nuptials. (I do love Smollett!)
BTW I’ve just removed an {em} from a cite. Does anyone know of a font which can cope with the various characters OED uses?
