humble / humble pie

February 3, 2021

3 February 2021

To eat humble pie is to be obliged to apologize for some wrong, to be humiliated. But it is not just a figurative expression, humble pie is a real dish as well, and the figurative expression was originally a play on words, a combination of the real food and the word humble, meaning deferential, submissive, or lowly.

The adjective humble comes into English from the Old French humble, which in turn is from the Latin humilus, meaning low or lowly. The adjective is borrowed into English by the thirteenth century. From a Kentish sermon, c. 1275:

Nu lordinges ure lord god almichti. þat hwylem in one stede. and ine one time flesliche makede of watere wyn; yet habbeþ manitime maked of watere wyn; gostliche. wanne þurch his grace maked of þo euele manne good man. of þe orgeilus umble. of þe lechur chaste. of the niþinge large. and of alle oþre folies; so ha maket of the watere wyn. þis his si signefiance of þe miracle.
(Now gentlemen, our lord God almighty, that while in one place and at one time physically made wine out of water, yet he has many times spiritually made wine out of water, when through his grace he makes of the evil man a good man, of the arrogant humble, of the lecher chaste, of the miser generous, and of all other sins, so he makes win out of the water. This is the significance of the miracle.)

The food sense of humble has its origin in the Latin lumbus, meaning loin, as in a loin of beef or pork. In Old French, this became nombles (the < l > becoming an < n > through what linguists call dissimilation). And in the Norman dialect, there was a semantic shift, and nombles came to mean not the loin, but rather the offal, the organ meat.

This sense was borrowed into English in the thirteenth century from Anglo-Norman French. An early use appears in the romance Sir Tristrem, written sometime before 1300 (the earliest manuscript version is from c. 1330) in a passage describing the dressing of an animal, probably a deer, that had been killed in a hunt:

The spaude was the first brede;
The erber dight he yare.
To the stifles he yede
And even ato hem schare;
He right al the rede,
The wombe oway he bare,
The noubles he gaf to mede.
(The shoulder was the first cut of meat;
He readily prepared the first stomach.
To the stifles he went
And cut them in two evenly;
He set out the fourth stomach,
The bowels he bore away,
The noubles he gave as a reward.)

Numbles was quickly reanalyzed and became umbles—a numbles became an umbles. And in some English dialects an < h > was inserted at the beginning to become humbles. Thus we have Robert Greene’s play The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, which contains this exchange between two women:

Lacy. What haue you fit for breakefast? we haue hied and posted all this night to Freiingfield.
Margret. Butter and cheese, and humbls of a Deere,
Such as poore Keepers haue within their Lodge.

So, humble pie is literally a meat pie made with organ meat, like kidney pie. The literal sense appears in the 8 July 1663 entry in Samuel Pepys’s Diary:

Going in, I stepped to Sir W. Batten and there stayed and talked with him, my Lady being in the country, and sent for some lobsters; and Mrs. Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinary good, and afterward some spirits of her making (in which she hath great judgment), very good; and so home, merry with this night's refreshment.

Pepys’s manuscript reads humble-by.

But the figurative sense doesn’t appear until the early nineteenth century. As mentioned, that’s a play on words, combining the offal sense with that of the low state. The earliest use of the figurative sense that I have found is from Henry Whitfield’s 1804 novel A Picture from Life: or, the History of Emma Tankerville and Sir Henry Moreton:

The conversation taking a political turn, Mr. Snug argued on the folly of the Cussicans menaces. He hoped ere long the main villain would be obliged to eat humble pie.

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Sources:

Greene, Robert. The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay. London: Edward White, 1594, sig. H4.

Hall, Joseph, ed. “Kentish Sermons.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 217–18. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 471. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lupack, Alan, ed. “Sir Tristrem, Part I.” Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994, lines 485–91. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. noumbles, n., humble, adj.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. humble pie, n., umbles, n., numbles, n., humble, n.2., humble, adj.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 6 of 10. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1971, 8 July 1663, 221.

Whitfield, Henry. A Picture from Life: or, the History of Emma Tankerville and Sir Henry Moreton, vol. 2 of 2. London: S. Highley, 1804, 156. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Groundhog Day

February 2, 2021

2 February 2021

Groundhog Day is a North American tradition that holds that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on 2 February and sees its shadow, winter will last another six weeks. It appears to be rooted in an older tradition that clear weather on the festival of Candlemas, which is 2 February, bodes a long winter. In Northern Europe, the prognosticating animal is usually a badger, but when the Amish brought the tradition to North America, the predictive powers were transferred to the local groundhog. Also known as a woodchuck, Marmota monax is a large ground squirrel that ranges across much of the Eastern and Midwestern United States, across Canada, and into Alaska. Several communities have Groundhog Day celebrations with “official” animal prognosticators, but by far the most famous is that of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and its rodent seer, Phil.

Official celebrations in Punxsutawney began in the 1880s, but the name Phil only dates to 1961. The name is possibly a reference to Prince Philip, husband to Queen Elizabeth II. In 1953, Punxsutawney sent two groundhogs, named Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (the coronation had just occurred) to the Los Angeles Zoo. But the state of California declared them agricultural pests and had them destroyed as a potential invasive species. Residents of Punxsutawney were insulted. In 1961 the name Phil appears, possibly in homage to the deceased predecessor, although this origin is speculative.

But in the last few decades, a figurative meaning of Groundhog Day has arisen, that of an event or sequence of events that keeps repeating. This sense arose out of the 1993 Hollywood comedy of that name, directed by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray. In the movie, Murray plays a selfish and self-absorbed TV weatherman sent to Punxsutawney to report on the Groundhog Day festivities. But he finds himself in a cycle of ever-repeating Groundhog Days, which only ends when he learns to stop thinking only about himself and start working for the benefit of others.

The earliest known reference to Groundhog Day is in an 1840 diary entry by a James L. Morris of Morgantown, Pennsylvania. It appears in publication by 9 February 1857, when the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser picked up a story that had run in the Cumberland Telegraph:

Ground Hog Day
Monday, the 2d inst., was what is known this region as the “ground hog day.” There exists a sort of half superstitious belief that this little animal comes forth from his burrow on the 2nd of February, and that if he sees his shadow, he goes back again remans six weeks longer, during which time old winter continues to keep everything bound up in his icy fetters. If that be true we shall certainly have a long winter. Monday was a beautiful day, the sun shining bright all day long.—Cumberland Telegraph.

And the Wisconsin Farmer of 1 February 1862 has this to say about it:

Ground Hog Day.—February 2d was the celebrated "ground hog day," which, according to legend, fixes the question of an early or late Spring. The story goes that on that day the ground hog—or, as the Yankees call it, woodchuck—leaves his winter quarters and sallies forth to snuff the air. If there is no sun to show him his shadow, he goes cautiously about, and will even venture to dig up a few roots, to try the hardness of the soil as well as to tickle his palate a little, after his long hibernation. But in doing this, should a glimmering of sunshine strike him sufficiently strong to mark his shadow on the ground, he hies at once to his hole, there to hibernate for six weeks—as instinct teaches him that winter will certainly linger that much longer. Should there be no patches of sunshine to disturb Mr. Woodchuck he remains out, knowing that the reign of Jack Frost will speedily terminate.

Groundhog Day remained simply the name of the tradition until 12 February 1993, when the movie of that title premiered. Within a week, the phrase was being used to refer to repeating events or unchanging conditions, albeit at first with explanatory reference to the movie. From the Hartford Courant of 17 February 1993:

Maybe it is coincidence, but since Groundhog Day, our weather pattern seems to be in a holding pattern.
In the new movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray is forced to live the February day over and over again, until he gets it right.
Our weather seems to be doing the same, since Punxsutawney Phil returned to his burrow, the weather pattern has been on hold.

But by the following year, Groundhog Day was being deployed in this figurative sense. The Los Angeles Times of 24 July 1994 quotes a government official using it to describe the troubles of the Clinton Administration, although the Times reporter feels compelled to add an explanatory mention of the movie:

A year ago, during Clinton’s first, disastrous spring, “there was a feeling of potential free fall. Nobody knew if this presidency could pull it out. After victories on the budget, NAFTA, there was a sense we could make things work. Now there’s frustration that we find ourselves once again in a difficult situation. It’s like ‘Why are we back in this place again?’” the official said. “It’s like Groundhog Day,’” the official added, referring to the movie in which the main character finds himself trapped in a time warp, constantly repeating the same day.

But a few months later, on 20 November 1994, the British newspaper The Observer deployed the figurative sense without feeling the need to explain it to its readers, indicating that the phrase had fully entered the public’s vocabulary, even in a country where the original Groundhog Day celebrations have no cultural resonance:

He nearly scored another a minute later, only to be denied by a fine Lukic save. Instead, Leeds scored, with Wallace’s cross being headed in at the far post by Deane.
All in all, a good day at the office for Mr Wilkins. If, like Groundhog Day, it could be repeated every time, he might have even less hair left, but he would be a happy man.

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Sources:

Buckley, Will. “Ray On the Way.” The Observer, 20 November 1994, 66. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

Goldstein, Mel. “We Seem Stuck, like Bill Murray in ‘Groundhog Day.’” Hartford Courant (Connecticut), 17 February 1993, B12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Ground Hog Day.” Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, 9 February 1857, 2. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Kruesi, Margaret. “Groundhog Day. By Don Yoder. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2003” (review). Journal of American Folklore, 120.477, Summer 2007, 367. JSTOR.

Lauter, David. “White House Awaiting Panetta’s Prescription.” Los Angeles Times, 24 July 1994, A24. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, draft additions September 2018, s.v. ground-hog, n.

Reilly, Lucas and Austin Thompson. “The Curious (and Possibly Murderous) Origins of Punxsutawney Phil’s Name.” Mental Floss, 1 February 2019, updated 30 January 2020.

The Wisconsin Farmer, 14.2, 1 February 1862, 66. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Still from Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, dir., Columbia Pictures, 1993. Fair use of a single frame to illustrate the topic under discussion.

huckleberry

February 1, 2021

Clip from the 1993 movie Tombstone in which Doc Holliday (played by Val Kilmer) tells Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn), "I'm your huckleberry" (20-sec)

1 February 2021

The 1993 movie Tombstone has a line when the character of Doc Holliday, played by actor Val Kilmer, tells Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Biehn, a man he is about to kill, “I’m your huckleberry.” The line is often repeated by fans of the film, perhaps because it makes little sense to a twentieth or twenty-first century audience. But the line is historically accurate. It is something the real Doc Holliday might have said.

Huckleberry is a name given to several North American plants in the genera Vaccinium and Gaylussacia, including the blueberry. The name probably comes from the English dialectal hurtleberry or whortleberry, a name for the bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus. This literal sense of the word dates to at least 1670, when it appears in Daniel Denton’s A Brief Description of New York, in a passage describing the plant life of Long Island:

The Fruits natural to the Island, are Mulberries, Posimons, Grapes great and small, Huckelberries, Cramberries, Plums of several sorts, Rosberries and Strawberries, of which last is such abundance in June, that the Fields and Woods are died red: Which the Countrey-people perceiving, instantly arm themselves with bottles of Wine, Cream, and Sugar, and in stead of a Coat of Male, every one takes a Female upon his Horse behind him, and so rushing violently into the fields, never leave till they have disrob'd them of their red colours, and turned them into the old habit.

Huckleberry growing near Golden, British Columbia; blue berries growing on a green-leaved plant

Several slang senses of huckleberry appear during the nineteenth century. It could mean a small amount or degree, probably from the small size of the berry. From James Kirke Paulding’s 1832 novel Westward Ho!:

For my part, stranger, I can't fetch my breath anywhere except in all out-doors, and had sooner lay down on a bed of leaves with a sky blanket, than sleep on one of your hard feather-beds, that pretty nigh break a man's bones. I wish I may be hoppled all my life to come, if I didn't once get within a huckleberry of being smothered to death in one of them beds with curtains all round 'em. Catch me there agin, and I'll give you leave to curry-comb me, anyhow.

It also commonly appears in the comparative phrase a huckleberry to/over a persimmon, again, probably relating the small size of the huckleberry to the much larger persimmon. Again from Paulding’s book:

We must make a straight wake behind us; for if the horn gets broadside to the current, I wouldn't risk a huckleberry to a persimmon that we don't every soul get treed, and sink to the bottom like gone suckers.

By the 1860s, huckleberry was being used to refer one’s sweetheart or friend, or simply to someone who is useful, the right person for the job. This sense probably arises out of the berry’s sweet and desirable taste. The phrase I’m your huckleberry is recorded in the 1862 papers of Val C. Giles, a soldier in the Confederate Army in reference to two gamblers cheating with loaded dice:

I’ll fling you a dose of high die for enough of Old Culpepper to treat this crowd.”
“All right,” said Mr. Bailey, “I’m your huckleberry.”
Bailey and Brownley kept loaded dice.

And it is used a few years later in Henri Wilkins 1879 play The Coming Man. In this scene, a doctor has instructed his servant Hank to not admit Prosey Greene, a suitor for hand of the doctor’s daughter, into the house:

P. G. Will nothing tempt you to forsake the wrong and espouse the right cause? Here is positive evidence that I am your friend, (shows money) Will you be mine and aid me in the consumation [sic] of my whole life's happiness?
Hank. (taking money) That kind of evidence will go farther towards convincing this jury than all the lawyer's learning, or poet's nonsense in the United States, (puts money in pocket) Now, I'm your huckleberry. Heave ahead and be lively, before the old man returns.

In the play, Hank is a Black man, but the phrase is not peculiar to Black speech.

So, the line in the 1993 movie is appropriate speech for a dramatization of events of 1881–82. We, of course, don’t know if Doc Holliday ever actually uttered those words (he does so twice in the movie, addressing Johnny Ringo both times), but it is something he very well may have said. The movie also has Holliday killing Ringo. Historically, Ringo was found shot in the head outside Tombstone, Arizona in 1882, and his killer was never identified. Ringo had been a suspect in the killing of Morgan Earp, and either Holliday or Wyatt Earp may very well have killed him in revenge. Or someone else may have done it. Ringo was not exactly lacking for enemies.

Huckleberry could also be used to refer to a child or to a person of little consequence. A chapter in Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Men is titled Huckleberries and is about two children who go berry picking and become lost. The title refers not only to the berries to be picked, but it also alludes to the two children, huckleberries of a different kind, although the text does not directly use huckleberry in any but the literal sense.

Mark Twain used this sense of the word at least twice in his writing. Most famously, of course, is in the name of Huckleberry Finn (1884), so called because he is the Finn boy, as opposed to his father. But also, because the term could be bestowed affectionately on a friend or sweetheart, the name would evoke the readers’ sympathies.

It also appears in the 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in the sense of a person of no consequence:

Expedition No. 3 will start adout the first of next mgnth on a search f8r Sir Sagramour le Desirous. It is in comand of the renowned Knight of the Red Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde, who is compete9t. intelligent, courteous, and in every mav a brick, and furtHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Saracen, who is no huckleberry himself. This is no pic-nic, these boys mean busine&s.

The typos here are deliberate; Twain is evoking the experience of reading “Arkansas journalism” of the late nineteenth century

The slang senses of huckleberry continued to be used into the twentieth century, but by mid century had faded from use. The literal sense, referring to the actual berry, is still in common use.

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Sources:

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys. Boston, Roberts Bros., 1871. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Denton, Daniel. A Brief Description of New York. London: John Hancock, 1670, 3–4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Giles, Valerius Cincinnatus. Rags and Hope, the Recollections of Val. C. Giles, For Years with Hood’s Brigade, Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861–65. Mary Lasswell, ed. New York: Coward-McCann, 1961, 56.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. huckleberry, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. huckleberry, n.

Paulding, James Kirke. Westward Ho!, vol. 1 of 2. New York: J. and J. Harper, 1832, 182, 80. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Harper and Bros., 1889, 247. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wilkins, Henri. The Coming Man, A Farce in One Act. Clyde, Ohio: A.D. Ames, 1879, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Bruno Karklis, 2018, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Video credit: George P. Cosmatos, dir. Tombstone. Hollywood Pictures, 1993. Fair use of a 20-second clip to illustrate the topic under discussion.

hocus-pocus

January 30, 2021

31 January 2021

Hocus pocus is a traditional utterance of stage magicians upon performing a trick. It’s part of their patter to distract the audience to prevent them from noticing the sleight-of-hand trick being performing. It’s pseudo-Latin, just nonsense syllables. Its origin is in the early years of the seventeenth century and the court of King James I of England where Hocus Pocus was the stage name of William Vincent, one of the king’s jugglers and magicians (with a side-job as a grifter and swindler).

The phrase hocus pocus appears as early as 1621 in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Augures, in which a character describes a masque within the masque as:

O Sir, all de better, vor an Antick-masque, de more absurd it be, and vrom de purpose, it be euer all de better. If it goe from de nature of de ting, it is de more art, for dere is Art, and dere is Nature; you shall see. Hochos-pochos. Fabros Palabros.

The earliest known mention of the magician is by Anglican priest John Gee in a 1624 anti-Catholic tract. The “they” in the passage is a reference to Jesuits:

Another matter more troubled my curiositie, where and of what Master they learned these trickes of legerdemaine. I alwayes thought they had their rudiments from some iugling Hocas Pocas in a quart pot.

The next year, an account from 18 November 1625 regarding an allegation of fraud identifies Vincent as Hocus Pocus:

William Vincent, alias Hocus Spocus, of London, the Kinge's Majestie's servant, to use his faculty of feales[?] &c, saith he was in company with the said Francis Lane and playd at [ ] for vjd., and soe till Hocus Spocus lost iijs. to Francis Lane, and said he would be halves with him, and would have had him fourth of the roome at Spencer's house into a private place.

Vincent was quite famous in his day. Playwright Ben Jonson mentions him in his 1631 play The Staple of News:

That was the old way, Gossip, when Iniquity came in like Hokos Pokos, in a Iuglers ierkin, with false skirts, like the Knaue of Clubs! but now they are attir'd like men and women o' the time, the Vices, male and female!

A book of magic tricks titled Hocus Pocus Junior was published in 1634 and went through several editions. The frontispiece of the book, seen here, shows a magician uttering the words hocus pocus as part of an incantation. Scholar of theater Philip Butterworth has argued that Vincent was the author of the book, but the evidence of authorship Butterworth presents is not definitive. In any case, the title is clearly a reference to Vincent, with the book being junior to the man’s senior.

And a few years before that, Thomas Randolph includes this bit of dialogue in his 1632 play The Jealous Lovers. The play was performed for King Charles I, so it would seem that by this date the magician’s patter of hocus pocus was well known, at least among the court:

I think Cupid be turn'd jugler. Here's nothing but Hocas pocas, Praestò be gon, Come again Jack; and such feats of activitie.

And several decades later, physician Thomas Ady gives a fuller account of Vincent’s patter in his 1655 book A Candle in the Dark, an attempt to disprove there is such a thing as witchcraft. The book was used, unsuccessfully, by the defense during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692–93. The mention of hocus pocus comes in a passage discussing different types of magic

The first is profitably seen in our common Juglers, that go up and down to play their Tricks in Fayrs and Markets, I will speak of one man more excelling in that craft than others, that went about in King Iames his time, and long since, who called himself, The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus, and so was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currantly without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered, nor the Imposture discerned.

The words hocus pocus, tontus talontus are nonsense, but vade celeriter jubeo is I command you go quickly.

It is sometimes said that hocus pocus is a corruption of the Latin mass in particular the sentence, accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes: hoc est enim corpus meum (take and eat, all of you, for this is my body). This is unlikely. While it’s certainly possible that hoc est corpus could be misheard as hocus pocus by someone who does not know Latin, the intervening enim militates against this, and the rest of the patter as given by Ady doesn’t match the words in the mass either.

This particular idea got its start, or at least was popularized, by Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, who in 1684 penned an anti-Catholic tract suggesting the magic phrase was a mockery of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Presumably by this date, memory of Vincent and his stage name had faded from popular memory:

And in all probability those common jugling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the Priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation. Into such contempt by this foolish Doctrine and pretended Miracle of theirs have they brought the most sacred and venerable Mystery of our Religion.

So, that’s it. Hocus pocus comes from the stage name of the most famous magician you’ve never heard of.

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Sources:

Ady, Thomas. A Candle in the Dark. London: Robert Ibbitson, 1655, 29. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Butterworth, Philip. “Hocus Pocus Junior: Further Confirmation of its Author.” Theatre Notebook, 69.3, 2014, 130–35.

Gee, John. New Shreds of the Old Snare. London: J. Dawson for Robert Mylbourne, 1624, 21. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Guilding, John Melville, ed. Reading Records: Diary of the Corporation, vol. 2 of 4.. London: James Parker, 1895, 264. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Jonson, Ben. The Masque of Augeres. London: 1621, sig. B.r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. The Staple of News (1631). In The Works of Benjamin Jonson, vol. 2 of 3. London: Richard Meighen, 1640, second intermeane after the act 2, 35. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hocus-pocus, n., adj. and adv.

Randolph, Thomas. The Jealous Lovers. Cambridge: Thomas and John Buck, 1632, 2.5, 25. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Tillotson, John. A Discourse Against Transubstantiation. London: M. Flesher for Brabazon Aylmer, 1684, 34. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: St. John’s College, Cambridge. Public domain in the United States as a mechanical reproduction of a work that was produced before 1925.

bubble (investments)

January 29, 2021

A GameStop store in Griffin, Georgia, 2014. In January 2021 GameStop stock was a speculative bubble.

29 January 2021

A stock or investment bubble is when the price of a stock, commodity, or other investment vehicle rises sharply because of speculation and then falls precipitously—inevitably because its price has become completely divorced from its actual value. The metaphor underlying the term is that of a soap bubble that expands until it pops.

The word bubble, referring to a literal membrane of liquid that encloses a gas, dates to the fourteenth century. Like its cousins blub, blubber, and burble, it is echoic, imitating the sound bubbles make when popped. An early appearance is in a recipe for making blue ink (azure) written sometime before 1350:

Yef thin asure is fin, tac gumme arabuk inoh, ant cast into a standys with cler watur, vorte hit beo imolten. Ant seththe cast therof into thin asure, ant sture ham togedere. Ant yef ther beth bobeles theron, tac a lutel erewax, ant pute therin, ant thenne writ.
(If your azure is pure, take enough gum arabic and put it into a stand with clear water until it is molten. And then cast some of this into your azure and stir them together. And if there are bubbles in it, take a little earwax, and put it in, and then write.)

But the investment sense took a few centuries to develop. The Oxford English Dictionary divides the investment usage into two senses, that of a fraudulent investment and a later sense of a rise in price due to irrational exuberance rather than deceit. But in practice it is often difficult to parse these two apart, and what caused the bubble, fraud or wild-eyed hopes, doesn’t affect the trajectory or effects of the bubble; they are the same either way.

The 1699 slang Dictionary of the Canting Crew records a sense of bubble to mean a con man’s mark:

Bub, or Bubble, c. one that is Cheated; also an Easy, Soft Fellow.

This sense probably comes from the idea of the mark being soft, easily punctured. It is not the same thing as the investment sense, but since that sense is recorded the next year, this slang sense probably had an influence on the latter.

In his 1700 book Labour in Vain, satirist Ned Ward includes an imagined dialogue between himself and his printer that is an early use of bubble to mean a speculative investment:

A DIALOGUE Between the AUTHOR AND THE PRINTER.
Printer. What Title do you design to give this Book?
Author. Labour in Vain: Or, What Signifies Little or Nothing.
Printer. Then I'm like to make a very hopeful Bargain this Morning; and grow Rich like a Jacobite, that would part with his Property, for a Speculative Bubble.

The first actual investment bubble was the South Sea Bubble of 1720. The South Sea Company, a joint-stock company founded in London in 1711 acquired a monopoly on British trade in slaves from Africa to South America and the South Pacific. Leaving aside the ethical considerations of buying and selling human beings, since Spain controlled South America and Britain was at war with Spain at the time, the chances of reaping profit from such trade were slim to none. Yet, the price of the company’s stock rose sharply, largely due to the company trading in its own stock and giving loans to people to buy shares, all of which drove the stock’s price up before it suddenly came crashing down in 1720.

Ned Ward, again, was one of the first to use bubble in this new sense in his 1720 The Delights of the Bottle, a poem about failed investors seeking solace in booze while creditors pounded at their doors:

When tir’d with intricate Affairs,
Or punish’d with inviduous Cares;
When Disappointment gives us trouble,
In South-Sea, or some other Bubble;
When Duns, by their impatient canting,
Perplex us, cause the Money’s wanting;
When teas’d at Home by Nuptial Dowdy,
Too Fond, too Noisy, or too Moody;
Whither can Man repair to find
Relief, when thus disturb’d in Mind.

The 1720 published version of Ward’s poem also included the lyrics to a song titled “South-Sea Ballad, or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange-Alley Bubbles.”

Since then, there have been many speculative bubbles, the most famous ones in recent years being the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and 2000 and the real estate bubble that burst in 2008.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2018, s.v. bubble, n. and adj.

Middle English Dictionary, November 2019, s.v. bobel, n.

A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew. London: W. Hawes, 1699, 1. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Vorte Temprene Asure.” The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, vol. 2 of 3. Susanna Greer Fein, ed. U of Rochester TEAMS Middle English Text Series, 2014. London, British Library, MS Harley 2252, fol. 52v.

Ward, Edward (Ned). The Delights of the Bottle. London: Sam Briscoe, 1720, 4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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