hustings

February 9, 2021

9 February 2021

The hustings is an odd phrase that one often hears in political commentary. The hustings are the places on the campaign trail where a candidate addresses the public. To speakers of present-day English, the word has no obvious meaning except what can be gleaned from context, and it is almost always found in the plural.

Hustings is a preserved fossil from Old English. Husting, from the Old Norse hus-þing, was an assembly of household or of a noble’s retainers, as opposed to an ordinary þing, which was a more general assembly of the people. The word appears in the entry for the year 1012 in the Abingdon Chronicle II:

1012. Her on þissum geare com Eadric ealdorman & ealle þa yldestan witan, gehadode & læwede, Angelcynnes to Lundenbyrig toforan þam Eastron; þa wæs Easterdæg on þam datarum Idus Aprilis. & hi ðær þa swa lange wæron oþ þæt gafol eal gelæst wæs ofer ða Eastron; þæt wæs ehta & feowertig þusend punda. Ða on þæne Sæternesdæg wearð þa se here swyðe astyred angean þone bisceop, forþam ðe he nolde him nan feoh behaten, ac he forbead þæt man nan þing wið him syllan ne moste. Wæron hi eac swyþe druncene forðam þær wæs broht win suðan. Genamon þa ðone bisceop, læddon hine to hiora hustinge on ðone Sunnanæfen octabas Pasce—þa wæs XIII Kł. Maī—& hine þær ða bysmorlice acwylmdon, oftorfedon mid banum & mid hryþera heafdum. & sloh hine ða an hiora mid anre æxe yre on þæt heafod, þæt mid þam dynte he nyþer asah, & his halige blod on þa eorðan feol, & his haligan sawle to Godes rice asende.
(1012. Here in this year Ealdorman Eadric and all the chief counselors of England, ecclesiastical and lay, came to London before Easter—Easter Day was on the ides of April [13 April]—and they were there so long until the tribute was paid after Easter, that was 48,000 pounds. Then on the Saturday the army became roused against the bishop because he would not promise them any money, and instead he forbade that anyone pay them on his behalf. They were also very drunk because wine from the south had been brought there. The seized the bishop, took him to their husting on the Sunday evening of the octave of Easter—that was the thirteenth Kalends of May [19 April]—and shamefully put him to death there. They pelted him with bones and with the heads of oxen, and one of them struck him there with the back of an axe in the head, so that he sank down from the blow, and his holy blood fell on the earth, and his holy soul ascended to God’s kingdom.)

This sense became obsolete in the early Middle English period, except for historical references. But it continued to be used to refer to a local court of justice, especially that held in the Guildhall of London. This use is recorded c. 1100 in the Carta civibus London (Charter of the City of London), c. 1100. The text is mainly Latin, but it uses the English nomenclature for the local courts:

Et amplius non sit miskenninga in hustenge, neque in folkesmote, neque in aliis placitis infra civitatem. Et husting sedeat semel in ebdomada, videlicet die lunæ.
(And besides, there should be no mispleadings in the husting, nor in the folkesmote, nor in other pleas within the city. And the husting should sit once a week, that is on Monday.)

Over time, the word came to mean the raised platform on which such a court was held, particularly on those occasions when elections were held. From the London Gazette of 13–17 July 1682 regarding just such an election:

London, July 15. Yesterday the Common-Hall met, pursuant to the Adjournment made that day Sevennight, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen being come down to the hustings, the following Order of His Majesty in Council was read.

And in Roger North’s Examen of 1740:

At Midsummer-Day, when the Common-Hall meets for the Election of Sheriffs, and the Lord-Mayor and the Court of Aldermen are come upon the Suggestum, called the Hustings, the Common Serjeant, by the Common Crier, puts to the Hall the Question for confirming the Lord-Mayor’s Sherriff, which used to pass affirmatively by the Court.

And humorist Thomas d’Urfey uses it in his 1719 collection of songs titled Wit and Mirth:

No matter pass’d in Common-Councel, of weight,
So private in th’ Morn, but I knew it at Night;
At the Pricking of Sheriffs, I could tell who would Sign,
To the chargeable Ofﬁce, or else pay the Fine:
Of chusing Lord Mayors too, I found the Intrigue,
And knew which would carry’t, the Tory or Whigg;
What Tricks on the Hustings Fanaticks would play,
And how the Church Party were still kept at Bay:
With Bribery Cheats and perverting the Law,
From the First of King JAMES to the 12th of Nassau.

But by the late eighteenth century, hustings was being used to refer to electoral platforms in other cities. Edmund Burke uses it in a speech during his election to parliament for the city of Bristol:

I stood on the hustings (except when I gave my thanks to those who favored me with their votes) less like a candidate than an unconcerned spectator of a public proceeding.

And it is this sense that continues in use today.

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Sources:

Burke, Edmund. “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (3 November 1774). The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, revised edition, vol. 2 of 4. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865, 91. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. husting.

d’Urfey, Thomas. Wit and Mirth or Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 2 of 6. London: W. Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719, 242. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

The London Gazette, no. 1738, 13–17 July 1682, Gale Primary Sources: Nichols Newspapers Collection.

North, Roger. Examen. London: Fletcher Gyles, 1740, 3.8.22, 598. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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

Schmid, Reinhold. “Leges Henri Primi.” Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1858, 435. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Whitelock, Dorothy, David C. Douglas, and Susie I Tucker. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961, 91–92. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius MS A.vi. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: James Gillray, 15 December 1806, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England. Public domain image.

hold my beer

February 8, 2021

7 January 2021

The phrase hold my beer is used as punchline to a joke in which someone has just done something incredibly stupid or spectacularly failed at something and someone else says “hold my beer,” implying that they are about one-up them with an even stupider stunt. The implication is that alcohol has impaired their judgment. (Sorry, jokes are never funny when explained.)

Hold my beer gets its start as part of an old joke making affectionate fun of people from the American South, who are stereotypically assumed to regularly engage in such behavior. The earliest appearance of the joke that I have found (it is likely much older, as such jokes invariably are) is from an 18 May 1995 Washington Post article:

Meanwhile, Spectator editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. entertained his audience of 450 with a rendition of “famous last words of a redneck.” To wit: “Hey y’all, watch this!”

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who has made a living off jokes about rednecks, has used the joke, and had a large role in popularizing it.

Somewhere along the way, someone added hold my beer to the joke. So, we have this from Jim Hightower’s 2003 book Thieves in High Places:

How optimistic are we Texans? The U.S. government did a little-known study during the past five years, installing black boxes in hundreds of pickup trucks. The idea was to get data on truck crashes, like they do when airplanes go down. They found that in forty-nine of the fifty states, the last words of drivers in the majority of crashes were: "Oh, shit!" But the researchers were surprised to find that in the vast majority of pickup crashes in Texas, the last words were: "Hey, y'all hold my beer and watch this!"

As the joke became universally recognized, the watch this was dropped, leaving just hold my beer.

A tweet from 26 January 2007 uses the phrase hold my beer, but without any context, so it’s hard to tell what is meant. Later that year, on 14 November 2007, another tweet uses the phrase, including a link to a BBC story about a man who injured himself trying to loosen a lug nut with a shotgun:

Belmont Club Hold My Beer: The BBC describes the unsuccessful efforts of a man to loo[sen lug nut].

(The BBC story does not use the phrase; it only appears in the tweet linking to it.)

The /r/holdmybeer subreddit launched on 20 November 2012, dedicated to similar tales of epic fails.

Finally, an entry for the phrase appeared in Urbandictionary.com on 15 September 2013:

hold my beer
(1) The act of giving up one's alcoholic beverage temporarily to attempt a stunt he or she has never ventured.
(2) Ones personal death wish fueled by ignorance.
Person: "Omg that guy tight-roped Niagara Falls"
Drunk Guy: If you think that's somethin', just "hold my beer"
Person: Did he just do a double backflip?
DG: double backflip you say..hold my beer
Person: That guy just drank 30 beer
DG: Bitch gimmie my beer

By this time, the phrase was firmly established in internet vocabulary and had become the stuff of memes.

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Sources:

@msitarzewski, Twitter, Jan 26, 2007.

@wretchardthecat, Twitter, Nov 14, 2007.

Grove, Lloyd. “The Candidate Reconnoiters.” Washington Post, 18 May 1995, C5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Hightower, Jim. Thieves in High Places. New York: Viking, 2003, 147. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Hold My Beer.” Know Your Meme, 2020. https://knowyourmeme.com/

“hold my beer.” Urbandictionary.com, 15 September 2013.

“Man Hurt Using Gun to Change Tyre.” BBC News, 13 November 2007.

“‘What were the Aggie’s last words?’ / ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’(joke).” BarryPopik.com, 5 September 2011.

Photo credit: Images from Game of Thrones (television series), HBO Entertainment, 2011–19; fair use of copyrighted images to illustrate the topic under discussion.

white trash

February 4, 2021

4 February 2021

The phrase white trash or poor, white trash is a derogatory Americanism referring to poverty-stricken White people, particularly those in the American South. The phrase originated among Black speakers in the early nineteenth century, but by mid century was being used by Whites as well. But even in the mouths of Whites, the phrase retains the racial distinction.

Use of the plain trash to refer to people of low status is, however, much older. It dates at least to the early seventeenth century, and Shakespeare uses it twice in Othello, both times in the mouth of Iago. At the end of Act 2, Scene 1, when Iago reveals his plan to the audience, he uses trash to refer to Cassio:

And nothing can, or shall content my Soule
Till I am eeuen’d with him, wife for wife.
Or fayling so, yet that I put the Moore,
At least into a Ielouzie so strong
That iudgement cannot cure, Which thing to do,
If this poore Trash of Venice, whom I trace
for his quicke hunting, stand the putting on,
Ile haue our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moore, in the right garbe
(For I feare Cassio with my Night-Cape too)
Make the Moore thanke me, loue me, and reward me,
For making him egregiously as Asse,
And practicing vpon his peace and quiet,
Euen to madnesse.

Shakespeare is engaging in wordplay by using both trash and trace in the same line. In Early Modern English both words can mean a cord used to harness or control animals and a verb meaning to control an animal by this means, and the noun trace is still used in this fashion. So Shakespeare is not only calling Cassio trash, but saying he can use him like he would use a dog or draft horse.

In the second instance, in Act 5, Scene 1, Iago uses trash to refer to Bianca, claiming that she had a role in wounding Cassio, when it was he who did it:

Gentlemen all, I do suspect this Trash
To be a party to this Iniurie.

The more specific white trash, however, makes its appearance by 1821, in an account in the Illinois Gazette describing a mixed-race crowd that had gathered upon the apprehension of a runaway slave. The account is given by a White person, but the phrase white trash is quoting a Black woman:

The males said little on the occasion, but some of the other sex gave free scope to their feelings, both against the Marylanders who had him then in their custody, and the whites in general. I happened to be in the vicinity of one who spoke the English language tolerably well, she was at no loss for words, nor sparing in throwing out her aspersive epithets. She had gone a certain distance with the man who was forced away, and on her return accompanied by her son, who stopped almost opposite where I stood, to talk with a white boy nearly his own size. She, the mother, on missing him, turned round, and observing how ill he was paired, like a fury vociferated, with a curse upon her son, why do you lag behind? Come along and do not stand there spending your precious time, in company too, and conversing with White Trash.
On hearing the phrase white trash, as it was altogether new to me when taken in her sense, I seemed as if bitten by a tarantula or stung by a gallinipper. I stood motionless and mum for a short period, but fortunately thinking of Zimmerman on the Prejudices and Pride of Nations. I was in a short time all serenity again, and believed now, that this lady of colour had as good a right and it was as natural for her to say White Trash as it would be for myself or any other of my colour to say Black Trash.

The next year we get poor white trash. From Maine’s Bangor Register of 1 August 1822, a description of a trial of a Black woman for manslaughter. Despite the references to witchcraft, this incident seems to be a rather straightforward assault with a fireplace poker. The race of the victim, Peter Belt, is not mentioned, but it seems probable that he was also a Black person, as the editors would not likely have described a deadly assault on a White person by a Black person as “whimsical.” She was convicted:

Georgetown, D.C. May 4
A very novel and whimsical trial came on in our Circuit Court on Thursday last, Nancy Swann, a lady of color whose mighty powers of witchcraft have made “de black n[——]s, and de poor white trash” tremble, was indicted for practising in and upon one Peter Belt, in the peace of God and the said United States, then and there being feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did make an assault, and that the same Nancy Swann with a certain hot poker which she in her right hand then and there held wilfully [sic], and of her malice aforethought, did push and thrust down the throat of him, the said Peter Belt.

By the 1860s and the Civil War, White people were using the phrase. From the 25 June 1864 diary of John Ransom, a Union prisoner at the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia:

Our guards are composed of the lowest element of the South—poor white trash Very ignorant, much more so than the negro.

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Sources:

Bangor Register (Maine), 1 August 1822, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. white trash, n.

The Illinois Gazette (Shawnee-Town, Illinois), 23 June 1821, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, s.v. white trash, n. and adj., poor white trash, n. and adj.; second edition, 1989, s.v. trash, n.1., trash, v.1.

Ransom, John L. Andersonville Diary. Auburn, New York: 1881, 71. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. The First Folio, 1623. Oxford, Bodleian Library Arch. G c.7.

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.