-stan / -istan

17 August 2021

Detail of an 1835 map of the Persian Gulf region with labels for Afghanistan, Hindostan, and Beloochtstan.

(This entry is for toponymic suffix -stan. If you want the slang word stan, meaning a fan of something, see the entry for stan.)

The suffixes -stan / -istan come into English from the Persian ستان (stân). The meaning in Persian is land or place of. In English, the suffix is primarily used for proper names, but in Persian it can also be used generally, for instance ریگستان (rigestân) is a desert, a “place of sand.” In English, -stan is used following a vowel or aspirated consonant (e.g., Kazakhstan or the archaic Hindustan), while -istan is used following a consonant (e.g., Afghanistan, Pakistan).

The word first appears in English in the form Indostan in the late sixteenth century, reflecting the beginning the European colonial exploitation of the region. From Thomas Blundeville’s 1594 description of India:

India tooke his name from the Flood Indus, which bordereth towards the East vpon the Realme of China, and towards the South vpon the great Ocean of India, and towardes the West vpon the sea of Arabia, and also vpon the Flood Indus, and towards the North vpon the sea Mare Euxinum, or Mar maior, and vpon Bramas.

This countrey is iudged at this day, as it hath bene long since to be the noblest and richest countrey in all the whole world, and it is diuided by the Flood Ganges into 2 . partes, whereof the West part is called Indostan, or India intra Gangem, and the East part is called India extra Gangem, and it containeth many prouinces and Realms, as Cambaiar, Delli, Decan, Bisnagar, Malabar, Narsingar, Orixa, Bengala, Sanga, Mogores, Tipura, Gouros, Aua, Pegua, Aurea, Chersonesus, Sina, Camboia, and Campaa.

We see the form Hindoostan in the next century. From a letter written 19 October 1677 by Matthew Vincent and Edward Reade, presumably employees of the British East India Company:

Shausteh Caun is called away to come up to Hindoostand by the King, which though we think by meanes of his money he will never doe, yett at present it startles him. and unfitts him and his Duan who are taken off with matters of this great moment to attend to any proposition we can make to him, soe that we feare it would be but labour lost to apply ourselves at present to him in this matter, nor are we unapprehensive that we may so soone put him in mind of the favour he did us the last yeare in writing to the King in our behalfe, when our whole business was stopped, from which he hath only reprieved us till ye answer comes, and that he may, now he is called away, stop all our business againe out of a designe to gett what he can out of us though noe order should come from ye King, and it is very likely it may not be in these times of great trouble in Hindoostan.

Other names for countries in the region would follow, and from English the names spread to other European languages.

But in the twentieth century, -stan began to be used as a standalone noun and as a combining form to create new words in English. In the 1930s, Stan started to be used as a generic name for a central Asian country or republic of the Soviet Union. From the Times of London of 7 September 1932:

When all the land in the Stans is collectivized in cotton plantations, say the Soviet governors, then the wheat, meat and vegetables are to come over from the Ukraine, Siberia, and the Caucasus.

And in the 1960s -stan began to be used as combining form to create the names of proposed or fictional countries. For instance, there are these uses of Bantustan and Whitestan for apartheid South Africa from an essay by E.G. Malherbe in 1960:

This training in ethnic isolation is not only against all university traditions, but it will not work in a multi-racial and multi-lingual country like South Africa. However much we may cut it up into “Bantustans” and “Whitestans,” South Africa will still have to remain an interlinked economic and political unity which will survive only if there is continuous consultation and co-operation between the various sections—White and non-White.

Many of these uses are jocular or racist. For instance, there is the jocular use of -istan in a 24 January 1999 New York Times article about Irvine, California:

Irvine, on the other hand, is what you might call a nerdistan: a suburban enclave of subdivisions, shopping centers and business parks where scientists, engineers and technicians feel comfortable living and working.

And there is this racist use by Andrew Sullivan in an article speculating what the world might be like if 9/11 never happened that appeared in New York magazine on 21 August 2006:

In fact, some CIA sources just told Novak that the Osama trail is getting hotter. But alas, over the last five years, Al Qaeda has dispersed its leadership across the globe, from Indonesia to Londonistan. Getting Osama would be emotionally satisfying. I’m not sure it would be militarily significant.

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Sources:

Blundeville, Thomas. M. Blundevile His Exercises, Containing Sixe Treaties. London: John Windet, 1594, 257r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Kotkin, Joel. “A Place to Please the Techies.” New York Times, 24 January 1999, BU4.

Malherbe, E.G. “Training for Leadership in Africa.” In Hildegarde Spottiswoode, ed. South Africa: The Road Ahead. London: Bailey Bros. and Swinfen, 1960, 145. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2020, modified December 2020, s.v. Hindustan, n. and adj.; September 2012, modified September 2019, s.v. Afghanistanism, n.; September 2007, modified March 2019, s.v. -stan, comb. form, -istan, comb. form; September 2004, modified December 2020, s.v. stan, n.1.

Saunders, S.E. “Marx in Asia.” Times (London), 7 September 1932, 13. Gale Primary Sources: The Times Digital Archive.

Sullivan, Andrew. “The Good News is 9/11 Never Happened.” New York (magazine), 21 August 2006, 32. OmniFile Full Text Mega.

Vincent, Matthew and Edward Reade. Letter, 19 October 1677. “Copy of Public Sundry Book, No. 1, 1677 to 1679, Relative to Affairs in the Bay.” Bengal and Madras Papers, vol. 1 of 3. Calcutta: 1928, 20. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, 1835. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

welch / Welsh

“Betting on the Favorite,” by W.L. Sheppard. A group of men in nineteenth-century dress in the paddock of a horse racing track making bets. In the foreground, two groups of men are making bets, with one in each group, the bookie, writing in notepads. Another man is consulting a jockey. A racehorse is in the background.

17 August 2021

To welch or welsh is slang meaning to renege on a bet or agreement. The word started life as an ethnic slur, implying the Welsh people were dishonest, Welch being an older spelling variant of Welsh. As such use of the word is best avoided.

The proper name Wales and the associated adjective Welsh come to us from the Old English wealh, meaning foreigner or slave, a word that was commonly applied to the Celtic Britons the English encountered when they started arriving in what is now England in the middle of the fifth century C.E. For instance, the Peterborough Chronicle has this entry for the year 465:

AN.cccclxv. Her Hengest & Æsc gefuhton wið Walas neh Wippedesfleote & ðær ofslogon .xii. wilsce ealdormen, & heora an þegn wearð þær ofslegen þam wæs nama Wipped.

(Year 465. In this year, Hengest and Æsc fought against the Welsh near Wippedfleet [probably present-day Ebbsfleet, Kent] & there slew 12 Welsh aldermen, & of theirs a thane was slain there whose name was Wipped.)

Over the ensuing centuries, the Britons were either driven out of what is now England or absorbed into the English people and culture. The name Wealhtheow, the name of Hrothgar’s queen in the poem Beowulf, literally means “foreign slave,” hinting that she was originally booty (in both senses of the word) captured in battle. The fact that she could rise to become Hrothgar’s wife and queen, holding a degree of sway and influence over the court, shows how the Early English did not make much of such ethnic differences and how despite being “foreign” she could be easily integrated into the dominant culture. But outside of what is now England, the distinct Celtic culture and language continued to survive, and Wales and the Welsh have maintained a distinct ethnic and linguistic identity.

In Welsh, the name for Wales is Cymru, and the Welsh people are Cymry (singular masculine is Cymro, singular feminine is Cymraes). The adjective is Cymreig.

But the slang word is not nearly that old, arising in the middle of the nineteenth century in horseracing circles. The earliest I have found is from London’s The Era of 11 June 1854:

Elbow to elbow is the soi-disant proprietor of a Metropolitan betting office, who unlike a few of his honest confrères, was but too glad to emerge, under the “Act for the Suppression of Betting Offices,” from his mahogany-polished desk after the victimization of thousands of unwary clerks and apprentices in distant parts of the provinces. Yonder, with a frantic howl of delight, in the pursuit of his inveigling policy, steps the now retired hell-keeper, with his attendant imps, the croupier and the bonnett—the enlarged coachman, who was once the pride of the road and the pink of the whip club, ere the mighty iron highway had driven him to the subterfuge and welching of the betting enclosure—and scores of other questionables, cum multis aliis, that crowd and bully in the precincts which Fuller Andrews is set especially to guard.

The fact that welching is unmarked and undefined here, and in many of the other early recorded uses, indicates that the term was already fairly well known by this point, at least among racing aficionados.

A few months later welcher appears in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle of 31 December 1854 in an article about horseracing on the other side of the Channel:

We wish to instruct our pupil brother in all the better parts of our national hobby, but at the same time preclude, if possible, the vices which have assailed it in England. At present the “genus” Tout, Nobbler, Welcher, is not known upon the Continent, although somewhat of that “baleful influence” has of late intruded itself upon the unsuspecting members of the Turf.

Other early uses include this from the Sunday Times of London on 9 September 1855:

On returning to scale the owner of Frindsbury objected that both Spider and the others had gone wrong. This the other denied, and a scene of confusion ensued. A number of scamps, chiefly of the Welching fraternity, who had “stood the field,” took possession of the weighing stand, and a most disgraceful row took place before the place was cleared of them. The race, which was a wretched exhibition altogether, is in dispute.

And from the Racing Times of 3 March 1856:

The season opened under a right and cheerless sky at Lincoln, and the six shilling railway fare brought at least a hundred new faces into the ring, many of them of a very welching hue.

And again, from Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle of 6 April 1856:

“WELCHERS BEWARE!”—At the late Catterick Meeting, the clerk of the course had the above notice conspicuously posted in the Ring. In addition he also provided several able-bodied labourers, with a barrel of tar and a sack of feathers, so that any one found “welching” might be summarily chastised and branded for their offences.

So, while welch was undoubtedly older in oral use, by the 1850s it had become well established in horseracing jargon.

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Sources:

“The Coming Season.” The Racing Times (London), 3 March 1856, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

“Extraordinary Circumstance.” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 6 April 1856, 4. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Irvine, Susan, ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition 7 MS E, vol. 7 of 7. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004, 17. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636. JSTOR.

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, modified June 2021, s.v. Welsh, adj. and n., modified December 2020, welsh, v.

“The Present State of the Ring.” The Era (London), 11 June 1854, 4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

“Racing on the Continent.” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 31 December 1854, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

“Rochester and Chatham Races.” Sunday Times (London), 9 September 1855, 7. Gale Primary Sources: Sunday Times Historical Archive.

Image credit: W.L. Sheppard, 1870, wood engraving from a sketch by W.B. Myers. Harper’s Weekly, October 1870. Public domain image.

wake

One half of an 1894 stereographic, a posed, derogatory depiction of an Irish wake, titled “Mickie O’Hoolihan’s Wake.” Nine men and women are posed around a coffin containing corpse. They are smoking and drinking; one mourner appears to be passed out. A cask and various bottles are in the frame.

13 August 2021

The word wake has a number of senses in today’s speech. It can be a verb meaning to remain conscious or to bring someone to consciousness. This sense usually appears in the forms waken or awaken. It can also mean to stand watch, to keep a vigil, although this sense is rare nowadays. As a noun it can mean a state of consciousness, but again this sense is rather obsolescent; instead, this sense is more likely to be expressed by wakefulness. More often the noun wake refers to a vigil, especially a funeral vigil. The noun wake can also mean the track left by a ship on the water’s surface, but this sense is a distinct word with an entirely different origin. (For the slang sense meaning socially or political aware, especially in regard to racism, see woke.)

All but the nautical sense can be traced back to the Old English noun wæcce, a state of consciousness, and the verb wæccan, to watch, to rouse. This noun can be seen in the Old English translation of Genesis 31:38–40, where Jacob is chiding Laban for having been cheated:

Wæs ic for pam nu twentig wintra mid ðe? Naeron þine heorda stedige, ne ic ðærof ne aet. Swa hwaet swa man ðærof forstæl oððe wilddeor abiton, ic hit forgeald. Daeges & nihtes ic swanc, on haetan & on cyle & on watccan.

(Have I been with you now for twenty winters? Your herd were not barren, nor did I eat of them. Whatsoever someone stole or wild beasts devoured, I paid for it. Days and nights I toiled, in heat and in cold & in wake.)

And the verb appears in Beowulf, lines 81b–85, where the narrator foreshadows the destruction of Heorot:

                                  Sele hlifade
heah ond horngeap;    heaðowylma bad,
laðan liges—    ne wæs hit lenge þa gen
þæt se ecghete    aþumsweoran
æfter wælniðe    wæcnan scolde.

(The hall towered, high and horn-gabled; it awaited battle-surges, hostile flames—it would not be long until sword-hate would waken deadly hostility between son-in-law and father-in-law.)

It’s a short jump from a state of consciousness to a turn at watch or a vigil. We see this sense by the early Middle English period. For instance, the sense of a funeral vigil appears in the poem The Story of Genesis and Exodus, which was written c.1250:

Sum on, sum ðre, sum .vii. nigt,
Sum .xxx., sum .xii. moneð rigt,
And sum euerilc wurðen ger,
Ðor quiles ðat he wunen her,
Don for ðe dede chirche-gong,
Elmesse-gifte and messe-song,
And ðat is on ðe weches stede.
Wel him mai ben [ð]at wel it dede!

([For] some one, some three, some seven nights, some thirty, some twelve months [are] right, and some are honored every year. While he is present here, attend church, perform alms-giving and mass-song for the dead, and that is standing in the wakes. Well may he be who does it well!)

As mentioned above, the nautical wake is a different word altogether. It’s a much later addition to the language, recorded in the sixteenth century, although its oral use in English may be older. It comes from the Old Norse vök, meaning hole or opening. Originally it referred to a break in an ice sheet caused by a passing ship, later extended to refer to the waves caused by a ship moving through water.

The Oxford English Dictionary, in a century-old entry, has an early sixteenth-century citation that reads:

No ship to ride in another's walk.

The OED gives the source as London, British Library, Harley MS 309, fol. 4. The text in question would seem to be the c.1530 A Booke of Orders for the Warre, Both by Sea & Land, penned by Thomas Audley. This text has never been published in full, and digital images of this manuscript are not available, so I can provide no further context for this snippet.

A clearer sixteenth-century use of wake in the nautical sense does appear in an account of Robert Dudley’s 1594 expedition to the West Indies. The account is penned by a Captain Wyatt, who was a soldier on the expedition. His first name may have been Thomas. The account appears to have been written shortly after the return to England:

But passinge the straighte wee bare awaie north and by east for some two daies as the winde woulde suffer us, but after altered that course and bare for the coste of Florida, a more westernlie course, to lie in the wake of the fleet of the West Indies bownde for Spaine.

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Sources:

Crawford, Samuel John. The Old English Version of the Heptateuch. Early English Text Society, O.S. 160. London: Oxford UP, 1922, 162–63.

Fulk, R.D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf, fourth edition. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2008, lines 81b–85.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. wake, n., wacche, n.

Morris, Richard, ed. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, second edition (1873). Early English Text Society, O.S. 7. New York: Greenwood Press, 1996, lines 2461–67, 70. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 444.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. wake, n.1, wake, v., waken, v., wake, n.2.

Wyatt, Thomas[?]. “Robert Dudley’s Voyage to the West Indies, Narrated by Capt. Wyatt” (c.1595). The Voyage of Robert Dudley. George F. Warner, ed. London: Hakluyt Society, 1899, 52. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Stromeyer and Wyman, 1894. Public domain image.

vaudeville

1894 promotional poster for the Sandow Trocadero Vaudevilles. A lithograph depicting a variety of performers, including clowns, ballerinas, dogs, acrobats, jugglers, and a performer in blackface.

12 August 2021

Today, vaudeville is a term for music hall or variety theater of bygone days. One often hears the word in reference to entertainers of the early-to-mid twentieth century who made the transition from the variety stage to movies and television. As one might guess, the word is from French, but its original meaning was that of a ballad or country song.

Vaudeville is a clipping and alteration of chanson du Vau de Vire (song of the valley of the Vire). The Vire Valley is in Calvados, Normandy. The phrase was originally applied to songs written by the fifteenth-century composer of drinking songs Olivier Basselin, who was born there.

Vaudeville made its way into English via bilingual dictionaries, such as Abel Boyer’s 1702 Dictionnarie Royal:

VAUDEVILLE, S.M. (Chanson historique qui court par la ville) a Ballad, or Country-Ballad.

(Historical song that runs through the city)

By 1724 vaudeville appeared in Elisha Coles’s English dictionary, indicating vaudeville was being used in English discourse. But since Coles, like most lexicographers of the period, included only unusual or “hard” words in their lexicons, the word was probably not yet in widespread or common use:

Vaudeville, verelay, a country ballad, or common proverb.

An 18 June 1739 letter by Horace Walpole uses vaudeville in this sense of a song. He wrote the letter from Rheims, France, so he is using it in French context:

I had prepared the ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and dance in it, and was determined to write the words and sing the tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one, be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that individual one, believe me, ’tis nothing without the tune and the dance; but to stay your stomach, I will send you one of their vaudevilles or ballads, which they sing at the comedy after their petites pièces.

Over the course of the next century, vaudeville broadened in meaning to mean any light entertainment, not just ballads or other songs. We can see this broader use in dramatist and songwriter Thomas John Dibden’s 1837 Reminiscences:

I also had the honour (for such it most certainly was) of being selected by her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth to write a sort of vaudeville farce, to be performed at Frogmore Lodge, before their Majesties and the royal family, at a fête given in celebration of the recovery of the late Princess Amelia from a dangerous indisposition.

And by the same year we see an American sense had developed, the one we’re most familiar with today, that of music hall or variety theater. From the Evening Star of 31 August 1837:

NIBLO’S VAUDEVILLES.—Niblo’s Benefit.—The proprietor, William Niblo, so universally known and esteemed for his successful and well directed efforts for many years past to gratify our citizens with whatever can add to their instruction and pleasure in the way of amusement, himself asks a benefit tonight. He will not ask in vain, and if the superior attractions of music and a Vaudeville theatre, (the first in our country) which he has offered this year, are any claim, and the crowds that flock nightly to them are in proof they are, let the author and getter up of these costly luxuries for the public, be for once richly rewarded.

This kind of American vaudeville flourished for about the next hundred years, when movies and then television drove the variety stages out of business.

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Sources:

“Amusements.” Evening Star (New York), 31 August 1837, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Boyer, Abel, ed. Dictionnaire Royal, François et Anglois, vol. 1. The Hague: Adrian Moetjens, 1702. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Coles, Elisha, ed. An English Dictionary. London: R. and J. Bonwicke, et al., 1724. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Dibden, Thomas. The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibden of the Theatres Royal, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket, &c., vol. 1 of 2. London: Henry Colburn, 1837, 268. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

Walpole, Horace. Letter to Richard West (18 June 1739). The Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. 1. Peter Cunningham, ed. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1906, 20. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit. Unknown artist, 1894. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

upsydaisy

11 August 2021

Upsidaisy is an exclamation used when helping someone rise to their feet, lifting someone up, or giving someone a boost over an obstacle. It’s often used in reference to a lifting a child but can be used for adults as well. Upsidaisy is spelled in a number of different ways. Other variants include: upsydaisy, oops-a-daisy, and whoops-a-daisy.

The up- element has an obvious origin, it refers to the action of rising. The -a-daisy element is more mysterious. This latter portion of the word is likely simply nonsense syllables, akin to the interjections lackadaisy and alack-a-day, which despite being very different in meaning are strikingly similar in form and in part of speech. Wright’s 1905 dialect dictionary records the variant upaday in use in Northamptonshire, East Anglia and in America, but whether this is an older form or a later variant is unknown.

The earliest known use of one of the variants is in a January 1711 letter by Jonathan Swift to Esther Johnson, a.k.a. “Stella,” a close friend, possible lover, and maybe even his wife by a secret marriage—the exact nature of their relationship is a matter of debate. Swift is using the word in the context of rising from a chair or perhaps his bed:

I wish my cold hand was in the warmest place about you, young women, I'd give ten guineas upon that account with all my heart, faith; oh, it starves my thigh; so I'll rise, and bid you good morrow, my ladies both, good morrow. Come stand away, let me rise: Patrick, take away the candle. Is there a good fire? --So—up a-dazy

Another early appearance is in William Toldervy’s 1756 The History of Two Orphans:

Throw made not any answer, but in attempting to go out of the room, struck his foot against a chair, which made him reel; and putting out his hands, in order to save himself, he almost laid hold of Miss Honeyflower’s arm, which Tom Heartley taking for design, gave Mr. Throw that blow in the face, which brought him sprawling upon the floor. “You see how it is, said Culverin, we had better have gone before, friend Throw; but, however, I’ll help you up again.” This noble resolution he was about to put into practice, and stooping down for that purpose; “Up-a-daisey,[”] said Miss Bella, and then, with all her strength gave him a push behind, which brought the old warrior’s honour to the dust; his wig flew off, which discovered the baldness of his pate, and his nose having reached the Portland stone, which lay before the fire, rather sooner than his hands, a crimson stream came pouring plentifully down from that fountain.

Early print appearances like these are often in adult speech, but that does not preclude an origin in children’s slang. Upsidaisy could very well have got its start among children, which would likely have gone unrecorded, only appearing in the written record when adults started to use it.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. upsadaisy!, excl.

Merriam-Webster. “The 'Oops' and 'Whoops' In 'Upsy-daisy.'” Accessed 20 July 2021.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. upsidaisy, int., up-a-daisy, int.

Swift, Jonathan. “Letter 15” (31 January 1710–11). Journal to Stella, vol. 1 of 2. Harold Williams, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948, 181. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Toldervy, William. The History of Two Orphans, vol. 2 of 4. London: William Owen, 1756, 23–24. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Wright, Joseph, ed. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 6 of 6. Oxford: Henry Frowde, 1905, 329.