desi

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking upon his departure from office

27 May 2026

[Edit, 29 May 2026: clarified the etymology]

Desi is an adjective that refers to things of South Asian origin, and in recent decades has also come into use as a noun referring to people of South Asian descent outside of the region. The word comes from the Hindi desī, a noun meaning a native or inhabitant of a region and an adjective meaning native, local, or rural/rustic. The Hindi word comes from the Sanskrit deśī́ya (deśáḥ [place, region] + -iya [suffix forming adjectives]).

In appears in Anglo-Indian vocabulary, that is Indian words used in English and English words with distinctive senses in India, in the late nineteenth century. I found an 1880 use of desi in an article on Hindi etymology in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal:

The commentary correctly explains it […] according to some it is a desí word meaning “blundering.”

And it can be found in two Anglo-Indian dictionaries of that decade. George Whitworth’s 1885 Anglo-Indian Dictionary has this entry, spelling it deshi:

Deshi. (Hindi deśi, from the Sanskrit deśa, country.) Native, belonging to the country, local. Often used in contradistinction to Viláyati.

Yule and Burnell’s 1886 Hobson-Jobson doesn’t have an entry for desi, but it has this in its entry for the word country:

The term, as well as the Hindustani desī, of which country is a translation, is also especially used for things grown or made in India as substitutes for certain foreign articles.

Rudyard Kipling uses desi in this sense in 1893 short story “The Finest Story in the World” in reference to Indian food:

And you’ll eat desi food, and like it all, from the smell of the courtyard to the mustard oil over you.

And there is this use in the April 1895 Calcutta Review in the context of textiles:

The Madhyama Kul and the Uttara Kul Tantuvás still adhere to weaving cotton-cloth, but their condition, on the whole, is not prosperous, as the demand for desi, or country-made, cloth is much diminishing.

In addition to referring generally to things of South Asian origin, desi is also used specifically to refer to folk and popular South Asian styles of music. There is this from the July 1888 issue of Calcutta Review:

Little is known, and much less is understood, of what is called Márga-desí or Harmonic Music, which was, no doubt cultivated at one time in this country. According to the author, Márga literally means offspring of search, enquiry, investigation &c. and Desí means local, indigenous, popular, and the compound word signifies a system of music, founded upon facts and principles determined empirically and æsthetically, as well as upon those ascertained by scientific investigations. But beyond the etymology, we have very little useful or reliable information on the subject.

In addition to the adjectival uses, by the late twentieth century desi could be used to refer to a South Asian person who is rustic or uncultured. Here is an example from John Masters’s 1972 novel The Ravi Lancers, set during the First World War:

But yesterday, Brigadier-General “Rainbow” Rogers, the senior office on board, had seen Lieutenant Mahadeo, the ex-rissaldar, eating rice with his hand, and had told Colonel Hanbury to get his officers house-trained without delay. They were taking it very well, thanks mainly to Krishna Ram’s attitude—all except Flaherty, the Anglo-Indian, who was staring with a surly mien at the empty plate before him, his head bowed.

“…Take up knife and fork, like this…Not like a dagger, Ishar Lall, more like a pencil…Try it, Flaherty.”

“I’m not a desi, sir,” the big man said sullenly. “I know how to use knives and forks.”

While this use of desi carries a negative connotation when applied to those living in South Asia, when applied to those of South Asian descent in diaspora it lacks the idea of rustic or unsophisticated, simply referring to their ethnicity. This sense appears in the closing decades of the twentieth century. From an article on slang in the 30 September 1988 issue of India Today:

In Bombay, an HMT is again no reference to a watch but to a “Hindi-medium type.” ABCD is more than a nursery lesson; it refers to “American-born confused desis” (a growing tribe).

And there is this from the Indian news website ap7am.com on 30 December 2023 with the title, “Beyond Rishi and Leo: The Political Desi’s Unstoppable Rise Around the World”:

In September this year, Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam joined the growing list of Indian-origin leaders dominating the world politics, just as Rishi Sunak scripted history by becoming Britain's first desi premier in 2022.

And the article’s subhead reads, “The Political Desi in the US, UK, Canada.”

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“Bengal: Its Castes and Curses. Calcutta Review, April 1895, 297. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

“Beyond Rishi and Leo: The Political Desi’s Unstoppable Rise Around the World.” Ap7am.com, 30 December 2023.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 1 May 2026, s.v. desi (boy), n.

Hoernle, A. F. Rudolf. “A Collection of Hindi Roots, with Remarks on Their Derivation and Classification. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 11, 1880. 66. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

“Hindu Music, Part I.” Calcutta Review, July 1888, xxi. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Kipling, Rudyard. “The Finest Story in the World.” Many Inventions. New York: D. Appleton, 1893, 106–150 at 135. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Masters, John. The Ravi Lancers. London: Book Club Associates, 1972, 80. Archive.org.

Merriam-Webster, 23 April 2026, s.v. desi, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2004, s.v. desi, adj. & n.

Tripathi, Salil and David Devadas. “Campus Slang: Elite Students Coin an Increasingly Outlandish Vocabulary." India Today, 30 September 1988.

Whitworth, George Clifford. An Anglo-Indian Dictionary. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885, s.v. Deshi, 82. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Yule, Henry and Arthur Coke Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases. London: John Murray, 1886, 206. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Kristy O’Connor/No 10 Downing Street, 2024. Wikimedia Commons. Flickr. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

x-dimensional chess

Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) & Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) from “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” S1.E3 of Star Trek, airdate: 22 September 1966 (Stardate 1312.4)

25 May 2026

Chess is considered by some to be the ultimate test of human intelligence, and multi-dimensional chess—three-, four-, five-, and even higher-dimensional versions—is a metaphor for even more complex tasks and strategies.

Three-dimensional chess started out as an actual variant on the game, or rather variants, as there are different versions of the game. It was invented in the early twentieth century, but within a few decades of its introduction, it had become a metaphor. And by the 1960s, notional higher-dimensional variants had entered the lexicon.

The earliest citation of three-dimensional chess in the Oxford English Dictionary is a literal one, found in H. J. R. Murray’s 1913 A History of Chess:

The latest derivative game of chess is Schachraumspiel, or Three dimensional chess (see Dr. Ferd. Maach, Das Schachraumspiel, 1908).

The German is literally chess-room-game or translated more idiomatically, spatial chess game.

But it wasn’t long before higher dimensions entered the picture. A. Merritt’s 1920 science fiction short story The Metal Monster uses fourth-dimensional chess to describe a complex, alien control panel:

The rods were movable; they formed a keyboard unimaginably complex; a keyboard whose infinite combinations were like a Fourth Dimensional chess game. I saw that only the swarms of tentacles that were the Keeper’s hands and these only could be masters of its incredible intricacies.

But the notion of three-dimensional chess really took off in the 1930s when it was erroneously associated with Albert Einstein. The idea of the famed physicist operating on a higher level undoubtedly fed the later figurative use of the term. The earliest reference to the game in connection to Einstein that I’m aware of is in Portland’s Sunday Oregonian of 26 January 1936:

When Colonel Lindbergh and his entourage left New Jersey they passed, so to speak, the door of Albert Einstein, who ponders mighty matters and plays three-dimensional chess with his colleagues for relaxation. Dr. Einstein must have deemed it curious indeed to see the colonel so hurriedly leaving a place where he, the doctor, had but recently so hurriedly arrived. It is a strange world, with some folk escaping to places which others are escaping from.

But Einstein did not actually play chess in any dimensions, as this 28 March 1936 article in New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press attests:

In answer to Smith’s questions, Prof. Einstein said yesterday he avoids playing bridge “because it affords too little relaxation.”

The scientist said also that his knowledge of three-dimensional chess, reputedly his favorite pastime, was limited to what he had read in the newspapers.

[…]

He disclosed that his chief form of diversion is walking. He is often seen taking strolls thru the country.

But the idea of Einstein playing three-dimensional chess was so compelling that the truth didn’t matter. Stories of him playing the game abound in the 1930s.

And, undoubtedly fueled by association with the physicist, figurative uses of three-dimensional chess as a metaphor for complex strategies appear in the wartime 1940s. The 28 June 1942 issue of the Miami Herald depicts complex billeting arrangements as a form of the game:

Last week was moving week for 653 TSS. Bright and early Monday morning, the whilom billetees of the Gale and Richmond hotels repaired to the Sea Isle, a 12-story barracks on the seaward side of Collins ave. at 31st st. The morning was featured by the three-dimensional chess game played by 653’s new top-kick, Sgt. George C. Barefield and Sgt. Clinton G. Gewirtz, in elevating squadron members to rooms on the top six floors.

The game is a simile for wartime logistics in Rhode Island’s Providence Journal of 11 June 1943:

The fact is that the oil transportation problem is much like a three-dimensional chess game. On the one hand, we have the crude oil-producing wells; on the other, we have the refineries; and above and below, we have the consumers—military, industrial and civilian. You can readily understand that this is on the complex side.

And the game is a metaphor for the strategy of island hopping in the Pacific theater in Alfred Vagt’s 1946 book Landing Operations:

By the beginning of December “a halt in the mud”—real, not metaphorical—had come about on Leyte. The tri-dimensional chess game of island warfare seemed to approach stalemate.

By the 1960s, three dimensions weren’t complex enough, and higher dimensions were necessary to describe the complexities of the modern age. We have avant-garde music likened to  five-dimensional chess in the Buffalo Evening News of 1 May 1967:

Involving a good deal of special talent to perform, it was something like watching some young, erudite physicists play five-dimensional chess—interesting and esoteric, but largely a matter for the performers themselves.

One wonders whether the appearance of a version of three-dimensional chess in the televsion series Star Trek, which premiered in 1966, further contributed to the popularity of the metaphor.

And by the twenty-first century, the number of dimensions was upped to six. From an article about Texas politics in the Houston Chronicle of 18 May 2014:

Back in San Antonio, the 10-member City Council would appoint a mayor until the May 2015 election.

“The process is not ideal. It’s a six-dimensional chess game with several variables,” said Councilman Rey Saldaña, who wouldn’t say yet whether he’ll seek the appointment.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Baugh, Josh and Brian Chasnoff. “Castro Turned Down Past Obama Offer.” Houston Chronicle (Texas), 18 May 2014, A25/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Dr. Einstein to Colonel Lindbergh.” Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 26 January 1936, 10/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Dwyer, John. “The Gallery: Color Film, Jazz Trio, Noise Are Latest Far-out Mixture.” Buffalo Evening News (New York), 1 May 1967, 13/1.Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“East’s Oil Supply Called at Limit.” Providence Journal (Rhode Island), 11 June 1943, 2/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Interviews Einstein.” Asbury Park Press (New Jersey), 28 March 1936, 5/2. ProQuest Newspapers.

Merritt, A. “The Metal Monster.” Argosy-Allstory Weekly, 125.2, 11 September 1920, 277. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Murray, H. J. R. A History of Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913, 860. Archive.org.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2024, s.v. three-dimensional chess, n.

“653 TSS. Is Moved to Sea Isle Hotel.” Miami Herald, 28 June 1942, D-7/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Vagt, Alfred. Landing Operations: Strategy, Psychology, Tactics, Politics, from Antiquity to 1945. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Military Service Publishing Company, 1946, 792. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: DesiLu Productions, 1966. Memory-Alpha.Fandom.com. Fair use of copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.

lavender

Lavandula angustifolia

22 May 2026

(For lavender meaning laundry, see this entry.)

Lavender is a flower, a shade of purple, and a slang term associated with gay men. The slang sense is commonly seen in lavender marriage, a companionate, and often celebrity, marriage of convenience where one or both partners are gay. There is also the Lavender Scare, the label applied the U.S. government’s persecution of gays in government service in the mid twentieth century.

The flower, Lavandula angustfolia, gives rise to the name of the color, and English use for the name of the flower dates to the thirteenth century, with the oldest extant appearance being in the form lauendre in a gloss of the Latin lauendula.

Use of the word as a name for the color appears much later, in the nineteenth century. There is this 1840 article by John F. W. Herschel in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society that uses the word as a name for the color, but which indicates the term, or at least the compounds lavender-gray and lavender-colored were in common use:

The fact to which I allude is that of the existence of luminous rays beyond the violet, but not affecting the eye with a sensation of violet, nor of any other of the recognised prismatic hues, but rather with that colour which is commonly termed lavender-grey.

And

The following experiment will show, that these rays when so concentrated as to possess an unequivocal illuminating power, still show no colour, but that sort of imperfect white which is best distinguished by the terms grey, ash-colour, lavender-colour, or such expressions. As orange, indigo, and violet, vegetable tints, are used for those of the prismatic hues, I may be allowed to express by the epithet lavender the rays which produce the tint in question, rather for the purpose of abbreviating the uncouth appellation of ultra-violet, and avoiding the ambiguity attaching to the term chemical rays (which exist in all regions of the spectrum) than for that of laying any undue stress on the observed fact.

When lavender became associated with homosexuality isn’t known for certain. It was clearly in place by 1919, but likely dates back further. The ballad Ninety-Ninth Hussars, published in the 1870 book Songs for the Army has these suggestive lyrics:

Sir Lavender Silk was a pretty young man,
[...]
His men, though respectful, had thoughts of their own
Which might have spoke out if they chose,
That Sir Lavender Silk had the aspect alone
Of a Lady dressed up in men’s clothes!

Lawrence Murphy’s 1988 book Perverts by Official Order: The Campaign Against Homosexuals by the United States Navy has the following use of dash of lavender from a 1919 investigation into homosexual activities among sailors at the Newport, Rhode Island naval base that gives a rather specific idea of what that phrase means:

Then came the ultimate question: “Are you the only straight one in this crowd?” “I am not,” replied [Fred Hoage], “saying that I am straight.” What he meant became clearer when he denied having participated in a sixty-nine party. “A straight person,” he went on, “must be straight and not reciprocate in any way.” Just what was he then? “As they say in sets I have known,” he confessed, “it is a dash of lavender.” Then you have reciprocated in these sexual acts?” queried the court. “Depending on what they were,” he answered, “I might have what they call, yanked someone off…”

Murphy’s book, while well researched, tells the tale in a narrative that does not reproduce an exact transcript of what was said or give a clear timeline of events. Without a visit to the National Archives to view the paper record of the proceedings, I cannot determine the exact date of these quotations, but the words dash of lavender were probably uttered sometime in March or April of 1919.

In the 1920s, pulp editor and sometime poet Harold Hersey penned a song titled The Lavender Cowboy. There are various versions of the lyrics, but the version that appears in his 1926 collection Singing Rawhide reads as follows:

He was only a lavender cowboy,
The hairs on his chest were two….
He wished to follow the heroes
Who fight as the he-men do.

Yet he was inwardly troubled
By a dream that gave no rest;
When he read of heroes in action,
He wanted more hair on his chest.

Herpicide, many hair-tonics
Were rubbed in morning and night….
Still, when he looked in the mirror
No new hair grew in sight.

He battled for “Red Nell’s” honor
Then cleaned out a hold-up next,
And died with his six-guns smoking….
But only two hairs on his chest.

Again, the Lavender Cowboy, at least in this version, is merely suggestive of homosexuality, but in 1927 we see lavender clearly being used with that connotation. The following poem appeared in the McGill Daily, the student newspaper of McGill University in Montreal on 16 February 1927:

QUESTION

Lesbians and lavender men
Do not attract each other;
Why is it?
I have asked the Students’ Council,
But they will not tell me—
Or they do not know

Why lavender men do not attract
Lesbians………….

—EUPHORIAN (TEXAS)

And there is Mae West’s 1928 play Pleasure Man that uses the word in the queer sense. The play had a single performance on Broadway before it was closed by police for obscene (read queer) content. Paradise Dupont is an effeminate character in the play whose appearance in the script reads as follows:

LEADER: “Yeah, we’ve always got to wait. You’d think they were Dukes or Earls or maybe Queens….

(Enter PARADISE DUPONT tripping lightly)

PARADISE: Whoops! I’ve been discovered, Royalty has arrived dearie.

And lavender appears later in the act in this exchange:

STEVE (To Paradise): Go ahead with your rehearsal, the boys won’t annoy you.

STANLEY: And don’t you annoy the boys, Violet.

PARADISE: Lavender, maybe but violet never.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Herschel, John F. W. “On the Chemical Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Preparations of Silver and other Substances, both metallic and non-metallic, and on some Photo- graphic Processes.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, part 1, vol. 130. London: Richard and John Taylor, 1840,1–59 at 19, 20. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Hersey, Harold. “The Lavender Cowboy.” Singing Rawhide: A Book of Western Ballads. New York: George H. Doran, 1926, 13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.  

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 21 April 2026, s.v. lavender, n., lavender, adj.

Middle English Dictionary, 31 January 2026, s.v. lavender(e, n.(2).

Mullins, Bill. “Antedating of ‘Lavender’ (Homosexual).” ADS-L, 24 October 2022.

Murphy, Lawrence R. Perverts by Official Order: The Campaign Against Homosexuals by the United States Navy. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1988, 54.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1997, s.v. lavender, n.2 & adj.

“Question.” McGill Daily (Montreal), 16 February 1927, 2/3. Archive.org.

West, Mae. Pleasure Man. Typescript, 1928. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Andrey Butko, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

on/off the hook

20 May 2026

The phrases on the hook and off the hook have had various meanings over the centuries. Of course, there are many literal uses of the phrases, but the figurative ones extend from on the hook metaphorically meaning to be ensnared or entrapped, like a fish on an angler’s line, to off the hook meaning to be wild and out of control. The use of hook as a metaphor for entrapment or being under control underlies all the figurative senses.

The metaphorical use of on the hook dates to the seventeenth century when Robert Naughton uses it in his 1642 Fragmenta regalia. The following passage is about Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, who, starting in 1580, had used information about William Parry, a Roman Catholic, to compel him to spy on others of his faith, but Parry was a double agent and plotted to assassinate Elizabeth. Parry was caught and executed in 1585.

They note him to have had certain curiosities, and secret wayes of intelligence above the rest, but I must confesse I am to seek wherefore he suffered Parry to play so long on the hook, before he hoysed him up; and I have been a little curious in the search thereof, though I have not to do with the Arcana Imperii [i.e., secrets of the empire].

And in that same era we see off the hooks to mean being flustered or in a bad temper. From Robert Davenport’s 1639 play A New Trick to Cheat the Divell:

Rog[er]. I doe not like this shufling.

Gef[frey]. What Roger, al amort, me thinkes th’art off o’th’hookes?

Rog. Yes faith, and Henges too, I’me almost desperate,
And care not how I am.

And by the nineteenth century, off the hooks in the ill-tempered sense had developed into being crazy or eccentric. We see the sense in Walter Scott’s 1824 novel St Ronan’s Well:

So saying, he exhibited a very handsome, highly-finished, and richly mounted pair of pistols.

“Catch me without my tools,” said he, significantly buttoning his coat over the arms, which were concealed in a side-pocket, ingeniously contrived for that purpose. “I see you do not know what to make of me,” he continued, in a familiar and confidential tone; “but, to tell you the truth, everybody that has meddled in this St Ronan’s business is a little off the hooks—something of a tête exaltée, in plain words, a little crazy, or so; and I do not affect to be much wiser than other people.

By the middle of the twentieth century, we see off the hook in American slang, meaning to be freed from an obligation, debt, or unfortunate situation. From Jim Thompson’s 1953 novel The Criminal:

Maybe that Federal judgeship will come through soon enough to take me off the hook.

And by the end of that century, off the hook was being used in teen and Black slang to refer positively to situations that were crazy or out of control. The college slang project at California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), Pomona defined off the hook as “happening; incredibly cool and hip.”

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Davenport, Robert. A New Trick to Cheat the Divell. London: John Okes for Humphrey Blunden, 1639, Act 1.1, B2r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 26 April 2026, s.v. hook, n.1.

Naunton, Robert. Fragmenta regalia, or Observations on the Late Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favourites. London: 1642, 19. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2024, s.v. hook, n.1.

Scott, Walter. St Ronan’s Well, vol. 3 of 3. Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1824, 95–96. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Fishfeeder, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carp_fly_fishing.jpg Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

haggard

18 May 2026

The adjective haggard today is generally used to describe someone who presents an emaciated, worn, weary, or disheveled appearance. But the original sense of the word is quite different, coming from the sport of falconry. The word was borrowed into English in the mid sixteenth century from the Middle French hagart, where it was both a noun and adjective. It could mean a wild hawk that had been caught and trained, as opposed to one that had been raised in captivity, or an adjective referring to such a bird.

The modern sense of haggard appears in the seventeenth century. And this shift in meaning was probably influenced by the word hag, although that word has a very different origin.

We first see English use of haggard in a poem by Richard Edwards that was penned sometime before 1566 (his death). Here the word is being used to describe a hawk, although the context is that of a spurned lover, one in which many of the early uses of the adjective will appear:

The striken Deare hath helpe, to heale his wounde,
The haggerd hauke, with toile is made full tame:
The strongest tower, the Canon laies on grounde,
The wisest witt, that euer had the fame.
Was thrall to Loue, by Cupids sleights,
Then waie my case with equall waights.

It is applied to people by 1566 as well, when William Painter uses it in Delectable Demaundes, and Pleasant Questions, a translation of a work by Ortensio Landi, to describe recalcitrant students:

But bicause the name of vertue is of suche maiestie, as at the firste vewe it would dashe and dismaie her firste and feble beholders, certaine Philosophers castinge asyde their frostie beardes, and other such ceremonies of Philosophicall showe: with louing care to cherishe and mainteine those soft and gentle minds, that could not yet wel broke the pain full bruntes of scollerlike customes: haue deuised certein pleasant confections (as it were wherwith to sauce and sweten the studie of Philosophie,) handling eche parte therof so familiarlie, that the most wild and haggard heades were oftetimes reclaimed to harken & follow their holsome Lessons.

The following year, George Turberville uses the metaphor of a haggarde Hauke to describe a woman who has rejected a lover:

Haue you not heard it long ago
of cunning Fawkners tolde,
That Haukes which loue their keepers call
are woorth their weight in Golde?
And such as knowe the luring voice
of him that feedes them still:
And neuer rangle farre abroade
against the keepers will,
Doe farre exceede the haggarde Hauke
that stoopeth to no stale:
Nor forceth on the Lure awhit,
but mounts with euery gale?
Yes, yes, I know you know it well,
and I by proufe haue tride,
That wylde and haggard Hawkes are worse
than such as will abide.

And in the same poem, Turberville uses the noun as part of the extended metaphor:

You flee with wings of often chaunge
at random where you please:
But that in time will breede in you
some fowle and fell disease.
Liue like a haggard still therefore,
and for no luring care.

Ten years later, in 1576, Thomas Achelley uses haggard again in the context of a woman rejecting a lover in his translation of a work by Matteo Bandello, but the extended metaphor of falconry is absent:

Vnfold those restles agonies,
Expresse the endles smarte:
Which since th’encounter of her vewe,
Haue slaine thy poore true harte.
Perchaunce, she is not of haggards kind,
Nor hart so hard is bend:
But thy distylling teares in fine,
May moue her to relend.

The noun haggard also came into use for a while as a noun meaning a wild or recalcitrant person, especially a woman. Shakespeare uses it in The Taming of the Shrew, written c. 1591 but not published until 1623. In that play, the character Hortensio uses the noun in reference to Bianca, whom he had formerly pursued:

I wil be married to a wealthy Widdow,
Ere three dayes passe, which hath as long lou’d me,
As I haue lou’d this proud disdainful Haggard.

By the late seventeenth century, the modern sense of the word appears. Here it is in John Dryden’s 1687 poem The Hind and Panther:

More haughty than the rest the wolfish race,
Appear with belly Gaunt, and famish’d face:
Never was so deform’d a beast of Grace.
His ragged tail betwixt his leggs he wears
Close clap’d for shame, but his rough crest he rears,
And pricks up his predestinating ears.
His wild disorder’d walk, his hagger’d eyes,
Did all the bestial citizens surprize.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Bandello, Matteo. A Most Lamentable and Tragicall Historie Conteyning the Outragious and Horrible Tyrannie Which a Spanishe Gentlewoman Named Violenta Executed vpon Her Louer Didaco. Thomas Achelley, trans. London: John Charlewood for Thomas Butter, 1576, sig. C4v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Dryden, John. The Hind and Panther. London: Jacob Tonson, 1687, 10. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Edwards, Richard. “A Louer Reiected, Complaineth” (before 1566). A Paradyse of Daynty Deuises. London: Henry Disle, 1576, 76. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Landi, Ortensio. Delectable Demaundes, and Pleasant Questions. William Painter, trans. London: John Cawood for Nicholas Englande, 1566, sig. ⁋2v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, September 2021, s.v. haggard, adj., haggard, n.2., haggard, n.3.

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew, Act 3. In Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio). London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623, 222. Folger Shakespeare Library. (The scene is numerated as Act 4, Scene 2 in modern editions.)

Turberville, George. “The Louer to a Gentlewoman, That After Great Friendship Without Desart or Cause of Mislyking Refused Him.” Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets. London: Henry Denham, 1567, 14v–15v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Krzysztof Wiśniewski, 2008, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.