![]() Looking up the town’s history, it was supposedly started by a guy named Adolph Hegewisch who originally bought the land and was president of the United States Rolling Stock Company. For some reason that didn’t sound quite right, but would a guy lie to me in a church with the words of the sermon still echoing from the rafters? Last Sunday after church some guy was telling me that the Chicago community of Hegewisch ( wikipedia) was named for “hogwash”, in what language I don’t know, because when transporting livestock by rail it came before the stockyards and the pigs were washed there first before moving further north. Middle English an ewt became a newt compare also nickname). Middle English a nadder became an adder compare also apron, auger, etc.), while conversely some vowel-initial forms have gained n– (so that e.g. Variants arising by metanalysis sometimes alliterate with words with initial n– in alliterative verse, and in some cases have become established as the regular modern forms (so that e.g. As for the metanalysis, here’s the relevant section of the N entry:įrom the beginning of the Middle English period, the coexistence of two forms of the indefinite article ( an before vowels and a before consonants) often led to metanalysis (the same phenomenon occurs in other languages where the indefinite article ends in – n, e.g. The comparison to drink (as in “into the drink”) is reasonable. 28 “Giving him a stouter on the noggin, I laid him as flat as a flaunder”). ![]() 6.” Noggin was originally “A small drinking vessel” and came to mean “A small quantity or measure of alcoholic liquor” (first attested 1690 the modern slang sense “The head” dates back to 1769: Stratford Jubilee II. (The author mentioned in the story, Andrew Meier, wrote an excellent book on Russia, Black Earth, and I’d like to read his book on Oggins sometime.) My first question was “What kind of name is Oggins?” since according to this NPR story he was born to Lithuanian immigrant parents, it’s presumably a Lithuanian name (Agins? Ogins? anybody know?).īut in one of those lexicographical detours I so often find myself on, I came across an odd nautical slang word for ‘the sea,’ oggin, that’s only attested from 1945 the OED says “Origin uncertain perhaps variant of NOGGIN n. Chivers about an American, Isaiah (Cy) Oggins, who became a spy for Stalin and was murdered in a Soviet prison camp. My brother sent me a link to this NY Times story by C.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |