Keep right on avoiding. I love your postings--always.
Best,
Linda
On Mar 17, 2011, at 4:44 PM, Sharon McCoy wrote:
> The term seems to have been in use as early as 1835, where it was used in
> Nathaniel Ames's _An Old Sailor's Yarns_, with the implication that it refers to
> the galley on a ship.
>
> "Captain Williams, here is one of that bloody Don Dego's shot gone right
> through the galley-door, and through the side of the big copper, and knocked
> all the beef and hot water galley-west" (308).
>
> Perhaps it is a term Twain picked up in his steamboat days? My favorite use of
> it is in Chapter 37 of _Huckleberry Finn_, when the boys are tormenting Aunt
> Sally by "smouching" her spoons, putting them back, and making her think she
> cannot count or that she is going mad. And the passage seems to lend credence
> to it as a nautical term, as Huck talks of getting his "sailing orders" from
> Aunt Sally:
>
> "So I smouched one, and they come out nine same as the other time.
> Well, she was in a tearing way — just a trembling all over, she was so mad.
> But she counted and counted, till she got that addled she’d start to countin
> the basket for a spoon, sometimes; and so, three times they come out right,
> and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the basket and
> slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west; and she said
> cle’r out and let her have some peace, and if we come bothering around her
> again betwixt that and dinner, she’d skin us. So we had the odd spoon; and
> dropped it in her apron pocket whilst she was a giving us our sailing-orders,
> and Jim got it all right, along with her shingle-nail, before noon."
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sharon (also happily and busily avoiding work)
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Gregg Camfield <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Thu, March 17, 2011 4:56:00 PM
> Subject: Re: M-W WOTD: "galley-west"
>
> Yes, in _Tramp Abroad_, specifically in the "Blue-Jay Yarn." "Of course that
> knocked the mystery galley-west in a second." "Askew" and "awry" don't really
> work in this context, do they? Nor do they really work in _LOM_, in which Twain
> has a pilot, Uncle Mumford, deride efforts to "tame" the lower Mississippi:
> "They have started in here with big confidence, and the best intentions in the
> world; but they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say?
> Says enough to knock THEIR little game galley-west, don't it?"
>
> (Ecc 7:13 Consider what God has done:
> Who can straighten
> what he has made crooked? )
>
> Here, too, the word seems to mean "destroy" or "end" or something to that
> effect. Does this cast doubt on Merriam's definition and etymology?
>
> As for the OED listing 1883 as the first use, _Tramp Abroad_ (1880), knocks that
> date galley-west, too. Last time I checked, the OED doesn't even list the use
> of "brat" as slang for "bastard," either, and Leontes' use of the term in _The
> Winter's Tale_ and Anne Bradstreet's use of the term in "The Author to Her Book"
> show that at least some writers used the term that way. Dictionaries to me are
> addictive drugs that too often give bad trips. Or maybe, because they too often
> trip me up, I want to avenge myself by tripping them up.
>
>
> And that is why I would never want to become a lexicographer, even to illuminate
> Mark Twain.
>
> Gregg (busily avoiding work) Camfield
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kevin Mac Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:36 am
> Subject: Re: M-W WOTD: "galley-west"
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>> He used it in A Tramp Abroad and Life on the Mississippi, and in a
>> letter in
>> 1875. OED cites earliest use as 1883.
>>
>> See Ramsay & Emberson, A MARK TWAIN LEXICON (1938, rep 1963).
>>
>> They list 7,802 words, of which 4,342 are apparently new words
>> invented by
>> Mark Twain.
>>
>> They checked their entries against OED, Webster, etc. It's a
>> complicated
>> subject but you can read their 119pp. introduction to get a good idea
>> of
>> their approach and how to treat their results.
>>
>> With so many new Mark Twain works appearing since 1938, it's time for
>> a
>> revised edition of this extremely useful but outdated work, and it
>> seems to
>> me the perfect sort of project for an online database. Any
>> lexicographers
>> lurking out there?
>>
>> Kevin
>> @
>> Mac Donnell Rare Books
>> 9307 Glenlake Drive
>> Austin TX 78730
>> 512-345-4139
>> Member: ABAA, ILAB
>> *************************
>> You may browse our books at
>> www.macdonnellrarebooks.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "David Davis" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:02 AM
>> Subject: M-W WOTD: "galley-west"
>>
>>
>>> http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/
>>>
>>> The Word of the Day for March 17 is:=20
>>>
>>> galley-west \gal-ee-WEST\ adverb
>>> : into destruction or confusion
>>>
>>>
>>> "American author Mark Twain is on record as one of the first to use
>>> "galley-west" in his writing. Etymologists believe the word is a
>>> corruption of dialectal English "colleywest" or "collyweston." The
>>> earliest appearance of those words, used with the meaning "askew or
>>> awry," dates from the late 16th century. The ultimate source of
>>> "colleywest" and "collyweston" is not known but is suspected to be
>> from
>>> a personal name. When "galley-west" is used in speech or writing, the
>>> verb "knock" usually precedes it."
>>>
>>> [Interesting. I don't know that he made-up many words - Shakespeare
>> a
>>> far greater coiners of neologisms than our boy. Does anyone recall
>> where
>>> he used this one? /DDD ]
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
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