Sauntering is hard work

To saunter “to walk in a leisurely way, stroll” is a verb, famous for its etymological opacity. It is instructive and a bit frustrating to read the literature on this word, published between roughly 1874 and 1910, though a few amusing notes in my collection antedate the eighteen-seventies. No one knows where saunter came from. Charles II was seemingly fond of “sauntering.” That monarch seldom denied himself the pleasure of walking in the royal gardens and paying a visit to one of his mistresses. Saunter clung to Charles II, and probably for good reason. The obscurity of the verb and the playful connotations, attached to it, suggest that saunter might be seventeenth-century slang, a humorous neologism. If I am right, this may be the reason the verb’s origin is almost beyond reconstruction.

Saunt(er) has a French look, like so many other words rhyming with its root (daunt, flaunt, gaunt, taunt, vaunt,andso forth), but may still be an English coinage: think of our nineteenth-century verb gallivant. John Minsheu (or Minshew), the author of the first etymological dictionary of English (1617), did not include saunter, most probably, because he had never heard it. Indeed, an earlier and much rarer verb saunter “to muse,” seems to have existed, but no one knows whether it was the same word. Something in the sound complex saunter, with its frequentative suffix –er (as in chatter or pitter–patter), must have suggested a leisurely activity.

The second etymological dictionary of English appeared in 1671. Its author, Stephen Skinner, included the verb and even had an idea of its origin: allegedly, the etymon of saunter was French sauter “to jump” (look up saltation in English dictionaries for the Latin root of sauter). But soon a hypothesis emerged that outlived many others. Sancta terra “Holy Land” was conjured up, “because when there were frequent Expeditions to the Holy Land many Idle Persons went from Place to Place upon pretence they had taken the Cross upon them or intended to do so, and to go thither.” This is Nathan Bailey (1721), whose dictionary was revised and reprinted countless times. His derivation of saunter from sancta terra (or its translation into French) stayed until the age of serious comparative philology.

However, not everybody rejected Bailey’s derivation of saunter. I’ll quote Ernest Weekley’s etymological dictionary. “SAUNTER: ‘From c. 1660, to roam loiter, and earlier and rare saunter, to muse to hesitate, being perhaps a different word.’ Etymologists of the 17^th century agree in deriving from French sainte-terre, Holy Land. Although this etymology is now derided, it may be partly true [!]. I suggest as origin Spanish santero ‘sometimes an hermit, sometimes one that lives with the hermit, and goes about questing for him and his chappel’ [Stephens, a 1706 dictionary of Spanish]. This word is also used of a ‘shrine-crawler’ in general. We may compare Italian romigare, ‘to roame, to roave or goe up and downe solitarie and alone as an hermit’ (Florio [a 1598 Italian dictionary] ….” ROAM: “‘Traditionally from Rome, as place of pilgrimage’; cf. Old French romier, pilgrim to Rome, Spanish romero, Italian romeo ‘a roamer, a wanderer, a palmer.’ The NED [= OED] altogether rejects this and suggests Middle English ramen, a cognate with Old High German rāmen ‘to aim at, strive after.’ It is quite clear that roam was early associated with Rome, the earliest occurrence of ramen… being connected in the same line with Rom-leoden ‘people of Rome’. The word is also older than dictionary records, as roamer, quoted by NED from Piers Plowman, was a surname in 1273…, surviving as Romer. For another word that may have influenced roam see saunter.”

Walter W. Skeat kept returning to saunter and ended up saying “of unknown origin.” Those interested in the history of saunter waited with impatience for the appearance of the volume of the OED containing the mysterious word, but Henry Bradley, the volume’s editor, failed to solve the riddle. Nor did James A. H. Murray, the chief editor of the OED, ever write anything about saunter. The OED online offers no solution either, but it made one important concession. The original OED rejected any connection between roam and Rome, while the latest version of the great dictionary admits, even if without much enthusiasm, Weekley’s explanation (Weekley’s name does not appear in the entry, but this fact is irrelevant). If roam goes back to Rome, saunter con be derived from sancta terra!

However, I don’t think the two are connected. Saunter “stroll” seems to have turned up too late to be derived from sancta terra, and if we add saunter “muse” to the equation, the senses won’t fit. Also, I keep thinking that saunter was coined or revived in the palace slang of King Charles II, and if so, at that time, everybody would have known the reference to pilgrims, but Skinner did not. Thus, roam may not throw light on saunter.

There has been a vague feeling that saunter consists of the prefix s and some Romance root. Hence the suggested etymon s’adventurer “to expose oneself to danger.” Skeat at one time reluctantly accepted this uninviting solution, though he admitted that no analog of such an odd derivation could be found. Auntre, the Old French for “adventure,” loomed large in various hypotheses, but no one could account for initial s, and of course, “to adventure oneself” sounded odd. The latest attack on saunter known to me was made in 1945. Leo Spitzer (Philological Quarterly 44, pp. 27-28) derived the verb from Old French cintrer “to mold an arch” (originally “to gird”) and then, allegedly, to “search, stroll, muse.” Perhaps saunter “to muse” and saunter “to stroll” do belong together, but it is rather unlikely that the verb that interests us has a long, complicated history between French and English.

Here are a few other suggestions, given below for amusement’s sake. “Is it possible that sauntering should be derived from sanitas, and have, when applied to a walk, the same meaning as our common word constitutional?” (1874). Our common word! Cornelia Blimber informed little Paul Dombey that she was going for a constitutional, and Paul wondered what that was. If you, too, wonder, (re)read the unforgettable Chapter 12 of the novel Dombey and Son. Constitutional, a piece of university slang (no citations predating 1829 in the OED; Dombey and Son was published in installments between 1846 and 1848), was not so short-lived, it appears. Another guess, antedating Weekley: “The dual signification of [Spanish] santéro, i.e. ‘one who collects alms for a holy man or hermit’ and ‘a hypocrite’, together with the lazy life led by like hangers-on of the Church, may serve to render such a supposition [santero as the etymon of saunter] plausible—at least on the surface” (1889). “Armstrong’s Gaelic Dictionary has sanntair, a stroller, a lounger—derived from sannt, lust or carnal inclination—and sanntach, lustful; whence to Santee—to prowl about and follow women with a lustful desire” (thus, saunter from Gaelic; 1875). And so it goes (one luminary after another): Hensleigh Wedgwood, Walter W. Skeat, Richard Morris, and even the indomitable Frank Chance. Etymological sauntering, it appears, is indeed hard work.

_{Featured image: English School, circa 1665. Double portrait of King Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.}