Flunkeys and lackeys two centuries ago

In An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, I called William L. Blackley’s 1869 book Word Gossip singularly uninformative, and I am sorry for that remark. One consolation is that when we are young and say something inappropriate or wrong, we fear swift retribution. But with age, most of us realize that the chance of being noticed (whatever we publish) is close to zero and lose no sleep over the mishap. Yet I am indeed sorry that I based a negative opinion of a respectable work on the basis of several unfortunate pages and will now discuss a few things that may be of interest to the readers of this blog.

The Reverend William Lewery Blackley (1830-1902) was an active parish priest in Ireland, a well-known (successful!) social reformer, and the author of many books. Unfortunately, I could not find his portrait on the Internet. By way of compensation, we featured an anonymous parish priest in the header. Blackley knew German and French very well and must have had a good command of Swedish. His education as a prospective churchman presupposed a study of Greek and Latin (and most probably, of Hebrew). Incidentally, quite a few British churchmen were linguists. Thus, the great Walter William Skeat was an Anglican deacon, but he could not function in that capacity because of problems with his voice, while being a professor at Cambridge did not require too much lecturing. (What a contrast! Today’s linguists may not be moderately proficient in any language except their own, while professors teach a good deal as a matter of course.)

Word Gossip was “a series of [fifteen] familiar essays on words and their peculiarities” that first appeared in Churchman’s Shilling Magazine and were published in book form in 1869 by Longmans, Green and Co. (London). In the introduction we read: “The kind reception accorded to the matter of the following pages on its appearance this year [1868] in successive numbers of ‘Churchman’s Shilling Magazine’ had induced me to republish it in a collected form.” I am aware of a single review of the book (in the Athenæum), but there must have been others, and perhaps letters from the readers.

Thoughts (very sensible thoughts) on etymology are strewn all over the volume of 234 pages. However, only the last two chapters deal directly with words of disputed origin. Blackley was aware of the linguistic literature of his time and of some old dictionaries, and since he was fluent in German, he did not miss German books on language history (a rare case in England before the days of Henry Sweet and Skeat, though German colleagues sometimes reproached even Skeat for not paying enough attention to their contributions), but surprisingly, he missed Jacob Grimm and remained unaware of the gigantic progress made by historical linguistics between the 1820s and his time. Therefore, even in 1868 his conclusions were of some interest only to the extent that they did not depend on the progress of Indo-European linguistics.

English (like every other European language) is full of native and borrowed words that appeared in print late, and one does not have to be a comparative linguist to discover their origin. Two such English words are flunkey “man in livery; obsequious person” and lackey “footman, valet.” The words are near-synonyms, and neither (especially lackey) is heard or seen too often. Lackey occurred at one time as a term of political abuse; for instance, the phrase the lackeys of the bourgeoisie was much in use in certain circles. Flunkey surfaced in the eighteenth century, and lackey in the sixteenth.

Both words are “of uncertain origin.” Blackley argued that at one time, they must have been applied primarily to soldiers, or rather mercenaries, for which reason they still “retain a contemptuous signification.” He referred to French flanqueur: “It means one who fights on the flank, a skirmisher.” In English, flunkey first meant “a liveried servant” and only later “toady.” Whether correct or not, Blackley’s guess is reasonable, and our best authorities have nothing to add to it. He also had an alternative hypothesis of the origin of flunkey, which I’ll skip, as well as a few fanciful etymologies of this word, not worthy of mention. Incidentally, those who coined the verb flunk don’t seem to have had flunkeys in view.

Lackey is a still harder word. Its Romance source began with the vowel a, which perhaps points to this noun’s Arabic origin, a- being part of the definite article. The Arabic home of lackey was suggested long ago, but the true etymon remains hidden. Blackley refused to go to Arabic and cited Latin laqueus “a rope with a slip knot, and especially a noose used for hanging.” The way from “criminal” to “hanging,” he said, is short. He also mentioned German Strick and Strang, both of which so often meant “rope, used to bind and hang criminals” that Strick became a common epithet “for a good-for-nothing dissipated fellow.” 

Blackley derived both flunkey and lackey from the names of despised mercenaries. His etymology of lackey does not go too far, but I find all the old conjectures worth knowing. Though quite often they are obviously wrong, a certain idea or association may inspire a better approach to the problem. Such at least has been my experience. Not all that is wrong is nonsense. The idea that in researching the origin of lackey we should turn to military terms is, most likely, correct, because in the fifteenth century, a certain class of soldiers, especially crossbowmen, was called alagues, alacays, or lacays. Arabic luk‘a means “worthless, servile; slave.” Skeat gravitated toward the Arabic hypothesis but added: “This is a guess; it is much disputed.” Yet this guess sounds no less probable than a direct derivation from Italian leccare or German lecken “to lick.” As mentioned above, our best authorities prefer to say almost nothing about the etymology of lackey, which is a pity.

The last word I’ll mention here, bat-fowling, is unknown to me, and it is probably unknown to most of our readers. The OED cites no contemporary examples. Bat-fowling means “catching birds at night by dazing and then netting them.” Blackley was sure that throughout England (!), “people said bat-folding, and for good reason…. The instrument in question is a net stretched upon a rood frame, consisting of two parts which, when opened out, are about of the same shape as a large paper kite, or a gigantic racket, or bat, and is hinged at the top, the ends at the bottom being in the operator’s hands.” I wonder whether those remarks deserve the attention of our lexicographers. Anyway, reading Blackley’s book is what my students call fun. Very much in accordance with the remarks about bat-fowling, I’ll cite the title of Chapter 1: “On Word Hunting in General.” Word hunting, by day or at night, is a noble pursuit.

_{Featured image: Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels.}