Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/20

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NOTES AND QtJERIES. t8*s.m.jA.7 f m

meaning of "bounder" expresses the very opposite the insider. See " I. 3. One who occupies a 'bound' or tract of tin-ore ground"; with an equally informing quotation : " 1708, Lond. Gaz., 4458/1. The Owners, Bounders,

Adventurers concerned in Tin at

Truroe." But as there is no indication of the word being revived in this sense, no confusion need be occasioned. "Bounder" in its present invidious sense need not, I suppose, be confined to one gender, but I heard it applied to a woman for the first time in John Oliver Hobbes's ' Ambassador,' the speaker being represented as a woman in good society. KILLIGREW.

" What is a bounder 1 " With a view to getting at the root-idea of the word I put this ques- tion to an acquaintance whose knowledge of slang is extensive and peculiar. "A bounder?" he answered ; " a howling bounder ? Oh, he 's a fellow with lots of bounce no end of a cad." I think the definition suggests a far more likely origin for the term than NEMO'S. How- ever this may be, NEMO'S suggestion derives no support from the phrase " a rank outsider," which denotes a horse that has been entered for a race, but has no chance of winning, or only the remotest possible chance.

C. C. B.

It, appears to me that the paling which this kind of person attempts to scale is the pale of " society," beyond which his natural habitat is found. If guesses may be hazarded, here is mine : it is his self-assertion, his " bounce," that entitles him to the name of " bounder."

ST. SWITHIN.

Is not the idea that of the man who habitu- ally goes to the utmost bound, or limit, in dress, or ethics, or manners, or all three ? He is one who has no reserve force, and is always at the last gasp or penny's length, so to speak. ARTHUR MAYALL.

Obviously "one on the boundary of the demi-monde" " Bounder " is not likely to supplant " cad." The latter is found in society, the former wants to be there.

DUDLEY WALTON.

High Street, Kingston-on-Thames.

Surely this word means " outsider," and is formed, schoolboy fashion, from " bounds." When it first came into fashion it was always used as above, and accepted as expressing the secular contempt of " gown " for " town," of "class" for "mass," of culture for philis- tinism. The late E. F. Fay, whose pen- name it was, most certainly meant it as an equivalent for " outsider." As public-school

and Varsity man, and admitted expert in slang, his testimony is good. H. H. S.

Sausset, Bouches-du-Rhone.

WILLIAM PRYNN (9 th S. ii. 288, 336, 496). MR. HEMS is in error I trust he will pardon me for correcting him in stating at the last reference that Mr. George Halford Fellowes- Prynne is President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He should have said Pre- sident of the London Architectural Associa- tion, a quite different body, whose active members are, for the most part, pupils and junior assistants in London offices, and which meets at 56, Great Marlborough Street. The R.I.B.A., whose rooms are at 9, Conduit Street, where it possesses a very extensive library of books on architecture and the allied arts, is at present presided over by Prof. George Aitchison, R.A.

BENJ. WALKER, A.R.I. B. A.

Langstone, Erdington.

GLADSTONE'S WELSH FOREFATHERS (9 th S. ii. 486). Is it not a pity to waste space on such a question as this ? The Welsh blood in Mr. Gladstone's veins must have been so attenu- ated in the interval between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries as to be of no account. Moreover, as I pointed out in 'N. <fe Q.' many years ago, most of us are descended from kings and queens one way or another if we only knew it ; and even I who write might claim cousinship with Mr. Glad- stone if descent from Llewelyn ap lorwerth constituted affinity. A. CALDER

" SOOT " (9 th S. ii. 427). Smart in his edition of Walker (1846, p. xxiii, 118) writes :

"The other words in which the short sound is denoted by the letters oo in the ordinary spelling of the language are wool, wood, good, hood, stood, foot, and their compounds, to which we may add soot ; for though this word, probably from being con- founded with those which are spelled with, long exhibited the anomaly of being pronounced sut, it is now by the best speakers classed with the words preceding it."

I suspect soot has served as a rime tor foot from the earliest times, but rimes are hard to find, and are fallacious indices of pronun- ciation. Bysshe in his 'Dictionary of Rhymes,' published in 1702, gives the follow- ing under oot : " Boot, coot, root, foot, shoot, soot, hoot." Walker says (I quote from the 1818 or eighteenth edition) : "Soot is vulgarly

E renounced so as to rhyme with but, hut, &c., ut ought to have its long, regular sound, rhyming with boot, as we always hear it in the compound sooty" Coleridge in his 'Ancient Mariner' (part iii. penult, stanza)