Isi postingan Anda
put up your dukes
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Monday, August 5, 2013
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Origin
The 'dukes' are the hands or fists. There
doesn't appear to be any obvious connection between 'dukes' and 'fists'
so, before we get to 'put up your dukes', we need an explanation of how
the two words came to be linked. The use of 'dukes' meaning 'hands' is
first referred to in print in the mid 19th century, in both England and
the USA. The American soldier Samuel E. Chamberlain used it in his
memoir My Confession, Recollections of a Rogue, circa 1859:
I landed a stinger on his "potatoe trap" with my left "duke," drawing the "Claret" and "sending him to grass."
The
most commonly repeated suggestion as to how 'dukes' came to mean
'fists' is that it derives from the Cockney rhyming slang - Duke of
Yorks = forks = fingers/hands.
At first sight this seems rather unlikely as
the link between forks and fingers is hardly intuitive. There is a clear
connection though - 'forks' had been a slang term for 'fingers/hands'
since the 18th century. It is recorded as slang for 'pickpocket' in
Nathan Bailey's, Etymological English Dictionary, 1737:
"FORK, a Pick-pocket. Lets Fork him; Let us pick that Man's Pocket. It is done by thrusting the Fingers, strait, stiff, open and very quick into the Pocket, and so closing them, hook what can be held between them."
The term 'fork-out', meaning 'pay money', comes from the same source and is recorded by 1831.
The earliest citation that I can find in print of the expression 'put up your dukes' is in John C. Hotten's Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, 1874, and this also supports the 'forks' = 'fingers' notion:
"Dooks, or dukes, the hands, originally modification of the rhyming slang 'Duke of Yorks,' forks = fingers, hands... The word is in very common use among low folk. 'Put up your dooks' is a kind of invitation to fight."
Alternatively, it is sometimes suggested that 'dukes' is of Romany origin. This belief comes from the Romany word 'dookin', meaning fortune telling or palmistry. H. Brandon, the editor of Poverty, Mendicity and Crime, 1839, lists this meaning in the book's glossary:
"Dookin - fortune telling."
The palmistry association does link 'dookin' with hands, but, that aside, the evidence to support the Romany source is lacking.
Another suggestion is that 'put up your dukes'
derives as a reference to the Marquis of Queensbury, who created the
well-known 'Queensbury Rules' for the regulation of boxing bouts. That's
an appealing idea but, again, there's no real evidence to support it
and, as is obvious, Queensbury was a marquis, not a duke.
Most
Americans won't realise that the expression 'duke it out', which is the
US variant of 'put up your dukes', is in all probability an homage to
the favourite son of the ruler who did all that he could to prevent the
formation of the United States. The ruler was of course the English King
George III and the favoured son was Prince Frederick, Duke of York and
Albany.
[As an aside, if anyone has evidence to support the rumour that the 1994 film 'The Madness of King George' was given that name in the USA because 'The Madness of George III', which was the title of the original play, might have made the poor Yanks think it was a sequel to 'The Madness of George I' and 'The Madness of George II', I would love to see it. Methinks that's probably an urban legend.]
George III was by no means mad, but he did
overestimate the abilities of the young prince. Despite having no
particular military skills, Frederick was made a field marshall and
given control of the British Army. His lack of expertise was lampooned
in the nursery rhyme 'The Grand Old Duke of York', which refers to his
misuse of ten thousand troops in an engagement near Flanders, in which
he 'marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again'.
Despite Frederick's lack of aptitude, he did later institute several
useful military reforms. It is generally accepted that when someone
squares up for a fight and 'puts up his dukes' he is the duke that is
being alluded to.
Although the term 'duke' had been common in the
USA since at least 1859, 'duke it out' didn't occur until the 1960s. An
early use was by Garry Niver, in the The San Mateo Times, May 1964:
"As expected, the Mid-Peninsula League baseball chase is going right down to the wire. However, instead of two teams figuring to duke it out for the coveted crown, there will be three."
Copyright © Gary Martin, 1996 - 2013
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