"IS THE word gallivanting very old?" asks a man born and bred in London's Boswell Street. His name is John Chang and he was introduced to this column by his Irish girlfriend.
How old gallivanting is I'm not sure. It was first seen in print in 1824, in a book by W.H. Pyne called Wine and Walnuts, but it may have been around the streets long before that.
In the 19th century it became quite an in word, thanks to Thackeray. It then meant, as it means today, to gad about seeking pleasure it also meant to flirt, an occupation one can pursue without gadding, I'm told. Pyne's hero, for example, was "sitting at his ease gallivanting with a publican's daughter".
Origin? Oxford thinks that it may be a humorous perversion of gallant. There is a French dialect word, galvauder, and the American World Books Dictionary asks us to consider this.
a Dub is an oldword for Loughlin tells me. It was her granny's word.
An old word this, found in Scotland as well as in the north of this blessed isle. Tyrone's Carleton wrote of "the dub before the door" in Fardorougba the Miser and Burns has:
"O ye whaleave the springs of
Calvin
For gumlie dubs of your ain delvin."
The Scots also have the marvellous dub skelper. To skelp in this case means to trod heavily, to splash, so that a dub skelper is a person who doesn't care where he walks and by figurative extension, one of those who spakes his mind, and who doesn't care who's listenin'. A bosthoon. Anyway, Mary's dub is from Low German dobbe, a pool of stagnant water.
From Great Yarmouth comes a letter from J.H. Franklin, who asks me to throw some light on the word fowt, an idiot. Gross's dictionary of 1790 has it, spelt fout: "An expression of contempt." A Great Yarmouth man won't be surprised that the word came from Scandinavia originally. The Old Norse was fauti, a fatuous man.
The Yorkshire word shouldn't be confused with the Ulsterfou, a spoiled child, a pet. This is a Scots import and an old word it is. Barbour used it in his Bruce, back in 1375.
Finally, in answer to many letter, gombeen is from Irish gaimbin. interest on a loan, from Middle English cambie, barter, exchange, from medieval Latin cambium, from a Celtic word tentatively identified by Whitley Stokes as kmbion.