[at-l] "Hiker" -- the word

[David Addleton]

Where did it come from? What's its etymology? Did it start out as a
pejorative reference to a person holding a particular dock-side profession
existing in the 1700s and early 1800s, only later to get shortend to "hike"
to refer to a "long walk"? Or, did it start out as a reference to a "long
walk" first, before getting turned into a reference to a person who takes a
long walk, using the reverse logic of disposing of the "r" that refers to
the person doing the thing to which it refers?

I ran across an English reference to "hyke" employed to refer to a long
walk, but my browser crashed before I could take a screen grab. I don't even
know the date of that reference and I haven't yet found it again.

I went hunting for the etymology of the word "hiker" and came up quite
short.

The OED is available online to subscribers only: I'd sure like a copy of its
article on the word "hiker" a derivative presumably of "hike" --- but maybe
it's the other way around if the word and its meaning came from America and
not the island of origin.

The online dictionaries searched at Dictionary.com cannot be correct. These
entries date the word "hiker" to 1800-1810 for its first written provenance.
However, the surname "Hiker" predates these references: just run a Google
Book search for the word "Hiker" and you'll find plenty of people who bore
that surname in 1700s and before. Professions were a source of surnames at
that time. Eliminating those references from the over 600 full content
online books is a daunting task I'm not yet ready to perform. Netscape dive
bombs when I get too many of those books open and they take way to long to
load given my (allegedly) broadband connection.

Etymologists need to be wary of words that use the Roman alphabet but come
to English from other languages, eg., the German and Scandanavian languages
which all have morphologically similar words that do not bear the same
meaning as "hike" in American English of the 1800s (another source of false
hits on Google books). Notwithstanding that concern, Americans are known for
taking slang from immigrants from those countries and putting them to new,
useful and often pejorative purposes.

Merriam-Webster suggests the word may be "akin to hitch" --  (following the
accepted, if speculative, etymology) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/Hiker

On 29 December 2006, Online Etymology dictionary did not have an entry for
"Hiker." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=hiker&searchmode=none.
It did, however, have an entry for "hike" and explains a connection with
"hitch" here:

hike: 1809, Eng. dial. hyke "to walk vigorously," of unknown origin. [Notice
it doesn't say if it came into the language via the mother island or from
one of its colonies.] The noun is from 1865. Sense of "pull up" (as pants)
first recorded 1873 in Amer.Eng., and may be a variant of hitch; extended
sense of "raise" (as wages) is 1867. hitch: (v.) c.1440, probably from M.E.
icchen "to move as with a jerk, to stir" (c.1200). It lacks cognates in
other languages. Sense of "become fastened by a hook" first recorded 1578,
originally nautical; the connection with icchen may be in notion of
"hitching up" pants or boots with a jerking motion. The noun sense of
"obstruction" is first recorded 1748. Military sense of "enlistment" is from
1835; verb meaning "to marry" is from 1844. Hitchhike is first attested
1923, from the notion of hitching a sled to a moving vehicle (a sense first
recorded 1880) + hike. [On the other hand, military slang in the 1800s and
beyond included a meaning for "hike" that meant "to raise" . . . <yet
another source of false hits on Google Books.>

The Wikipedia article about "hiking" may be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiker
Hiking is a form of walking, undertaken with the specific purpose of
exploring and enjoying the scenery. It usually takes place on trails in
rural or wilderness areas.
"The word hiking is understood in all English-speaking countries, but there
are differences in usage. In some places, off-trail hiking is called
cross-country hiking, bushwhacking, or bush-bashing. In the United Kingdom,
hiking is a slightly old-fashioned word, with a flavor rather of
'heartiness' and 'exercise' than of 'enjoying the outdoors' (people in the
UK would be more likely to use more modest terms such as hillwalking, or
simply walking). Australians use the term bushwalking for both on- and
off-trail hiking. New Zealanders use tramping (particularly for overnight
and longer trips), walking or bushwalking. Hiking in the mountainous regions
of Nepal and India is sometimes called trekking. Overnight hiking is called
backpacking in some parts of the world. Hiking a long-distance trail from
end to end is referred to as thru-hiking in some places." So much for
etymology from Wiki!

Etymologists need to be wary of words that use the Roman alphabet but come
to English from other languages, eg., the German and Scandanavian languages
which all have morphologically similar words that do not bear the same
meaning as "hike" in American English. Notwithstanding that concern,
Americans are known for taking slang from immigrants from those countries
and putting them to new and both useful and pejorative purposes.

001 & 002 & 003 jpg:
Hans Breitmann's Barty: And Other Ballads ; Hans Breitmann in Politics : a
Second Series of the... By Charles Godfrey Leland
pp 51-52, n. 3.
Published 1869, by J.C. Hotten, London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Godfrey_Leland credits him with
linguistic knowledge and this book bears out the Wiki article's suggestion
given how employs a pejorative about a German emigrant's American
experience.

<<reference to people who worked in the rag trade on the New York docks,
also known as "hookers" without any reference to the sexual profession...>>

004 & 005 jpg:
In the book *Contested Etymologies in the Dictionary of the Rev. W.W. Skeat"
(by Hensleigh Wedgewood Tru"bner & Co., London, 1882)

<<reference, again, to people who worked in the rag trade on the New York
docks, also known as "hookers" without any reference suggested to the sexual
profession...>>

The footnote in the book about the Breitmann Ballads reads as follows:

<< 'Hiker,' a word popular among the lower orders for a German, the dutch
being, as in this case, superfluous; it is merely an English corruptions of
'haken:' Ger. A hook. the rag-pickers of New York and other eastern
sea-ports, are mostly Germans; their only implement is an iron hook; hence,
they are 'hookers.' Therefore 'hooker,' or 'hiker,' becomes a generic title
of contempt for the whole German-American population. Our English 'to hook,'
'to steal' comes from this implement in the hands of beggars and sturdy
vagabonds of Henry the Eighth's time.>>

In the Hans Brietmann ballad the German emigrant is called a "tam Tooch
hiker" roughly translated into modern English as "damn Dutch hiker" --- a
clear reference to poor Dutch emigrants in the northeastern ports involved
in the rag trade.

What I'd like to know at this point is whether the American pejorative
"Tooch hiker" came to apply to any poor emigrant from the eastern seaboard
who couldn't afford a horse or wagon and walked west in search of better
fortune. Many of them doubtlessly were europeans from Germany, Holland, and
Scandinavia and had similar accents when trying to speak English. Americans
are fond of their rags to riches stories, as demonstrated most recently in
the movie "Pursuit of Happiness." I'm sort of hoping for a rags to riches
story for the word "hiker"!