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

[Jim Bullard]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ lists its origin as "unknown".

On 12/30/06, David Addleton <dfaddleton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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"!
> _______________________________________________
> AT-L Mailing List.
>
> Go here to unsubscribe or change your options:
>
> http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/at-l
>


-- 
Jim Bullard
http://www.jimbullard.org
http://hiking.jimbullard.org
http://jims-ramblings.blogspot.com/