Tantivy

[pynchonoid]

3. Weird Words: Tantivy

Riding at full gallop.

This archaic British English word has strong
associations with the
hunting field. Those dictionaries that mention it say
it imitates
the sound of the hooves of galloping horses, but I
can't help but
feel that a better origin lies in the three notes of
the huntsman's
horn when rallying the riders, one that is echoed in a
hunting song
of 1787 by the Irish dramatist John O'Keefe: "With a
hey, ho, chivy
/ Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy". ["Chivy", or
"chevy", is
another old hunting cry.]

A once-common common figurative usage was "to ride
tantivy", to go
at something full speed or headlong, of which a late
example is in
Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson (1917): "He
was of a
nature to ride tantivy into anything that promised
excitement or
adventure".

A century earlier, the ubiquitous Sir Walter Scott had
a character
say in Peveril of the Peak, published in 1824: "There
are those
amongst us who ride tantivy to Rome, and have already
made out half
the journey". This used the word in another sense, of
a nickname
given to high churchmen and Tories after the
Restoration of the
monarchy in 1660. It came from a caricature published
in 1681 that
showed a group of churchmen riding the horse of the
Church of
England madly towards Rome, that is, turning to
Catholicism.

from:
WORLD WIDE WORDS          ISSUE 337          Saturday
19 April 2003
http://www.worldwidewords.org          



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