Some words for Saturday

[A participant in a drag hunt organised by the Spring Valley Hounds of New Jersey in 2018. See reference 1. Turned up by Bing]

This morning, no doubt prompted by ITV3, I got to wondering about where the term of detective mystery 'red herring' came from.

I learn, first from Webster's (handily kept upstairs), then from OED, that the foundations of this usage were laid in the seventeenth century, a time before foxes were the plague they are now. So when the hunt master failed to turn up a real fox to hunt, he sometimes resorted to drag hunting. First choice, a dead fox, second choice a dead cat or dog; and, if all else failed, a kipper, sometimes known as a red herring. Kept in barrels in the larder, so one was usually able to lay one's hands on one.

So at that time the red herring was what you really wanted to chase down, but gradually the present usage of diversion, of false scent took over. A shift perhaps helped along by the fact that the drag hunt itself was a bit of a fake.

Red herring is also curious in that it can refer both to an individual kipper or the generality of kippers, as in 'the cow is a smelly animal'. While the plural form is more usually reserved for a small number, for several red herrings.

Somewhere along the way I noticed that 'seer', as in prophet or visionary was to 'see' as employer is to employ. Possibly the agentive variety of a deverbal noun. With this last term being new to me, but seemingly respectable, as in, for example, reference 2. I associate to the gerund of Latin lessons, remembering the word but not its meaning, apart from it being something to do with verbs.

From which we get 'overseer', not very prophetic at all.

Also, once of measure of weight or capacity in India.

While seersucker, a material of which BH and her family were fond, is derived from the old Persian for 'milk and sugar', the name of a striped linen or cotton material from India, with the puckering or crimping that we know the material for now. In my case, in a striped jacket I used to wear for the races, but mistaken by some customers of TB for regatta-wear.

PS: the background to the image looks like maize to me. I wonder if the farmers of New Jersey get as fed up with the antics of the hunting set as some farmers do here? Remembering here that hunting on a horse was the sport of farmers as well as of toffs, particularly in Ireland.

Reference 1: http://www.springvalleyhounds.com/.

Reference 2: Deverbal Nouns in Knowledge Representation - Olga Gurevich, Richard Crouch, Tracy Holloway King, Valeria De Paiva - 2006.