Hobson-Jobson

See also: hobson-jobson

English

WOTD – 8 September 2009

Alternative forms

• hobson-jobson

Etymology

Derived from adapting the call Hassan! Hussein! (حسن حسين (ḥasan! ḥusayn!), a lament for the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad) to Hobson and Jobson, a pair of comic figures popular in the nineteenth century. Note that the conventional derivation from "Ya Hussan! Ya Hussein!" is incorrect. Coined in the linguistic sense by Yule and Burnell in their dictionary Hobson-Jobson.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌhɒb.sənˈdʒɒb.sən/
• IPA^(key): /ˌhɑb.sənˈdʒɑb.sən/

• Audio (AU):

  (file)

Noun

Examples
English hoosegow (“jail”) from Spanish juzgado English plonk (“cheap wine”) from the word "blanc" in vin blanc (“white wine”)

Hobson-Jobson (plural Hobson-Jobsons)

1. (Anglo-Indian, slang, obsolete) Any Indian religious observance, especially the Muharram.
   • 1851, Jamie Gordon, page 85:

     ‘You must be moped to death in this dull place; and next week is Hobson Jobson. Can’t you throw some dust any how, in the eyes of the cat, and meet me and Philip somewhere, and so get away to the Tamacha.’
2. (linguistics, uncountable) The assimilation of borrowed lexis, either partial or whole, to word forms of the borrowing language.
   • 1886, Yule, Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, page 265:

     Falaun, s. [. . .] gradually, by a process of Hobson-Jobson, this was turned into Forlorn.
3. (linguistics, countable) A word or phrase borrowed by one language from another and modified in pronunciation to fit the set of sounds the borrowing language typically uses.

   Coordinate term: mondegreen

   • 1899 June, Indian Antiquary, page 161, column 2:

     CARAFT, here is a delicious Hobson-Jobson from that veritable well of curious Anglo-Indianisms, the Madras Manual of Administration[.]

   • 1977, Robert H. Stacy, Defamiliarization in Language and Literature, page 51:

     If the French for pun, calembour, derives (as Spitzer maintained) from "conundrum"; this points up well the at first puzzling effect of such devices. Caran d'Ache is in fact an intentional hobson-jobson.

   • 2003, Jan Venolia, The Right Word!, page 4:

     A Hobson-Jobson turns a difficult word or phrase into something more tractable (or perhaps less offensive). By that route, a Texas river that French trappers had named Purgatoire became the Picketwire, and the Malay word kampong became the English word compound.

Derived terms

• law of Hobson-Jobson

Translations

borrowed word or phrase with altered pronunciation

• Finnish: erikoislaina
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

See also

• calque
• Entries referring to "Hobson-Jobson" at Wiktionary

Further reading

• Hobson-Jobson on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Yule, Henry, Sir. Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. New ed. edited by William Crooke, B.A. London: J. Murray, 1903. A part of the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia.
• Full text of Hobson-Jobson, 2nd edition, at Wikisource
• Full text of Hobson-Jobson, 2nd edition, at Google Books