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A section for all you budding etymologists where each week the origin of a word or phrase is investigated.
This week it is..... Bale out/bail out
Various meanings, including ‘making an emergency
parachute escape from an aeroplane’ and ‘ladling water
from a boat’.
This is an unusual phrase (or is that pair of phrases?) in
that it isn’t the origin or the meaning that is the source
of debate, but the spelling. Is it ‘bale out’ or bail out’,
and should there be different spellings for the different
meanings of the phrase? Those meanings would be a
good place to start:
Make an emergency exit from an aeroplane, using a
parachute; Ladle water from a boat; Liberate from
prison, into the security of a guarantor; Jump from a
surfboard/skateboard/bicycle etc., in order to avoid
getting injured; Step away from a pitch in baseball.
You may be clear in your own mind as to the correct
spelling for each of these. Whichever you opt for you
will have no difficulty in finding supporting examples
in print. There are many examples of both ‘bail out’
and ‘bale out’ for all of the above meanings. There is a
‘correct’ spelling for each however, based on whether
the expression in question derives from ‘bale’ or ‘bail’
and, more significantly, where you live. In the USA, ‘bail’
is almost always used for all variants.
Let’s take the meanings for which there is a degree of
agreement about the spelling. The ‘ladling of water from
a boat’ is properly written as ‘bailing’ or ‘bailing out’. This
derives from ‘baile’, which is an early name for a bucket
or pail. It is tempting to imagine that a bail is some sort of
cross between a bucket and a pail, but that’s just fancy.
This usage has been known since the 17th century; for
example, Samuel Purchas’s Pilgrimage, 1613:
They bailed and pumped two thousand tuns [another
vessel for liquids ] and yet were ten foot deepe.
‘Liberating from prison’, often on the payment of a
surety, is also unambiguously ‘bailing out’. This derives
from the French ‘baillier’ meaning ‘to deliver on trust’.
This usage dates back to the 14th century in French and
appears in Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, 1588:
Thou shalt not baile them, see thou follow me.
The last two, which both utilize the sense of ‘bail’ as
withdrawing from something, are clearly of fairly recent
American derivation and it is reasonable to defer to
the US ‘bail’ spelling there. The earliest example I can
find of such is in Ted Masters’ Surfing Made Easy, 1962:
Bailing out, getting off and away from the surfboard
on purpose.
What is essentially the same meaning of ‘bailing’ was
adopted as Valley Speak, as demonstrated in Mimi
Pond’s Valley Girl’s Guide to Life, 1982:
When you skip school.., it’s cool to go, ‘like, I bailed,
man.’ Or when you leave a party, you go, ‘Let’s bail.’
The only meaning of ‘bail/bale out’ for which the spelling
is widely disputed is the emergency exiting of aeroplanes.
This depends on whether the allusion being made is to
aircrew being bundled out of a stricken aeroplane like a
bale of hay, or being tipped out as in the bailing out of a
boat. An alternative allusion for the ‘bail’ spelling would
be the ‘bailing out of’, that is, the removing from, jail.
The US ‘bail out’ shows that they rejected the bale of hay
imagery. It isn’t that the US have opted to spell hay-bale
as hay-bail - they are quite happy to ‘tote that barge and
lift that bale’. The earliest reference I can find to the
naming of the jump from an aircraft is from the USA, in
a September 1925 edition of The Oakland Tribune:
The pilot who has to ‘bail out’ hurriedly from a crippled
or burning plane.
In other parts of the English-speaking world, should
you decide to record your heroic jump from an aircraft,
you’d be advised to write it as ‘bale out’. The first record
of this from a non-US source is Fred Tredrey’s flying
school diary, Pilot’s Summer, 1939:
If you bale out and land in water... a smart rap will
release the whole lot and you can swim free.
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