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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..... Beck and call
To be at someone’s beck and call is to be entirely
subservient to them; to be responsive to their slightest
request.
’Call’ is used here with its usual meaning. ‘Beck’ is more
interesting. The word, although it has been in use in
English since the 14th century, isn’t one that is found
outside the phrase ‘beck and call’ these days. It is merely
a shortened form of ‘beckon’, which we do still know
well and understand to mean ‘to signal silently, by a nod
or motion of the hand or finger, indicating a request or
command’.
If the term ‘beck and call’ had originated prior to the
14th century we would presumably now say ‘beckon
and call’. It didn’t though and the first recorded use
of ‘beck and call’ in print is in Aemilia Lanyer’s set of
poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 1611:
The Muses doe attend vpon your Throne,
With all the Artists at your becke and call;
That is straightforward enough. What brings the phrase
to the attention of etymologists is the confusion that
some people have between it and ‘beckon call’. This
supposed phrase is a simple mishearing of ‘beck and
call’. The mistake comes about because no one uses
‘beck’ any longer, whereas ‘beckon’ is commonplace.
‘Beckon call’ could be said not to be a phrase in English
at all, but it is gaining some ground nevertheless. The
misspelling began in the USA in the early 20th century;
for example, this early citation from The Modesto NewsHerald, May 1929:
A crowd of several hundred people heard a stirring address
by B. W. Gearhart, Fresno attorney and American Legion
official. “Down through the history of American wars,
from the Revolutionary to the recent World conflict,” the
speaker declared, “America always has had at its beckon
call men who would give their all for their country that
people might enjoy peace and freedom.
The rogue phrase still appears in print in newspapers.
Here’s a recent example from the London Daily Mirror,
by Phil Differ and Jonathan Watson:
He [football manager Dick Advocaat] told me what he
was particularly looking forward to when he comes to
Scotland and that’s having the entire Scottish press at
his beckon call and I promised he won’t be disappointed.
Just because ‘beckon call’ is based on a mishearing
doesn’t mean that it won’t one day become accepted as
proper English. Other phrases, like ‘beg the question’
for instance, are routinely used incorrectly by so many
people that the incorrect usage has now become the
standard. Let’s hope ‘beckon call’ dies a natural death,
not only because it is essentially just a spelling mistake
but because its adoption would signal the last gasp of
the enjoyable little word ‘beck’.
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