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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..... Motley crew
An assorted and ill-disciplined group of ne’er do wells.
Since at least the 14th century, ‘motley’ (with a variety
of spellings) has been the name of a type of cloth made
from two or more colours and, in later years, the name
of clothing made from such cloth. There are several
citings of motley in the late 14th century, including this
from the Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
“A marchant was there ... In motlee, and hye on hors
he sat.”
The best-known wearers of motley were jesters of
harlequins and the patchwork costume became their
standard style of stage dress, as in this painting by Frans
Hals, circa 1620.
From the 17th century onward, any miscellaneous
ragbag of undisciplined ne’er-do-wells might find
themselves described as a ‘motley crowd’, ‘motley
herd’, ‘motley assembly’ etc. Added to this list, but with
no especial significance came ‘motley crew’. It may be
that this was in reference to the crews of sailing ships,
with the ‘motley’ being used to distinguish between an
assortment of types, as distinct from a crew of disciplined
and uniformed sailors. The earliest citation that can be
found of ‘motley crew’ in print certainly refers to sailors.
That’s in George Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 1748:
This ship they resolved, if possible, to carry to Europe...
but their great difficulty was to procure a sufficient
number of hands to navigate her. They endeavoured to
supply this defect by pressing many of the inhabitants
of Buenos Ayres, and putting on board besides all the
English prisoners then in their custody, together with
a number of Portuguese smugglers whom they had
taken at different times, and some of the Indians of the
country. With this motley crew (all of them except the
European Spaniards extremely averse to the voyage)
Pizarro set sail from Monte Video.
With the associations of a ‘motley crew’ with indiscipline
and garish costume, what better name for a heavy rock
band? Mötley Crüe formed in 1981 and adopted the
name. In the fashion of the time, like contemporaries
Siouxsie & the Banshees and Enuff Z’nuff, they indulged
in a deliberate misspelling. That fashion has passed
now, but it’s unlikely that their bass player Nikki Sixx
will revert to his given name of Frank Carlton Serafino
Feranna, Jr.
Is there an English phrase or saying that you would
like to know more about?
Email it to us on [email protected]
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