Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
From: hoey@aic.nrl.navy.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 03 Feb 1995 23:05:37 GMT
Subject: Re: argle-bargle

Jerry Young <jerry_l_yo...@oakqm3.sps.mot.com> writes:

> For no particular reason, I have been making a list of expressions that
> are made of two repeated words that differ from one another by a vowel or
> a consonant....

A wonderful collection.  But how could you miss Hobson-Jobson, a
favorite word of word collectors.  A Hobson-Jobson is a
folk-etymological alteration of a borrowed word.  It is itself one: it
comes from the Muslim ritual cry "ya Hasan, ya Husayn!" which the
English heard as common surnames.

Speaking of which, a friend of mine claims that "How do you do" is a
Hobson-Jobson for an Old English greeting cognate to "Health to you."
The idea is that the Normans, hearing this greeting, thought it was
the question "How do?" and regularized the grammar.  Has anyone seen
research supporting or contesting this, or providing another reason
for asking the odd question "How do you do?"

Dan
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil