I was wondering where the term “chuck wagon” came from, so I started looking. That Wikipedia article says Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher, introduced the concept in 1866:
Goodnight modified a Studebaker-manufactured covered wagon, a durable Civil War army-surplus wagon, to suit the needs of cowboys driving cattle from Texas to sell in New Mexico. He added a “chuck box” to the back of the wagon, with drawers and shelves for storage space and a hinged lid to provide a flat working surface.
But what was this “chuck”? I went to the OED’s chuck wagon entry (from 1933) and found it was their chuck n.⁵, which is “perhaps the same as chuck n.⁴”: “A lump; a large awkward-shaped piece of wood for burning, a chock n.¹; also of bread, meat, and the like, a chunk n.¹” (sense 2: “a cut of beef extending from the horns to the ribs, including the shoulder-piece”); unfortunately, the entry is from 1889, and the etymology is simply “apparently originally the same as chock n.¹” So we go to chock n.¹ “A piece or block of wood; a log, a stump”; this entry was revised in 2015, and the etymology is more discursive, even if it ultimately wanders off into a swamp:
Apparently < Middle French (northern) choque (also chouque; French regional (northern) choque, chouque), apparently originally a variant of soche, souche log, block of wood (11th cent. in Old French in Rashi as çoce; French souche), further etymology uncertain and disputed; compare Italian ciocco log, block of wood (14th cent.).
I don’t know how you get choque, chouque from soche, souche, but it looks like that’s the best that can be done for now. (In case you’re wondering, they didn’t serve chuck steak at a chuck wagon: “The meats were greasy cloth-wrapped bacon, salt pork, and beef, usually dried, salted or smoked.”)
Green’s has “chuck” from 1837 (and the unrelated? “tuck” from 1835).
OP: I was wondering where the term “chuck wagon” came from, so I started looking. That Wikipedia article says Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher, introduced the concept in 1866:
I was expecting this to be the actual explanation.
Heh. That would have been convenient!
Chuck wagon and the possibly-earlier chuck box are attested (so far) after the Civil War.
Dictionary of American Regional English gives a possibly relevant sense for chuck
noun1 part 2, food, a meal; quotes from 1865.
I don’t know how you get choque, chouque from soche, souche
It’s messy. TLFI shows c. 1180 çoche, latter 1200s choque, 1360s souche, etc. FEW likewise has a mixture. Under *tsŭkka ‘baumstrunk’ it says, “mfr. nfr. souche, anorm. chouque”. The key, FEW explains a few dense pages later, is a metathesis of the two consonants in some dialects, plus more transparent sound changes.
Rashi’s form is the earliest attestation (late 1000s), quoted by both the TLFI and FEW as çoche, following Darmesteter and Blondheim (p. 28, §218). D&B indeed reconstruct plural çoches, but the sources vary: (transliterated) suks (“pr. soc[a]s”), çuks, çaks, eukç (I’d call it a miscopying, but ע for ש is not as obvious as e for ç), skots, sukiis, askuts. I can’t tell which sources are considered more authentic. Surely not all of the copyists knew French (Rashi’s French in particular)¹.
Incidentally, the word comes up in Rashi’s commentary on tractate Shabbat, wherein is discussed what kind of wood may be burned on the Sabbath, and in what manner.
Moshe Katan’s Otzar La‘azei Rashi (§126, in Hebrew) builds on Darmesteter and adds some newer sources, but it only gives צוק̃יש coches. Katan’s work is aimed not at the philologist but at the reader of Rashi, and therefore dispenses with the critical apparatus.
To complicate matters, Rashi used a plain ק for a /k/ and a form with a tilde/zarqa, ק̃, for what is transcribed as a <ch>, a /t͡ʃ/ I suppose. Katan marks them distinctly. Darmesteter and Blondheim are aware of the distinction but quote both as a plain ק, which makes me nervous (maybe needlessly) about their accuracy. Probably many of the manuscripts can be read online but I’m not going that far.
¹ That would be an interesting avenue for textual criticism: identifying the chain of texts by relying on words which the copyists would not know and would thus not correct. Perhaps someone has done this already.
Wow, what a swamp! Thanks for wading into it and sharing what you found.
That would be an interesting avenue for textual criticism: identifying the chain of texts by relying on words which the copyists would not know and would thus not correct.
It would indeed.
Whoopses: Katan writes צוק̃יש, with the tilde.
Also D&S should be D&B, and the closing quote should precede the closing parenthesis.
I think I fixed them all; let me know if there’s anything else.
Thanks!
I wouldn’t quibble, but I think you might not mind: the double quote after the italic s should be explicitly made a closing quote.
Mind? What an idea! I love that sort of detail. Done!