Another word that keeps popping up in our reading of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet (see this post) is gymkhana, and eventually I thought to investigate it, since I was fuzzy about both meaning and etymology. Wiktionary says:
From Hindustani گیند خانہ (gendxānā) / गेंदख़ाना (gendxānā, “racquet court”), from گیند / गेंद (gend, “ball”) + خانہ / ख़ाना (xānā, “court”). Influenced by gymnastics and gymnasium.
I’ve probably learned that before, but the fake gymnastics connection makes it hard to remember the true origin! And I think the Raj-related meaning is better explained in the OED entry (from 1900):
Originally Anglo-Indian.
‘A place of public resort at a station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games of sorts are provided’ (Y.). Hence (esp. in European use), an athletic sports display. Now spec. a meeting at which horses and their riders take part in games and contests; also a competition designed to test driving skill. Also attributive, as gymkhana club, gymkhana meeting.
1861 [‘The first use of it that we can trace is (on the authority of Major John Trotter) at Rurki in 1861, when a gymkhana was instituted there’.—Y.]
1877 Their proposals are that the Cricket Club should include in their programme the games, etc., proposed by the promoters of a gymkhana Club.
Pioneer Mail 3 November
[…]
I was surprised the first citation was so late; I’ve antedated it to 1854 (“The Gymkhana opens to-morrow, and a goodly meet is expected to take place, weather permitting”), but I got discouraged from trying to take it further back because the metadata on the alleged pre-1860 hits at Google Books is so terrible.
For comparatively early evidence of the automotive sort of gymkhana I recommend the article “Sports Cars Have a Field Day” in the May 1953 issue of _Popular Mechanics_. I remember reading about such gymkhanas circa 1976 in an old book about sports cars that belonged to my father and was probably published at roughly the same time he had bought his ’57 TR-3 (which was ’60 or ’61 – he didn’t get it new). I think it may have already been a bit archaic by ’76 in US sports-car parlance.
ETA: Relevant claimed origin story from wikipedia: “The origin of motorsport gymkhana is not certain. However, it is speculated that it might have begun after World War 2, when American soldiers brought home small and nimble cars from Europe. The smaller cars designed for dense European cities could not compete in races against American cars meant for open countryside, so new events were designed for them involving skillful maneuvering through complex courses. This soon evolved into the American form of autocross.”
I know gymkhana well, but only in the horsy sense. A gymkhana with motor cars provokes an amusing mental image.
Here’s some footage (grainy super 8, no audio) of sport-car gymkhana shot in 1962 in Minnesota: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceq7ZaCv8FA
Oh and this longer thing on gymkhanas open only to Chevrolet Corvairs (“unsafe at any speed,” said the haters) has a discussion on “what is a gymkhana” starting around 1:50. The dudes talking are extremely “square” in their hairstyle and dress (a glimpse of the lost world that was destroyed as soon as the goddam Beatles turned up on the Ed Sullivan Show) but they presumably liked doing wacky things in their Corvairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0v53DQFISc
More etymology at AHD:
(khan-2 is not a ruler but “A caravansary in certain Asian countries”, from “Arabic ḫān, inn, from Persian khān, house, from Middle Persian.” I didn’t know that one!)
The Hindi-Urdu word is pronounced with initial /g/ (according to Wiktionary), so the pronunciation must have been eggcornized along with the spelling.
“Y.” = Yule = Hobson-Jobson, and their opinion was “This word is quite modern, and was unknown 25 years ago” (first edition, 1886, referring to the 1861 date as cited by the OED; changed to “40 years ago” in the 1903 edition). So possibly it really doesn’t go back much farther than your 1854.
Thanks for that!
It’s interesting that the OED uses the word “needful” in its entry for an Anglo-Indian word, because that’s such a marker for Indian English today. Coincidence? Was needful a more common word in the early 1900s?
It’s funny, I noticed the same thing and had the same thought.
Not a coincidence, that sentence about “needful facilities” is quoted from Hobson-Jobson (“Y.” is a cryptic abbreviation for most readers today, but revision is slow). And yes, the Google ngram shows “needful” was more than 10 times more common in the 1880s than it is now in British and American English.
The OED has no regional label on needful or the phrase do the needful. Maybe it should. (Do the Needful previously at Language Hat.)
I’ve just been rereading Hobson-Jobson and have been noticing how many -khana words there were for different spaces or events, including burra-khana, jail-khana, poggle-khana…
Thanks ktschwarz.
It seems crazy to me that there’s no “do the needful” marker in the OED. I think it’s probably the single most obvious marker of Indian English, especially in a business context.
“Do the Needful” shoulda been a semi-novelty dance craze record. Do the Frug. Do the Funky Chicken. Etc.
Government taking over Delhi Gymkhana Club.