I was standing near a row of books, minding my own business, when a man pointed to a page in a book, and said something like “this says hoi polloi means the masses; I thought it meant the upper class”.
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The book reader was probably thinking of hoity toity.
I remembered writing something about hoi polloi several years ago. I think it followed a newspaper article suggesting some people in the USA had fenced off a beach near their Hollywood homes.
I remember the newspaper article had commented they wanted to keep out “the hoi polloi”.
I suppose they were the hoity toity, in other words the upper class (in their minds anyway) who wanted to keep out the hoi polloi, or the masses.
I can’t remember how the standoff was resolved, if ever it was resolved. But I do remember travelling along the roads west of Hollywood and noting the houses that had fences running down the beaches to the water, to keep out the “hoi polloi”, or the vulgar people.
Speaking of the word vulgar, I have a dictionary called the dictionary of the vulgar tongue. A friend of mine insisted on borrowing the book, expecting it to be full of rude words, and returned it most indignantly because it didn’t live up to expectations.
Anyway, back to hoi polloi.
This expression thrust itself upon the English-speaking people in the same year that hoity-toity made an impact – 1668.
In that year, John Dryden in his essay called Of Dramatick Poesie spoke of the people, the multitude, the hoi polloi. In the same year Sir Roger L’Estrange wrote about widows chanting and jigging to every tune they heard, “and all upon the Hoyty-Toyty”.
The earliest meaning of hoity-toity, whichever way it has been spelt, was of riotous or giddy behaviour, even people who considered they had more fun than others. Hoi polloi on the other hand represented the masses.
Over the years those fun-loving hoity-toity people have embraced an air of superiority, something like “my party’s better than your party”, so that these days a hoity-toity person is regarded as someone who generates, rightly or wrongly, a superior air.
The expression hoi polloi, on the other hand, represents all the rest of us nobodies, still seeking our 15 minutes of fame. The word “the” before the Greek expression hoi polloi is redundant, although we often see it in print these days.
Hoi polloi is in danger of losing its original meaning as people seem to assume it means the rich and famous.
“Why is it so?” that professor once said.
I can only assume it is because hoi polloi sounds so similar to hoity-toity, which has also undergone a change in meaning.
Incidentally, the word polloi came from the same word that led to polygamy, but don’t you worry about that.
So a hoity-toity person who once loved to engage in boisterous behaviour (“giddy, thoughtless, romping”) is now seen as being “stuck up”. And the masses, or hoi polloi, are heading the same way, if people keep misunderstanding it..
We’re running out of words to describe you and me.
Well, I know how to describe me, but I’m a bit worried about you.
www.lauriebarber.com; lbword@midcoast.com.au
