‘Got any ’ose?’ asked my husband, falling into his Two Ronnies ‘Four Candles’ routine, in which he likes to play not only the shopkeeper but also the customer, with disastrous results. In both the pantyhose and the garden hose in the sketch, the hose was originally the same word.
Hose meant the leggings or trousers our Germanic forefathers wore. In some contexts it long retained the archaic plural hosen. When Nebuchadnezzar in his rage commanded Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to be thrown into the burning fiery furnace, they were bound ‘in their coats, their hosen, and their hats’, according to the translation of 1611. In the pleasantly named A Pisgah-sight of Palestine (Pisgah referring to the summit of Mount Nebo from which Moses saw the Promised Land), written during the Civil War while waiting for things to get better, which they didn’t, Thomas Fuller explains that ‘by hosen we understand not stockins, but breeches’, which he thought Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wore for warmth, ‘Babylon, being somewhat a more northern climate, and colder countrey then Iudea.’
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