News about Slews

We've looked at tranches, now it's the turn of slews. The word became an element in common English parlance within the past couple of decades, and is used just like the terms tranche and raft to mean a lot of somethings: a 'slew of complaints', cites one modern dictionary; a 'slew of awards' quotes another; and 'a slew of regulations' mentions a third. And you can have a 'slew' of people: which takes us back to the origin of the term - the Irish and Gaelic 'sluagh' meaning a crowd, a multitude, a host. Very likely Irish or Scottish emigrants carried the term across the Atlantic in the nineteenth century to the USA, where it morphed into a slew and entered the US lexicon. Like so many other Americanisms, it has found its way back to the British Isles, and has now joined the terms raft and tranche, available to us as useful alternatives for 'collection' or 'group' or 'host' or the metaphorical 'cartload'.

If you believe you don't know any Irish/Gaelic, think of the word 'slogan' - which has two elements, the first 'sluagh' meaning a host or army; and the second 'gairm' meaning a 'proclamation' or 'shout' - the two together becoming (in the 16th century) the English 'slogan' - the repetitious 'war cry' beloved of politicians, salespersons and pressure groups.

An etymologically challenged Robert Browning, trying to give local colour and period flavour to his poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", wrote "Dauntless the slug-horn to my lip I set, and blew". He must have read somewhere*of the 'sounding of the slughorn' (slogan or war-cry) and been misled by the 'horn' into assuming it was some kind of bugle or trumpet.

* Probably the young eighteenth century forger of antique poetry, Thomas Chatterton, whose not very convincing ye-olde-tea-shoppe style neverthless hoodwinked a number of scholars who should have known better. A sample of his work is his Mynstrelles Songe: "O synge untoe mie roundelaie . . . . . Mie love ys dedde
. . . . under the wyllowe-tree."

News about Slews