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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2010-07-07 11:08:10

David Bird
Eggcornista
From: The Hammer, Ontario
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 1690

"Starch" for staunch

The sense of starch as a verb meaning “to stiffen” stretches back through ME and OE to P.Gmc. and to PIE base *ster-, for “strong, stiff, rigid”. In our dispensation it has come to imply both formal, unbending stiffness, and the oblique sense of vigor, mettle, energy. We’ve recently seen the origin of staunch in another context.
Understanding “staunch” as “starch” would be aided in non-rhotic dialects.

Acknowledgement
Carol, you’re the best “momma bear”, my starch defender.

History of meteorology
The Jesuit order, at this time, was both a starch defender of Aristotle and a promoter of worldwide voyages and missions.

The New World Order
The starch ally of the US, The Bank of England, even joined the French in demanding US gold for dollars. No honor amongst thieves.

Conflict in Asia
Indonesia on the other hand shifted its socialist course after the coup of 1965 that ousted President Sukarno and brought General Suharto and his military to power. He became a starch ally of the West

Indian American business journal
Louisiana governor-elect Bobby Jindal’s starch Republican stance concerns some Indian Americans.

Last edited by David Bird (2010-07-08 07:02:55)

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#2 2010-07-09 12:55:30

jorkel
Eggcornista
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1456

Re: "Starch" for staunch

No one has commented on this one yet, so I’ll just toss in my approval of it. Very credible, and it’ll certainly make my year-end list of favorites.

I also wonder if there is any influence exerted by stark...

Political views, theories…? – Yahoo! UK & Ireland AnswersAn issue may have a stark conservative and a stark liberal position. For example, abortion: For is liberal, while Against is conservative. ...
uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid… – United Kingdom – Cached

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#3 2021-04-28 17:09:21

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2714
Website

Re: "Starch" for staunch

Ran into this one again.

Roberts has always been a starch conservative, but right now, he is trying to keep the ruse of an impartial judiciary intact.

I’ve had experiences in my lifetime that have slid me back and forth between starch conservative and bleeding-heart liberal.

He’s politically very different from me, he’s anti-liberal, very Christian (but that starch conservative Christianity, not that Jesus-hippy kind),

I must say I was pleasantly surprised after dragging my baby-booming, starch-conservative mother out to “Girls Night: The Musical” last night.

Why do these so-called starch conservative politicians have sex liberal lifestyles away from the camera

GUNDY ADVISER Noral Rebin makes no apologies for being a starch conservative in his approach to handling other people’s money.

Montana Standard Newspaper Archives, Mar 16, 1948, p. 1 https://newspaperarchive.com › ... › 1948 … Escape Injury in Plane Mishap Starch Republican Presidential Aspirant Robert Taft of Ohio and Owen Rrewsler escaped injury Monday when a plane in which …

Got a kick out of this comment (from Making Light: Return of the Dreadful Phrases https://nielsenhayden.com › makinglight › archives Dec 7, 2018 — ] :

I think a starch conservative is either someone on a low-carb diet, or someone who likes their shirts very soft and flexible.

Starch liberals and Democrats seem to be in shorter supply than conservatives and Republicans, but they are out there as well:

I have a dumb in-law that’s been a starch Democrat for most of his life, but a borderline racist.

Mr. England is a starch democrat and progressive and public-spirited in all matters of citizenship, being a force in local politics. He was the first mayor of Laredo, ...

In politics he is a starch liberal and hat been prominent at every Democratic convention since 1912.

A variant, which may not be eggcornish at all but just a fairly normal adjectival phrase:

The starchy, conservative lawyer who freed every slave in England. Granville Sharp was not the sort of young radical that films like Belle …

God, as Sidney Adler so memorably put it, is much like the well-appointed gentlemen in Jane Austen’s classic: a bifurcated person — a kind and a starchy liberal …

(There are ±450 hits on “starchy liberal” but ±1600 on “starchy conservative”.)
.
A number of hits are from older documents and may be suspect of coming from OCR mistakes (perhaps from stanch , which is accepted by some dictionaries for staunch in this adjectival sense as well as the verbal one).
.

David suggests this coming from staunch (/stanch ) and Joe suggests stark as another possible source. Arch-(conservative/liberal ) may be at work as well, I think; for many people this may be mostly a blend (e.g. of staunch/stark with arch ). Strict is another word that fits many of these contexts and may be involved, perhaps applying more to constricted conservatives than to free-wheeling liberals??

.

Starched/-y meaning ‘uptight, inflexible’ or ‘full of mettle or vigor’, is as David suggests, a good eggcornish construal, and perhaps also the meaning ‘permeating substance, dyed-in-the-wool’ is infused in there. In any case, the ideas of lack of motion, unchangeability, and/or resistance to pressure are pretty clear in many usages.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2021-04-29 00:18:54)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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