Re: Etymology of "quandary"

I don't think the stress on the second syllable was ever normative; Oxford
(as far as I can find online) and Merriam-Webster's Third don't even
mention it. I believe it stems, surprising as it may seem, from the scene
in Gilbert and Sullivan's *Iolanthe* where the fairies invade the House of
Lords. The Lord Chancellor, taking them for a group of teenagers (fairies
are always young, after all), tries to get rid of them, but the Queen of
the Fairies stands up to him:

Queen.

Oh! Chancellor unwary
It's highly necessary
⁠Your tongue to teach
⁠Respectful speech—
Your attitude to vary!

Your badinage so airy,
Your manner arbitrary,
⁠Are out of place
⁠When face to face
With an influential Fairy!
*All the Peers* (*aside*).

⁠I never knew
⁠We were speaking to
An influential Fairy!
Lord Ch.

A plague on this vagary!
I'm in a nice quandary!
⁠Of hasty tone
⁠With dames unknown;
I ought to be more chary!
It seems that she's a fairy
From Andersen's libr*a*ry,
⁠And I took her for
⁠The proprietor
⁠Of a Ladies' Seminary!
All.

⁠ {     {\displaystyle \scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\
\end{matrix}}\right.}} [image: \scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\
\end{matrix}}\right.}]HeWe     } {\displaystyle \scriptstyle
{\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}} [image: \scriptstyle
{\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}] took her for
⁠The proprietor
Of a Ladies' Seminary!
Gilbert here, as he does elsewhere when convenient, is wrenching emphases
for the sake of rhyme, making *necessary*, *arbitrary, library,* and
*seminary* all rhyme with "fairy". Nobody started pronouncing "necessary"
or "library" that way, but *vagary* and *quandary* are more recherché
words, and many people (like myself) may have heard them in this scene long
before they heard them anywhere else (though they may have seen them on the
printed page) -- particularly once  the D'Oyly Carte records (and their
competitors) brought them into millions of houses. *Vagary*, indeed, is
listed in the dictionaries as being accented either on the first or second
syllable, and I wonder whether the second-syllable accent precedes Gilbert.

On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 9:59 PM James McNally Pfundstein <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I wonder if the stress on the second syllable (apparently normative until
> the latter part of the 20th C) points toward another possibility. It could
> be a haplology of Italian _quando andare_ ("When to go...?"), describing a
> particular kind of quandary which may have become more general.
>
>
> J("Joe Strummer")M("me debo ir o quedarme")P
>
> ________________________________
> From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <[email protected]>
> on behalf of DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, May 31, 2019 12:46 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] [CLASSICS-L] Etymology of "quandary"
>
> It's always terrific to come across a word with unknown etymology,
> especially when the OED cites Leo Spitzer, one of the great philologists of
> the last century -- he carried all European literature around in his head,
> someone said.
>
> Dan
>
> "Quandary" in *Oxford English Dictionary*:
>
> Etymology: Origin unknown. Various etymologies have been suggested, *all of
> them implausible*. Perhaps compare CONUNDRUM n.
>
> A recurrent suggestion is that the word is an alteration of some
> post-classical Latin term, arising (perhaps humorously) in scholastic or
> university use. This is not impossible …
>
> Some of the more fanciful suggestions are: that the word derives < French
> qu'en dirai-je ‘what shall I say of it?’; …
>
> A further ingenious suggestion was made by L. Spitzer …  he argued for a
> French origin of the word, proposing an (*unattested*) earlier form of
> calambredaine (colloquial) nonsense, twaddle, balderdash (1798; of
> uncertain origin) as common etymon of both QUANDARY n. and CONUNDRUM n.,
> and perhaps even of KANKEDORT n. (which is attested much earlier).
> [Chaucer: "Was Troylus nought in a kankedort?"]
>


-- 
Prof. Em. David M. Schaps
Department of Classical Studies
Bar-Ilan University
5290002 Ramat-Gan, Israel
-972-53-312-5666