I have not heard this clothing trademark in use lately – FUBU – and maybe the company has gone out of business. “Considering that ‘hue and cry’ is in its ninth century of use, insisting on spelling it correctly DOES NOT seem picky.” It seems reasonable to expect people to learn to spell the words they use in publishing their thoughts.ĭon’t say “Considering that ‘hue and cry’ is in its ninth century of use, insisting on spelling it correctly may seem a bit picky,” It’s amazing that modern speakers still have a use for it. to strike, or deal blows with a cutting weapon to strike forcibly with a cutting tool.Ĭonsidering that “hue and cry” is in its ninth century of use, insisting on spelling it correctly may seem a bit picky. Hew, on the other hand, has to do with cutting and chopping. One “raises a hue and cry” against a perceived crime or injustice. In modern use, “hue and cry” is used figuratively as a synonym for outcry. Men who refused to assist in “the hue and cry” were subject to legal penalties. In time the expression became a legal term for such a pursuit commanded by the local constable. “Hue and cry” was the combined tumult of men shouting, dogs baying, and hunting horns sounding that accompanied the pursuit of a criminal. Hue meaning “shout” came into English from French heu, which was more of an utterance like “huh” than a word. Outcry, shouting, clamor, especially that raised by a multitude in war or the chase. Modern speakers are more familiar with the hue that means “color” than with the hue that means a noise or an outcry, so it’s not surprising they might assume the hue in the expression would have a different spelling. So where’s the hew and cry over the gross spending spree? Imagine the hew and cry if GeorgeBush were President Remember the hew and cry about some ducks dying in a tailings pond? Here are some examples of hue being misspelled as hew in newspapers published in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Canada.Īmid Hew and Cry, British Buyout Firms Stay on Message Sometimes, however, the intended expression seems clear enough from the context. Where’s the hew and cry about the way women are treated?Ī web search turned up a great many examples of “hew and cry,” but it’s not always easy to tell which are misspellings and which are intended to be humorous.įor example, the Seattle Times ran the headline, “Hew and Cry Put on Hold.” The story was about a protest against the the logging of Old-Growth stands.īefore 1979 and the separation of the Department of Education from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, many newspaper headlines used the expression “hew and cry” as a play on the acronym HEW. They were called huers, since they commonly alerted the waiting fishermen by shouting through speaking trumpets.The following comment set me wondering how widespread the misspelling of hue in the expression hue and cry has become: To be sure of not missing their arrival, fishermen posted lookouts on the cliffs. At that time an important part of local livelihoods in coastal communities came from the seasonal catch of fish called pilchards, which migrated past the coast in great shoals in early autumn. It seems that hue could mean any cry, or even the sound of a horn or trumpet - the phrase hu e cri had a Latin equivalent, hutesium et clamor, “with horn and with voice”.Īs an etymological footnote, the Old French huer survived in Cornwall right down to the early twentieth century. This came from the Old French hu for an outcry, in turn from huer, to shout. This mysterious word hue is from the first part of the Anglo-Norman French legal phrase hu e cri. The laws relating to hue and cry were repealed in Britain in 1827. The same term was used for a proclamation relating to the capture of a criminal or the finding of stolen goods. If the criminal was caught with stolen goods on him, he was summarily convicted (he wasn’t allowed to say anything in his defence, for example), while if he resisted arrest he could be killed. Everybody in the neighbourhood was then obliged to drop what they were doing and help pursue and capture the supposed criminal. If somebody robbed you, or you saw a murder or other crime of violence, it was up to you to raise the alarm, the hue and cry. There wasn’t an organised police force and the job of fighting crime fell mostly on ordinary people. Our modern meaning goes back to part of English common law in the centuries after the Norman Conquest. As a result, you sometimes see the phrase written as hew and cry. A This idiom, meaning a loud clamour or public outcry, contains the obsolete word hue, which people these days know only as a slightly formal or technical word for a colour or shade.
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