Mind your language
I BECAME entangled in the under- world of confidence tricksters recently and it is all The Spectator's fault.
I had caught sight of the word phoney on the front cover (1 January) and won- dered if it really ought to have an e in it. My 1972 edition of Chambers was suit-
ably humble about its history, saying `origin unknown'; even the second edi-
tion of the Oxford English Dictionary says 'origin uncertain'. More recent Chamberses suggest that the word may come from the 'Irish fainne, a ring, from
the old practice of tricking people into buying gilt rings which they believed to
be genuine gold'. No dictionary seems to mind whether it is phoney or phony, so that's all right.
The word doesn't crop up until this century, and was certainly used in America before anywhere else. It made a new name for itself by figuring in the phrase `phoney war'. And the Irish ori- gin doesn't seem as unlikely as all that.
It may come via fawney, which since the 18th century has meant a ring (ever heard anybody use it?) Anyway, To go on the fawney means to practise the fawney-rig Can old, stale trick, called ring-dropping'). Yes, but how does it work?
George Parker in his A View of Soci- ety and Manners in High and Low Life (1781) says that `there is a large shop in
London where these kind [pedants beware] of rings are sold, for the pur- pose of doing the Fawney'. The man who does the fawney-rig is also appar- ently called a fawney. `The Fawney,' Parker explains, `says, "I dare say some poor woman (etc.)" '. But then what? If there are any surviving fawney-riggers out there perhaps they could let me know.
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