Talk:Whig

Origin of term

I reworked this monstrosity a little bit. First was deleting this note left by an anonymous editor:

According to my encyclopedia the term whig derived from whiggamore which was "a Scotch word once used to describe persons from western Scotland" (World Book). The text above implies that the term whiggamore derived from the Whiggamore Raid. While as far as I can infer from the article I read, the term existed before the raid. In other words, unless I'm mistaken, the raid was named after the people, not the people after the raid. I realize you might not be able to use this since it comes from another encyclopedia. I looked at the source the author used and he seemed to make an inference that isn't supportable. [...]

Great observation, but it should be here, on the talk page. It seems to me, however, that both the original text and the anonymous note were correct, the former simply needing clarification. Based on a close reading of the 1913 Dictionary article and the About.com page, all "inferences" appear to be reasonable—the "raid term" was named after the "people term" that originated from the "horse term."

I tried to clear things up, and I hope it helped. — supreme_geek_overlord 06:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Have added some more references and tried to clarify this. Columbia is the only reference I've found to "cattle driver" – there are various interpretations of the origin of the term of abuse, most commonly it being a word used during the raid to urge on horses, subsequently modified by opponents to depict the covenanter faction in the Parliament of Scotland as yokels. Note that "whig" became a term for a faction in the Parliament of England before political union of the Parliament of Great Britain, and British Whigs together with Americans of the same political persuasion were involved in supporting the revolution, hence the later US party. .. dave souza, talk 13:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)