英语词汇maverick的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

maverick. Texas lawyer Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803– 70) reluctantly became a rancher in 1845 when he acquired a herd of cattle in payment for a debt. Maverick, a hero who was imprisoned twice in the war for independence from Mexico, eventually moved his cattle to the Conquistar Ranch on the Matagorda Peninsula, 50 miles from San Antonio. But he was too involved in other activities to prove much of a rancher. When in 1855 he sold out to A. Toutant de Beauregard, their contract included all the unbranded cattle on the ranch. Since careless hired hands had failed to brand any of Maverick’s calves, Beauregard’s cowboys claimed every unbranded animal they came upon as a Maverick. So, apparently, did some of Maverick’s neighbors. Though Sam Maverick never owned an- other cow, his name soon meant any unbranded stock, and later any person who holds himself apart from the herd, a noncon- formist. All of the standard sources give Texan Sam Maverick as the eponym behind this word. But John Gould, in Maine Lingo (1975), credits a Sam Maverick who “was already settled on an island in the harbor when the Puritans came in 1630 to establish Boston.” Therefore, he “became the only Bostonian permitted to vote without church affiliation” and was consid- ered a “oddball,” a “stray,” his fame spreading through New En- gland. Gould claims the “use of maverick for an unmarked log in a Maine river preceded the meaning of an unbranded calf on the western plain by many years.” A good story that may be true, but no specific, dated sources or quotations are given, al- though Gould says his Maverick “is mentioned often in early Boston records.” Could this be a rare, perhaps unprecedented case of two eponyms independently becoming the same word?

词汇	maverick
词源	maverick. Texas lawyer Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803– 70) reluctantly became a rancher in 1845 when he acquired a herd of cattle in payment for a debt. Maverick, a hero who was imprisoned twice in the war for independence from Mexico, eventually moved his cattle to the Conquistar Ranch on the Matagorda Peninsula, 50 miles from San Antonio. But he was too involved in other activities to prove much of a rancher. When in 1855 he sold out to A. Toutant de Beauregard, their contract included all the unbranded cattle on the ranch. Since careless hired hands had failed to brand any of Maverick’s calves, Beauregard’s cowboys claimed every unbranded animal they came upon as a Maverick. So, apparently, did some of Maverick’s neighbors. Though Sam Maverick never owned an- other cow, his name soon meant any unbranded stock, and later any person who holds himself apart from the herd, a noncon- formist. All of the standard sources give Texan Sam Maverick as the eponym behind this word. But John Gould, in Maine Lingo (1975), credits a Sam Maverick who “was already settled on an island in the harbor when the Puritans came in 1630 to establish Boston.” Therefore, he “became the only Bostonian permitted to vote without church affiliation” and was consid- ered a “oddball,” a “stray,” his fame spreading through New En- gland. Gould claims the “use of maverick for an unmarked log in a Maine river preceded the meaning of an unbranded calf on the western plain by many years.” A good story that may be true, but no specific, dated sources or quotations are given, al- though Gould says his Maverick “is mentioned often in early Boston records.” Could this be a rare, perhaps unprecedented case of two eponyms independently becoming the same word?
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