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Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 17:37:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Alfred M Kriman <akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu>
Message-Id: <200108162237.f7GMbJV04183@darwin.helios.nd.edu>
To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Kings Larry and George V (was: "hoi polloi" ...)

Elizabeth Vandiver wrote
> I know we discussed the burgeoning usage of "hoi polloi" to mean
> "elitist" a few months ago; I just wanted to record another example of
> this oddity.  I was just watching Larry King Live for, I believe, the
> first time ever, while working out  in my basement. The discussion
> turned to polo (specifically, the Windsor family and polo) and  King
> agreed with a guest who called it a "nouveau riche" sport by saying "It
> is rather  *hoi polloi*, isn't it?" Though the guest had also called
> polo "vulgar," the context made it quite clear that King thinks "hoi
> polloi" means elitist.

I am at the fortunate disadvantage of having missed this show again,
so I'm not sure if J.F. Gannon's comment misconstrues the course of
the discussion:

> ...   By the way there is certainly some thing odd about calling
> the Windsor family's line is sports nouveau riche.  It might fit Ralph
> Lauren, as in Polo Ralph Lauren.

Regardless of this, and the fact that I am bringing coals to a
Newcastle list, I would like it at least noted that technically, the
House of Windsor dates only to a 1917 declaration of George V, three
days after Bastille Day and a few months before the Bolshevik revolution
against his cousin Tsar Nicholas II, that ``all descendants in the male
line of Queen Victoria, who are subjects of these realms, other than
female descendants who marry or who have married, shall bear the name
Windsor.''  The story of the brainstorming session that came up with
the name is well known, as is the quip of George's cousin the Kaiser
(abdicated 1918) when he learned of the proclamation.  (I can't recall
the witticism now, sorry.)  So ended the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
there.  The House of Windsor is pretty nouvelle.

(Interesting that Nick and family, denied asylum by George V, were
later murdered the night of Bastille+2, 1918.  It seems that late
cancer is an especially bad sign for monarchs.)

AMK
.