"Stop hectoring me"

[Argent Towers]

My entire life, my father has said this all the time. I have never heard anyone else use this expression before. Ever. He grew up in Queens, NY...is it somehow exclusive to that area, or to NY in general?

What's the straight dope?

[GorillaMan]

'Hector' as a verb is reasonably common in Britain - and occasionally makes its appearance as a person's name.

[Argent Towers]

Aren't a lot of NY and East Coast expressions borrowed from England (since the English made a big influence on those places?)

[ratatoskK]

I've heard it. My parents are from Long Island. Probably I heard it from my grandparents.

[Pixisis]

I heard it, grew up in CT.

I've also seen it in books, but then again, I read a lot of British authors.

[Wendell Wagner]

It's not remotely a new term. The OED gives a citation for it from 1660. It's also a reasonably common term. As far as I know, it's not restricted to any particular region. I think the only reason that you may not have heard it from anyone other than your father is that it may be slightly old-fashioned and dying out these days. You need to spend more time talking with people older than yourself.

[Argent Towers]

I'm going to start using it now all the time.

[Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

According to my dictionary, the word comes from the character in Greek drama; but according to a book review I recently read in the New Yorker, it actually derives its present meaning from the Hectors, one of the street gangs that roamed London at night in the 1600s.

[Crandolph]

Aren't a lot of NY and East Coast expressions borrowed from England (since the English made a big influence on those places?)

That's an understatement. I'd go so far as to suggest we're actually speaking some American dialects of the English language itself. :p

[Colibri]

According to my dictionary, the word comes from the character in Greek drama; but according to a book review I recently read in the New Yorker, it actually derives its present meaning from the Hectors, one of the street gangs that roamed London at night in the 1600s.

Hector, the heroic son of King Priam of Troy in the Iliad, was often portrayed in drama as a loudmouthed and boastful bully. The street gang perhaps named themselves after the heroic aspects of the character; but the present meaning has I think a lot to do with the bullying sense.