According to dictionary.com a Quay is “A wharf or reinforced bank where ships are loaded or unloaded”.
As far as I know this word isn’t used in the US (I could be wrong about that), but is a rather common word in the UK and at least in parts of the Commonwealth. How can that be? Did the early US colonists pick and choose the English words they wanted to keep and use?
It seems that there are lots of common British words that never made it to the US for one reason or another. Is this what we would expect to happen given the war between the two countries?
Well, this American uses that word, quite often in fact. Everybody seems to know what I’m talking about.
Words generally change when the residents of a particular area find new words from local languages that mean the same thing, and facilitate communication with the indigenous peoples. Just a SWAG.
No, this is what we would expect to happen when two places with a common language origin are physically isolated from one another for an extended period. The same is true from the French spoke in France and that spoken in French-Canadian regions. Or the Spanish spoken in Spain and that spoken in, say, Argentina. Languages, like living things, evolve. Isolated, they’ll evolve very differently.
Silenus, if you don’t mind me asking what part of the US do you live in? I have traveled extensively and have never heard this word uttered once… and I tend to hang around ports, docks and wharfs etc.
I’ve know of the word too (from Chicago, not that we use it much) and here’s some history for you (by the way I’ve heard it (mis)pronounced kway a few times too, its actually kee)
Southern California, but I’ve spent considerable time on the North Coast and in Alaska. Hope that helps. Of course, my mother was a librarian, so I have a…diverse vocabulary.
The PBS series “The History of English” pointed out how some differences between US and UK English arose. E.g., many early UK->US immigrants came from areas in eastern England that had a large Scandinavian influence way back when. Many of these peculiarities from that region have been mostly lost in England but some survives in US English. (And are now back imported via US media.) I remember them discussing “guess” as an example of a word with some differences in usage due to this.
Such “selective language change via migration” can account for a lot of US/UK differences without having to resort to “anger over the war(s)” reasons.
I live in the Boston area and the first time I heard it was in that legendary recitation of :
1 Hen
2 Ducks
3 Squawking Geese
4 Limerick Oysters, etc
when you reach 10, they word quay is mentioned.
Here’s a link.
My guess is that “quay” didn’t get separated – the OED traces it back as far as 1695 – so much as its usage simply died off on one side of the pond but not the other. (Why? Why not? “Wharf” makes a perfectly good alternative.)
The word made it into Noah Webster’s 1828 (American) dictionary:
QUAY, n. ke.
A key; a mole or wharf, constructed in harbors for securing vessels and receiving goods unladen or to be shipped on board.
Note that nobody calls it a “mole” nowadays either.
Bonus trivia: the OED cites Swift as rhyming “quay” with “day,” which just goes to show that particular (mis)pronounciation is nothing new under the sun.
