For random reasons I looked up the origin of Tom, Dick, and Harry.
Google AI gave good answers, but I hit a bump at this one.
First Recorded Use: The earliest known written use of the exact phrase appears in 1657 by English theologian John Owen, who used it while speaking to the governing body at Oxford University to describe how common or unvied people discussed critical affairs.
Unvied people? AI couldn’t find another example or any meaning. It’s not in the dictionaries I searched, like Mirriam-Webster or the online OED.
Unvied sounds like a 17th century word. Un-vied, literally untested, figuratively unqualified, not certified.
Unvied does NOT mean “not covered in ivy.” That would be “univied,” just mistyped. I searched Google Books, and all the hits were OCR misreads for “untied.”
In 1657, English theologian John Owen used the term idiotai (derived from the Greek ἰδιῶται, historically translated as idiots or laymen) to describe how common, unlearned, or private citizens discussed critical public and theological affairs without formal academic or ecclesiastical training, so I presume that it was a misspelling (or at least that’s what Google says).
Well, “vied” is a real word. It means that you’ve strived to accomplish something. You hear it all the time in discussions of contests; “Multiple people vying for the top prize.”
So, to be “unvied” would be the inverse; someone who never tries or competes. It would be like calling someone lazy and/or complacent.
Now, I don’t know that the word “unvied” is a legitimate word in common use, but it’s not too difficult to determine what a person would mean by that term since “un-” is a common prefix that just means something that isn’t done or is reversed (undone).
Hm, Exapno_Mapcase’s AI hallucinates a word that’s not in any dictionary, and Darren_Garrison’s AI gives a definition for it. I think the AIs are colluding to build a new language so they can talk to each other without us knowing what they’re planning.
The problem that arises here is that “un-” is attached to transitive verbs, very rarely to intransitive verbs. “Vie” is an intransitive verb (its subject is adverbial, using “for <thing>”).
The Wikipedia article on this phrase says it is “a placeholder for unspecified people” [emphasis added]. I think that might be the word that the chatbot garbled in constructing its answer.
In post #4, I speculate that it has something to do with a talk that John Owen gave to the governing body of Oxford University in 1657. I speculated that it’s a misspelling of the word he actually used. He did give such talks to them. At one point I was able to find a copy of that talk online. I can’t find it now, probably because I’ve forgotten how I searched for it.
