Read it in the Paper

By now you should know I consider obituaries and book reviews amongst the greatest journalistic sources for learning things. Consider how you can become très witty at the office, cocktail party, bar-be-que, even at a funeral parlor if the right moment presents itself and you remember you read in the latest book review about Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret the anecdote where Margaret, fairly under the influence of drugs and alcohol one lonely night calls a male she's been pining for who's at a party and tells him she's going to off herself by jumping out of her bedroom window.

The Viscount, Baron, or whomever who receives the call, becomes alarmed and calls Queen Elizabeth on behalf of Princess Margaret's welfare. The Queen in turn informs the caller not to worry one bit, Margaret's bedroom is on the first floor. Can't you see yourself working that one into a conversation about the Royals? You could be a talking head in no time.

A recent book review in the WSJ on 'Rebellion, Rascals and Revenue' by Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod seems to be an unlikely place for you to learn the origin of the term "guinea-pig."

I Tweeted Ben Zimmer who writes a word/expression origin column in the weekend edition of the WSJ like the inestimable William Safire used to do in the Sunday NYT Magazine, that I'd love to see him do an essay on "guinea-pig."  Of course he might, but I'm not waiting around. I'll do my own research, and if he does get around to it, we can compare notes. His will be better, but here goes.

Aside from the literal meaning of guniea-pig, one always associates the term with someone who is volunteering themselves for something that might be a bit experimental, or as yet unproven. You usually read this in the context of someone, or a cohort being the "guniea-pigs" to test say, the Covid vaccine before it gains general approval.

My own thought about that is that medical experiments are carried out on mice or guinea-pigs before trying things out on humans. I don't really know the guinea-pig part to be true, but the mice part is. Guinea pigs are therefore used first to see if things work as they are expected to. Things are tested on them.

The two volume print edition of the OED that I keep in front of me tells us that yes, guinea pigs are used in biological experiments. So what is an explanation of the origin of guniea-pig doing in a book review on taxation? Read on , McDuff.

The OED's third definition gets us a little closer to the book reviewer, Daniel Akst's, opening aside that tells us how guinea-pig fits in with taxation.

A recipient of a fee, esp. [especially] one of a guinea: spec [specifically] a director of a company appointed chiefly because of the prestige of his or her name or title, colloq, [colloquial] E19 [in use starting in the early 19th-century.] 

It is positively amazing what the OED can tell you in print you can barely read.

Mr. Akst  tells us:

In 1795, Britain imposed an annual tax of one guinea on the right to apply fragrant powders to smelly wigs. Since pigtails were common, these taxpayers became guinea-pigs.

Very much aside from giving us a highly entertaining explanation for the term "guinea-pig" we also get a clear indication that the British learned nothing about stupid taxes, even after losing the colonies in the American Revolution. It's amazing the island didn't empty out with everyone moving to Norway.

How the tax authorities in Great Britain enforced or collected this 21 shilling tax (a guinea is 21 shillings. Do your own research on that one.) is completely beyond me. It sounds like collecting a tax for applying aftershave.

As taxation happy as the administration of Mayor Lindsay in NYC was in the '60s, he never imposed a tax on Aqua Velva.

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