The word, he avers, is _Phoenician_: from
_maphula_, one of those kinds of bread named as such by Athenaeus. "It
was a _cake_," says Athenaeus, "baked on a hearth or griddle." He
derives this by taking away the final vowel, and then changing _l_ for
_n_; thus: "maphula," "maphul," "mufun!!!"
In this strange book there are fifty other etymologies as remarkable as
this. The author plainly offers them in hard earnest. This is something
worth _noting_.
V.
_By Hook or Crook_.--"As in the phrase 'to get by hook or crook;' in the
sense of, to get by any expedient, to stick at nothing to obtain the
end; not to be over nice in obtaining your ends--_By hucke o'er krooke_;
e.g. _by bending the knees, and by bowing low_, or as we now say, by
bowing and scraping, by crouching and cringing."--Bellenden Ker's
_Essay on the Archaeology our Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes_, vol.
i. p. 21. ed. 1837.
I wish your correspondent, "J.R.F.," had given a reference to the book
or charter from which he copied his note.
Has Mr. B. Ker's work ever been reviewed?
MELANION.
[Mr. Ker's book was certainly reviewed in _Fraser's Magazine_ at
the time of its appearance, and probably in other literary
journals.]
_By Hook or By Crook_.--I have met with it somewhere, but have lost my
note, that Hooke and Crooke were two judges, who in their day decided
most unconscientiously whenever the interests of the crown were
affected, and it used to be said that the king could get anything by
Hooke or by Crooke.
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