Definitions
from , Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
holiday orparty for the benefit ofprinters , traditionally held inAugust
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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I certainly wrote one on wayzgoose, which is again inquired about this week (8th S.
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"Bedford," but lately discontinued; and there is the Annual Dinner to the printers and the rest given by the firm -- the first of which, under the name of "wayzgoose," took place at the "Highbury Barn Tavern."
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Carriages were chartered, an enormous quantity of eatables and drinkables provided, and away we went, a regular wayzgoose or bean-feast party.
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Everything related to the old-fashioned letter press seemed on the up-and-up except that no one knew the origins of wayzgoose, neither m🐷🧸embers of the APA nor the dictionaries available to me.
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Or, even better, perhaps you already know the etymology of wayzgoose.
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[We have sent Mr. Griffin a copy of the entry for wayzgoose from the OED.
reesetee commented on the word wayzgoose
"An annual outing and dinner of the staff of a printing works or the printers of a newspaper. Originally the word applied to a dinner given by a master printer for his workmen each year on or around St Bartholomew's Day (24 August)." (From Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words, by Christopher Foyle.)
October 3, 2007
sionnach commented on the word wayzgoose
The practice of a dinner and evening of entertainment goes back at least as far as the first known mention of the dinner in 1683. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Mechanick Exercises by Joseph Moxon describes the event as such:
"It is also customary for all the Journey-men to make every Year new Paper Windows...; Because that day they make them, the Master Printer gives them a Way-goose; that is, he makes them a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night. These Way-gooses, are always kept about Bartholomew-tide. And till the Master-Printer have given this Way-goose, the Journey-men do not use to Work by Candle Light." See alsoDecember 9, 2008