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Why are left-handers called “southpaws”? (2015)
- nematode 9y agoThe article just kicks the can down the road: why is the left hand called the 'south paw' in boxing?
- derekp7 9y agoIf I had to guess -- in a normal defensive stance, where both hands are held out in front, the right hand is typically higher and slightly in front of the left hand. Top being north, bottom is south.
- treyfitty 9y agoFor a lefty, you're correct. But for a righty, then the right hand would be south. So, that can't possibly be the reason why boxers call lefties 'Southpaws'
- akaru 9y agoThe parent comment makes perfect sense to me: a left-handed person would have their left hand south. So their main hand is the south paw.
- skepticaldrunk 9y agoYour parent comment points out that for a right-handed person, their right hand would be south. The same is true for either handedness, thus does little to differentiate the two.
- treyfitty 9y agoLeft handed fighters put their right hand south. Their left hand (jab hand) closely guards their cheek/chin. So it can't possibly be south.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- basseq 9y agoThere's really no good "reason" here, and people keep making up superfluous descriptions, like the whole deal about ordinal baseball diamond orientations. Or, in boxing, how the southpaw stance has the left hand below ("south") the right. The real answer appears to be that "south" merely means "opposite" and "paw" means—of course—"hand".[1] [1] http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw
- Avshalom 9y agoPrevalence of left handedness increases towards the equator: science fact. Which is also why left handedness is so often literally translated to 'north-hand' in various Australian, South American and South African languages.
- pavement 9y agoThe earliest baseball mention of a “southpaw” - as found by Tom Shieber, senior curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame—appeared in the New York Atlas in 1858, but in reference to a left-handed first baseman, not a pitcher. The first documented use of a phrase or term in print, does not mean that the writer used it according to the original intended context, especially since it does not specifically get used in a passage that explicitly states the intended use and origin. The atlas doesn't explicitly state: "We decided to call him a southpaw, because we're inventing this new term, and not because of convention, and it means 1, 2 and 3, because x, y and z."
- pflats 9y agoEtymological research is rarely cut-and-dry. The authors are aware of this, and the quotation is being held as a counterexample to "the conventional wisdom that the word “southpaw” originated “from the practice in baseball of arranging the diamond with the batter facing east to avoid the afternoon sun. A left-handed pitcher facing west would therefore have his pitching arm toward the south of the diamond.”" The article goes on to point out that southpaw was almost definitely a boxing term before it was given its baseball "etymology".
- hluska 9y agoThe article on wordorigins.org contains more information, including this quote: Use of southpaw to mean the left hand goes back all the way to 1813, long before baseball, as we know it today, existed. It’s used in a letter appearing in the Philadelphia newspaper The Tickler on 30 June of that year: “Luk here mon, and convince yourself,” said he, holding up the Tickler, in the right paw, between the ceiling and the floor, and with the south paw pointing to the “bow, vow, vow.” (Source - http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/southpaw/)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wyldfire 9y agoMy dad had always told the story regarding the orientation of the stadium. Interesting to learn that it may not be the case.
- kazinator 9y agoPossibly related: why does "going south" mean degrading, spoiling, breaking down ... The "paws" in "southpaws" clarifies that it is a derogatory term, suggesting that the left-handed are clumsy. Could it be that the sense of south in "going south" is a back formation from southpaw? Etymonline documents "going south" as meaning "vanish, abscond", tracing it to 1920's America: "American English, probably from mid-19c. notion of disappearing south to Mexico or Texas to escape pursuit or responsibility, reinforced by Native American belief (attested in colonial writing mid-18c.) that the soul journeys south after death." It could be that the "turn bad" meaning derives from that.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hoorayimhelping 9y agoWhere are you getting it's derogatory? It wasn't stated or implied in the article.
- lprubin 9y agoThe phrase "Well, that went south really quickly" tends to mean a situation got really bad. Implying that south is bad.
- Luc 9y agoPerhaps related: the Latin words for left and right are sinister and dexter, which obviously have connotations...
- Freak_NL 9y agoSeems etymologically plausible at the least. Left-handedness used to be frowned upon up to the point of children being forced to write with their right hands in school (often under physical threat of a ruler or reed slapped across your left hand if you did dare to use it). Glad that was over when I grew up in the eighties. Even today some people react with surprise when they see me writing with my left hand. We're a sizeable minority (of ten percent) — it's far from rare — but amongst older generations it sometimes just comes across as weird (I'm in my thirties myself).
- nathan_f77 9y agoThis post must be related to the recent "How do you draw a circle?" [1] article. They used the term "southpaw", which I had never heard before. EDIT: Strange, I definitely read the word "southpaw" somewhere in the last few days, and I remember learning that it was a term for left-handed people. Now I can't find it anywhere in the circle article, the HN comments [2], or the Reddit thread [3]. Little things like this really make me want to sign up for fetching.io again. EDIT 2: Ahh, I found it! It was in a Quartz Daily Brief [4] news summary that I had skimmed earlier today: > Left-handed people are more likely to be geniuses. The trait indicates greater connectivity between brain hemispheres, which may explain why southpaws seem to have an edge at math. ([5]) js2, I'd be really interested to know if that's why you posted this, or if it was just a coincidence. [1] https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-about-you/ https://qz.com/994486/the-way-you-draw-circles-says-a-lot-ab... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14579728 [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6i5pa0/how_cultures_around_the_world_draw_shapes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6i5pa0/how... [4] https://qz.com/daily-brief/ https://qz.com/daily-brief/ [5] https://qz.com/1006075/left-handed-people-are-more-likely-to-be-geniuses-in-math/ https://qz.com/1006075/left-handed-people-are-more-likely-to...
- js2 9y agoNone of the above. :-) My daughter was doing geometry homework that had a question about the direction of a baseball field and claimed they are often oriented so that the batter faces east. I wanted to verify the assertion, and Google led me to this article. I was familiar with "southpaw" but always thought it was a boxing term and didn't know its etymology.
- nathan_f77 9y agoHaha, that's great. Just the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon for me, then.
- rdiddly 9y agoI'm glad this expression won out, instead of the briefly popular but terribly clumsy "antipodean-gripper." /bs
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- js2 9y agoAnd for footedness, a lefty is "goofy foot" in board sports.
- pacaro 9y agoExcept that "regular" is left foot leading and "goofy" is right foot leading. In my experience learning to ride "switch" is only a matter of practice, and not much at that. Anyone who juggles, or plays keepy-up (aka foot juggling) knows the importance of practicing evenly on both sides
- notadoc 9y agoI have never heard that term before
- paulddraper 9y agoDo you watch baseball? Because I would be surprised if you hadn't heard it there.
- sremani 9y agoRocky movie has an explanation about Southpaw, may be it is here say or not, but it does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4lxjvrhHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4lxjvrhHs
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoWell, southpaw doesn't have a pejorative connotation, so I guess it beats being called "sinister".
- kls 9y agosinistra, in Latin proper, simply meant left. It was later that someone decided that left = evil and sinister, well became sinister, but the historical root simply means left and is the original archaic definition of sinister. Personally I am more concerned by our higher than average death rate than I am worried about being touched by the devil.
- inanutshellus 9y agoDon't let yourself be touched by the devil and maybe you'll live longer! /s
- dudul 9y agoA quick Google research will return a few articles explaining how the studies that started this myth about higher death rate in the 80s and 90s were flawed.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSeems just as likely that southpaw is a malapropism for sinister at some point; in our family at least mis-hearings are often a long way off the intended word.
- galago 9y agoDifferent parts of the UK had different names for left-handed people. It predates baseball or rounders. I can't remember which, but one region used the term 'southpaw'. I've seen a map explaining this but I can't find it at the moment. Its a weird feeling when I completely can't find something via Google, even though I've seen it online.
- danans 9y agoOn the subject of direction word trivia, the Sanskrit word for right, a cognate of Latin "dexter", is "dakshina." In this case, however, it eventually came to mean "south". Why? It makes sense when you realize that the the word for ahead/in-front "purva" came to mean east, the word for back/behind "paschima" came to mean west, and the common word for north "uttara" can mean left. So the words imply an eastward-facing world orientation, which itself probably has its origin in worship of the rising sun.
- balsam 9y agoAlso: purva -> "first" uttara -> "second" A anti-clockwise orientation..