Chapter NABÓB to NACODA of N by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Ritson, in Life and Letters, i. 124.

1807.—“Some say that he is a Tailor who brought out a long bill against some of Lord Wellesley’s staff, and was in consequence provided for ; others say he was an adventurer, and sold knicknacks to the Nabob of Oude.”—Sir T. Munro, in Life, i. 371.

1809.—“I was surprised that I had heard nothing from the Nawaub of the Carnatic.”—Ld. Valentia, i. 381.

c. 1858.—

“Le vieux Nabab et la Begum d’Arkate.” Leconte de Lisle, ed. 1872, p. 156.

b.—

[1764.—“Mogul Pitt and Nabob Bute.”—Horace Walpole, Letters, ed. 1857, iv. 222 (Stanf. Dict.).]

1773.—“I regretted the decay of respect for men of family, and that a Nabob would not carry an election from them.

“JOHNSON : Why, sir, the Nabob will carry it by means of his wealth, in a country where money is highly valued, as it must be where nothing can be had without money ; but if it comes to personal preference, the man of family will always carry it.”—Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, under Aug. 25.

1777.—“In such a revolution…it was impossible but that a number of individuals should have acquired large property. They did acquire it ; and with it they seem to have obtained the detestation of their countrymen, and the appellation of nabobs as a term of reproach.—Price’s Tracts, i. 13.

1780.—“The Intrigues of a Nabob, or Bengal the Fittest Soil for the Growth of Lust, Injustice, and Dishonesty. Dedicated to the Hon. the Court of Directors of the East India Company. By Henry Fred. Thompson. Printed for the Author.” (A base book).

1783.—“The office given to a young man going to India is of trifling consequence. But he that goes out an insignificant boy, in a few years returns a great Nabob. Mr. Hastings says he has two hundred and fifty of that kind of raw material, who expect to be speedily manufactured into the merchantlike quality I mention.”—Burke, Speech on Fox’s E.I. Bill, in Works and Corr., ed. 1852, iii. 506.

1787.—“The speakers for him (Hastings) were Burgess, who has completely done for himself in one day ; Nichols, a lawyer ; Mr. Vansittart, a nabob ; Alderman Le Mesurier, a smuggler from Jersey ;…and Dempster, who is one of the good-natured candid men who connect themselves with

every bad man they can find.”—Ld. Minto, in Life, &c., i. 126.

1848.—“‘Isn’t he very rich ?’ said Rebecca.

“‘They say all Indian Nabobs are enormously rich.’”—Vanity Fair, ed. 1867, i. 17.

1872.—“Ce train de vie facile…suffit à me faire décerner…le surnom de Nabob par les bourgeois et les visiteurs de la petite ville.”—Rev. des Deux Mondes, xcviii. 938.

1874.—“At that time (c. 1830) the Royal Society was very differently composed from what it is now. Any wealthy or well- known person, any M.P.…or East Indian Nabob, who wished to have F.R.S. added to his name, was sure to obtain admittance.”—Geikie, Life of Murchison, i. 197.

1878.—“…A Tunis?—interrompit le duc.…Alors pourquoi ce nom de Nabab ?—Bah ! les Parisiens n’y regardent pas de si près. Pour eux tout riche étranger est un Nabab, n’importe d’où il vienne.”—Le Nabab, par Alph. Daudet, ch. i.

It is purism quite erroneously applied when we find Nabob in this sense miswritten Nawab ; thus :

1878.—“These were days when India, little known still in the land that rules it, was less known than it had been in the previous generation, which had seen Warren Hastings impeached, and burghs³ bought and sold by Anglo-Indian Nawabs.”—Smiths’s Life of Dr John Wilson, 30.


But there is no question of purism in the following delicious passage : 1878.—“If…the spirited proprietor of the Daily Telegraph had been informed that our aid of their friends the Turks would have taken the form of a tax upon paper, and a concession of the Levis to act as Commanders of Regiments of Bashi-Bozouks, with a request to the General-issimo to place them in as forward a position as Nabob was given in the host of King David, the harp in Peterborough Court would not have twanged long to the |tune of a crusade in behalf of the Sultan of Turkey.”—Truth, April 11, p. 470. In this passage in which the wit is equalled only by the scriptural knowledge, observe that Nabob=Naboth, and Naboth=Uriah.

NACODA, NACODER, &c., s. Pers. na-khuda (navis dominus) ‘a skipper’; the master of a native vessel. (Perhaps the original sense is rather the owner of the ship, going with it as his own supercargo.) It is hard to understand why Reinaud (Relatíon, ii. 42) calls this a “Malay word…derived from the Persian,” especially considering that he is dealing with a book of the 9th and 10th centuries. [Mr. Skeat notes that