The Hitch-hiking Grandmother: "that" Grace Small

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The Hitchhiking Grandmother
By "that" Grace Small
As told by Ruth Barton Davies
The Pilgrim Way Press
Forest Grove, Oregon, 1990
ISBN: 0-9623785-0-X

Etymological footnote: Way back when, when I was a beginner I once said to someone I was going to hike somewhere. "that's a long way to walk?", he replied ... and I said, "Oh, I mean hitch-hike!". It became abundantly clear to me in the months and years that passed after that time, that "to hike" is in fact generally understood to mean "walk" in the English language.

Well, to be fair, I knew that before then too, but somehow the logical contraction of "hitch-hike" seemed at the time, to be "hike". Not at all, the vast majority of people I've encountered, and literature I've reviewed over many many years of hitch-hiking, uses the word "hitch". I should have said , I was going to hitch, not I was going to hike, and my chances of being understood would have been somewhat better.

I mention this here, only because I have in fact come across the occasional writer who used the word "hike" to imply "hitch-hike". None of them have been anglophones though. Until now. Grace Small, a true to the bone American woman, consistently uses the work "hike" when she means "hitch-hike". That makes this book, and this lady linguistically somewhat special in my experience, and vindicates that early bungle of mine!

It's interesting to note that neither the Oxford English Dictionary, nor Merriam-Webster's suggest that "hike" has anything to do with "hitch-hike", the nearest meaning offered being "To travel by any means". Both dictionaries though, note that "hitch" is an abbreviated form of "hitch-hike". Looks like Grace and I don't have the dictionaries on our side :-). I'd recommend you stick to "hitch" if you want to be widely understood in any case.

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