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<div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;">I did a bit of non-scholarly Googling for "What a lark!". More recently there are some nice Woolfian parodies ("What a lark! What a gas!", and "What a lark! What a jape!"). Wallace
Stevens uses the phrase in a journal entry for 1903 or 1904. And this, from T. H. Huxley suggests a lower-class association:<br>
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"I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite, while a rat-killing match in Whitechapel is low; or why 'What a lark' should be coarse, when one hears 'How awfully jolly' drop from the most refined lips
twenty times in an evening . . ." (T. H. Huxley, “Administrative Nihilism”, 1871)<br>
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I agree that Woolf is probably combining associations in MD; Clarisssa is both bird and playful child - and perhaps throwing off a few class restraints at the same time. And as others have suggested, this initial plunge is proleptic of Septimus's tragic and
fatal plunge from the window later on.<br>
<br>
Jeremy<br>
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<div style="direction: ltr;" id="divRpF67377"><font color="#000000" face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> vwoolf-bounces@lists.service.ohio-state.edu [vwoolf-bounces@lists.service.ohio-state.edu] on behalf of Stuart N. Clarke [stuart.n.clarke@btinternet.com]<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 17 September 2013 16:05<br>
<b>To:</b> vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Vwoolf] Larks<br>
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<div>“And now, [the aeroplane] curving up and up, straight up, like something mounting in ecstasy, in pure delight, out from behind poured white smoke looping, writing a T, an O, and F.”</div>
<div>Gillian Beer wrote in "The Island and the Aeroplane: The Case of Virginia Woolf":</div>
<div>“Toffs and toffee are lexically indistinguishable, farts in the wake of lark, of sexual rapture.”</div>
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<div>Stuart</div>
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<div style=""><b>From:</b> <a title="fernald@fordham.edu" href="mailto:fernald@fordham.edu" target="_blank">
ANNE Fernald [Staff/Faculty [A&S]]</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, September 17, 2013 2:39 PM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="mcnar001@umn.edu" href="mailto:mcnar001@umn.edu" target="_blank">
Toni McNaron</a> </div>
<div><b>Cc:</b> <a title="VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" href="mailto:VWOOLF@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" target="_blank">
woolf list</a> </div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Vwoolf] larks</div>
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<h1 id="pagetitle" style="font-family:georgia,times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-weight:normal; padding-bottom:0px; padding-top:0px; padding-left:0px; clear:both; margin:0px 0px 4px 9px; line-height:1.2em; padding-right:0px">
<font color="#000000" size="2">Here is what my OED tells me about the etymology, which is uncertain but does seem to support a link:</font></h1>
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<span><font size="2"><span>lark</span>, <span style="font-style:italic">v.<span style="vertical-align:text-top">2</span></span></font></span></h1>
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<font size="2">View as:
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<a id="viewOutline" href="http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry:showfullentry/false?t:ac=Entry/105880" style="color:rgb(51,51,51); text-decoration:none" target="_blank">Outline</a> |
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<font size="2">Quotations:
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<strong style="float:left; display:block; line-height:25px"><font size="2">Pronunciation:</font></strong><font size="2">
</font><a id="pronunciationLink" rel="39741044" style="color:rgb(91,133,177)"><font size="2">/<span style="font-size:1.08em; font-family:'Lucida Sans Unicode','Arial Unicode MS',arial,sans-serif; color:black; line-height:25px">lɑːk</span>/</font></a></div>
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<span id="etymologySpanBlock1"><font size="2"><strong>Etymology:</strong> Belongs to
</font><a id="c16" href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/105877#eid39740766" rev="/view/Entry/105877#eid39740766" rel="105877" style="color:rgb(91,133,177); text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span><font size="2"><span style="font-variant:small-caps">lark</span> <span style="font-style:italic">n.<span style="font-size:0.6em; vertical-align:text-top">2</span></span></font></span></a></span><span id="etymologySpanBlock2"><font size="2">;
the noun and verb appear first in 1811–3. The origin is somewhat uncertain. </font>
<p style="padding-bottom:0px; padding-top:0px; padding-left:0px; margin:15px 0px 0px; padding-right:0px">
<font size="2">Possibly it may represent the northern </font><a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/105171#eid39907331" rev="/view/Entry/105171#eid39907331" rel="105171" style="color:rgb(91,133,177); text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span><font size="2"><span style="font-variant:small-caps">lake</span> <span style="font-style:italic">v.<span style="font-size:0.6em; vertical-align:text-top">1</span></span></font></span></a><font size="2">,
as heard by sporting men from Yorkshire jockeys or grooms; the sound </font><a id="pronunciationLink" rel="39741057" style="color:rgb(91,133,177)"><font size="2">/<span>lɛək</span>/
</font></a><a id="pronunciationLink" rel="39741058" style="color:rgb(91,133,177)"><font size="2">/<span>læək</span>/
</font></a><font size="2">, which is written <em>lairk</em> in Robinson's <em>Whitby Glossary</em> and in dialect books, would to a southern hearer more naturally suggest ‘lark’ than ‘lake’ as its equivalent in educated pronunciation. On the other hand, it
is quite as likely that the word may have originated in some allusion to </font>
<a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/105876#eid39739718" rev="/view/Entry/105876#eid39739718" rel="105876" style="color:rgb(91,133,177); text-decoration:none" target="_blank"><span><font size="2"><span style="font-variant:small-caps">lark</span> <span style="font-style:italic">n.<span style="font-size:0.6em; vertical-align:text-top">1</span></span></font></span></a><font size="2">;
compare the similar use of <em>skylark</em> verb, which is found a few years earlier (1809).</font></p>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 9:27 AM, Toni McNaron <span dir="ltr">
<<a href="mailto:mcnar001@umn.edu" target="_blank">mcnar001@umn.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex; margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left:#ccc 1px solid">
I agree with Michael Davis in that both the bird and the playful gaminess is going on in the reference. I also think about the fact that larks, when they flourished, were often the very first birds to greet the dawn, hence they were seen as excited about another
day in which they could make beautiful music, fly around, eat bugs, etc. So a imagine larks as exuberant, hence perhaps how the verb "to lark" came into existence in the first place.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Toni McNaron</font></span>
<div class="HOEnZb">
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