On the origin of the Hungarian idiom Anda Pál hadába való ‘henpecked husband'

Abstract

Old compilations of Hungarian phraseological units contain several obsolete expressions for ‘wife-ridden’, one of which is Anda Pál hadába való, lit. ‘a member of Paul Anda’s army’. Our earlier dictionaries – following Szirma y's Hungaria in Parabolis – relate it to Anda Pál, a 17th-century cavalry corporal, who asked for leave every weekend to go home to his wife. This paper claims, however, that the story is an etiological anecdote and Anda is in fact an archaic charactonym meaning ‘silly, simpleminded’. It was originally the present participle of and-, an obsolete root of Modern Hungarian andalodik ‘get into reverie’ and andalít ‘put into reverie’. The purpose of adding Pál ‘Paul’ is only to personify the adjectival meaning and even had, whose meaning has narrowed down to ‘army’ in Modern Hungarian, may have been used in its earlier meaning ‘kinship’. Thus the original meaning of Anda Pál hadába való may have been ‘a member of the group of (wife-ridden) silly, simple-minded husbands’.