Etymology of Canvassing

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cole from La Jolla, California.

Hi, Cole. What’s up?

I called in to ask today about a word. I was working at a political kind of thing a couple months back, and we used this word canvassing to talk about the process of going door-to-door and knocking on everybody’s door and talking to a bunch of people. And it was always confusing to me because I didn’t know how canvas fit into the equation because it didn’t really have anything to do with canvas as far as I could know about it.

You weren’t wearing canvas shoes or anything like that, right?

No, unfortunately, not that day at least.

Yeah, and boy, that’s hard work. A couple of lifetimes ago, I did some canvassing, and I have never been as tired in my life, Cole, as when I got off a shift. And it’s just exhausting, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, canvas is a confusing word, and the etymology is kind of confusing, murky as well. But our best guess is that it has to do with using canvas to sift something out, like, I don’t know, grain or something like that, sifting through canvas.

Yeah, the Oxford English Dictionary has an etymological note to that regard, but it’s kind of ambivalent as to whether or not that’s truly the origin. Another theory that’s been proposed is that maybe you’ve seen this in old movies where at the end of the game, they would take the hero of the game and toss them up in the air where all the teammates would hold the edge of a blanket or a piece of canvas and throw the person up. Sometimes it was done as a prank, but sometimes it was done in celebration.

That’s also called canvassing. And that kind of buffeting about over the centuries since like the 1500s has had a bunch of different kind of transformations where it meant to shake or to shatter or it meant to thrash a person or to buffet a person, to pull to pieces. And eventually to shake out is in a form of discussion, to like really thrash out a discussion. So you can slowly see this transformation.

So I’m imagining that once we started to have a political canvas, it was getting to talk to somebody about their beliefs and like really hashing it out. Where do their beliefs match your candidates? Scrutinizing, examining.

Yeah.

Shakespeare used it that way in Henry VI, Part 1. I’ll canvas thee in thy broad cardinal’s hat.

Nice.

It’s a threat. I’ll canvas thee. He’s going to toss him up in the air with a blanket.

I had no idea. I thought I might have had to do something with like carrying your own canvas bags or something.

Oh, yeah. But that’s way more interesting.

Yeah, and it’s even, as you know, in politics, there’s a bunch of other kinds of canvas in American English, all related to politics, but generally about encountering somebody else or bringing your own point of view to the table or just finding out what their opinions are.

Yeah, shaking things out in one way or another.

Yeah, figuratively or literally.

Yeah.

Cool?

That’s really cool. Thank you so much for that.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Cole. Bye-bye.

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