Cliches: Hoodwink, and Pull the Wool Over His Eyes
As birthday and other family get-together opportunities come up, we get a kick out of playing historical games together. Recently, while explaining a couple of old English games that would have been familiar to the Mayflower pilgrims (1620), husband Dave asked me if the word “hoodwinked” could have come from one of the games called Hoodman’s Blind. It seemed a slight possibility, and we were curious enough to do a little research.
First, the game of Hoodman’s Blind is played by putting a hood over someone’s head to blind them, and then other players tag or slap or push the hooded player. If the hooded player can catch a taunter and guess who they are, that person then becomes the hooded player. Adults played the game, as did children.
It is really very fun to play.
At any rate, the two books we have on cliché origins do not have the word “hoodwink” listed, and online queries simply turned up the definition as ”to blindfold.” Although that almost fits, it doesn’t necessarily speak to origin.
In using an etymology dictionary found online at etymonline.com, we discovered that the origins of the word hoodwink are placed at 1562, which is the right time period for the game of Hoodman’s Blind. By 1610 it looks like the word had become a cliché suggesting deception.
Our antique Webster’s dictionary, which also has word etymology, says the obsolete definition of the noun “hoodwink” is “Blindman’s Buff,” but doesn’t give a date. (Could it mean ”Hoodwink,” as in an alternative name for the game?)
Wikipedia says that Blindman’s Buff (the UK version of America’s “Blindman’s Bluff“) is a variant tag game that dates back to the Tudor period in England (1485-1603; this period is also called the Renaissance of 1300-1600, which includes the Elizabethan era of Queen Elizabeth’s reign from 1558-1603). It is described as being like Marco Polo, only not played in a swimming pool.
It would appear there is a clear connection: ”hoodwink” does come from old English tag games that utilized a hood or blindfold. As for the phrase “Pull the wool over his eyes,” it is defined as “to hoodwink, or to deceive.” It seems plausible that this phrase, too, could have origins to games like Hoodman’s Blind, as wool would have been a very common choice of fabric for the hoods used to play the game. Phrases.org, a service based in the UK, lists “Pull the wool over his eyes” in their database with the definition of “to hoodwink,” but they describe the origins as not dating back any further than the early 1800’s, and they make the connection to the wearing of wigs, not hoods. Wigs were sometimes made of wool, but they weren’t supposed to cover the eyes. This leads me to think that the connection with wigs may not be correct, and that the old English games of blindfolded tag are a more plausible fit.
