Whig

Whig (pronounced wig)

(1) To move along briskly (obsolete except in Scotland).

(2) A political party in Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1679-circa 1860 and in the and US circa 1834-1855 (initial capital).

(3) Slang for a conservative member of the Liberal Party in Great Britain (used both with and without initial capital).

(4) Slang for certain factions in the US Republican Party (used both with and without initial capital).

(5) A (rarely used) historical term for a seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterian, especially one in rebellion against the Crown (used both with and without initial capital).

(6) In Northern English dialectal use, acidulated whey, sometimes mixed with buttermilk and sweet herbs, used as a cooling beverage (obsolete).

(7) Buttermilk (now rare)

Circa 1657: The British political movement later called Whig began to emerge in the mid-1650s, (“emerged” is a better expression than “was formed”), in part perhaps a disparaging use of the 1640s whigg (a country bumpkin) but the greater influence was the 1649 Whiggamaire (later Whiggamore) (the Covenanters, adherents of the Presbyterian cause in western Scotland who marched on Edinburgh in 1648 to oppose Charles I)  The sense, from circa 1635, of a country bumpkin may have been linked to "a horse drover," from the dialectal verb whig "to urge forward" + mare (in the sense of a horse).  In 1689 the name was first used in reference to members of the British political party opposed to the Tories.  The American Revolution era sense of "colonist who opposes Crown policies" is from 1768 and, as early as 1825, was applied to opponents of Andrew Jackson and taken as the name of a political party (1834), most of the factions of which were absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854-1856.  The adjective whiggish (used usually as a disparaging way of describing the tendencies of some towards the philosophies of the Whigs while claiming alignment with another political faction) is from the 1670s, the noun whiggery (principles or practices of the Whigs) noted during the next decade.  Whig, Whiggishness & Wiggery are nouns, Wiggish is an adjective; the noun plural is Whigs.

Portrait of Lord Shelburne (1776), oil on canvas, by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).

The Whigs were a faction of the Tory party which later became a party in its own right.  In its varied forms, the Whigs operated between 1679 and the late nineteenth-century, their philosophy based on a defense of constitutional monarchism and an opposition to absolutism, the part the Whigs played in British politics later absorbed by Tory factions and the Liberal Party although strains of its philosophy can sometimes be seen still in the Labour Party (depending on which faction is in the ascendant).  Structurally, the morphing of a Tory faction into a formalized party had far-reaching consequences which continue to this day; no prime-minister since Lord Shelburne (1737-1805; UK prime-minister 1782–1783) has attempted to govern without the support of a party.

In the US, a Whig Party was active in the mid-nineteenth-century and four US presidents belonged to the party while in office.  Formed originally in opposition to the policies of Democratic President Andrew Jackson, the Whigs supported the supremacy of the congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization, banking, and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing.  Not directly related to the British Whigs, party founders chose the name to echo those of the eighteenth-century who fought for independence, nodding also in the direction of the earlier Federalist Party but would later dissolve because of internal tensions over the expansion of slavery to the territories.  Charmingly, many joined the short-lived Know Nothing Party; most eventually drifted back to the Democrats or Republicans although the name is revived from time-to-time but without much electoral success.  Of late, some belonging to the more conservative factions in the Republican Party are labeled Whigs and this can be either in disparagement or self-referentially.

The term “Whig historian” was first recorded in 1924.  Despite the temptation, it really can’t be used in any neutral sense because of the legacy of the words of Sir Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979; Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge) who, early in life, published the book for which he is still remembered: The Whig Interpretation of History (1931).  In that slim volume, he defined Whig history as "the tendency in many historians... to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present."  Both "Whig historian" and the "Whig interpretation of history" are thus loaded terms.  Sir Herbert, it was clear, was thinking of the English tradition of historiography but his critique has been widely adopted, the idea of the retrospective creation of a line of progress toward the glorious present a theme now explored not only by the odd Whig but also the post-modernists.

Lindsay Lohan in blonde wig (asymmetric bob) on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show, New York, November 2012.

The word wig (a head of real or synthetic hair worn on the head for various reasons) is unrelated to Whig.  Dating from the 1660s, it was a clipping of the French periwig (a wig, especially the large, stylised constructions worn by both men & women) which was an alteration of the Middle French perruque (wig).  The word “wig” in 1730s England was adapted to created the informal “bigwig” (an important person), based on the fashion at the time for those in authority to wear large, elaborate wig, the idea (presumably not without foundation) that the more important the person, the bigger the wig.  The same linkage explains the military slang “brass hat” (a high-ranking officer), based on the brass embellishments or insignia applied to the hats of the upper ranks.  The term persists (even outside the military) even though the metal is now rare even on the hats of dress uniforms but there's still often gold braid to justify the connection.