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With the November elections approaching and the campaign season beginning in earnest, I started thinking about politicians being absent from when it's time to vote (and voting by show of hands rather than on the record), from their districts unless they need to raise money, from representing all their constituents and not just the few with money, from restraining spending taxpayer dollars on bridges to nowhere or to give themselves better health and retirement benefits (I've often wondered why these public servants earn 5 to 10 times the median income of their consituents, why they get free health care that is superior to anything their constituents can buy, along with a retirement program that is the envy of all but the highest echelon corporate executives -- yet all in the name of "public service"), and on and on. That lead me to wonder about the word absentee. (A twisty path but nonetheless the path my thoughts took.)
Absentee has lots of uses today, such as absentee landlord, absentee voter, and a student who doesn't attend class. But in our early history, absentee had a much more interesting connotation: During the American Revolution, absentee meant a crown loyalist who was absent from his or her residence, which was simply another way of saying traitor. Sometimes I wonder if the colonials didn't have it right. But absentee did move on and the traitorous connotation did become obsolete, perhaps as loyalists also became obsolete.
Some subsequent uses include Iowa's was the first state to formal acceptance of the idea of an absentee voter (Iowa was the first). But the political connection didn't totally die: One of the earliest uses of "absenteeism" was in 1888 by M. Lane in article written for Political Catch-Words: "Absenteeism . . . does duty in defining the position of congressmen, like the late Senator Nye, whose constituency is in one state and their residence in another." Does this sound familiar today?
Other articles on Americanisms and language are available by selecting Featured Articles > The English We Use above.
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