Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1885 — Unpertakers-Why so Called. [ARTICLE]

Unpertakers-Why so Called.

This use of the word is no doubt derived from its primary meaning, one who stipulates to do anything, or undertakes the management of an affair. Two hundred years ago a class of people known as upholders were usually called upon to take charge of funerals. Thus the poet Gay says: “The upholder, rueiul harbinger of death. Waits with impatience for the dying- bi eatb.” Now, upholders were dealers in sec-ond-hand furniture, old clothes, and the like, and perhaps were so Called because they were so often’ resorted to as the last resource of failing credit. As these persons were able from their stock of cheaply purchased material to supply what was needed at funerals at less expense than the regular merchant or harberdasher, they came to be thus employed, and also to furnish houses. In time the more ambitious of this class confined their business to the furnishing of houses only, and dealt in goods both new and old, and to avoid the confounding of their business with that of the funeral managers styled themselves upholdsters, a name changed later to upholsterers. Subsequently the more pretentious members of the clan of upholsterers assumed the name of undertakers, deriving their cognomen logically enough from the signification of its parts in the Saxon tongue. An undertaker, one who takes in hand a business or task, or readers himself responsible for its performance. Or perhaps the idea of the word was taken from the French name of the same officer, entrepreneur, though the primary idea of the French word is rather that of one who bids for a particular task.---Infer Ocean.