Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Vocabulary
The guide man; the head man
Three Men in a Boat
"Caesar, of course, had a little place at Walton - a camp, or an entrenchment, or something of that sort. Caesar was a regular up-river man. Also Queen Elizabeth, she was there, too. You can never get away from that woman, go where you will. Cromwell and Bradshaw (not the guide man, but the King Charles's head man) likewise sojourned here."
I found out that in this text the guide man is an author of a manual or guide and the head man is an executioner.
Could it be that in another context the guide man is a person who conducts a tour of the city and the head man is a leader of a group of people?
"Caesar, of course, had a little place at Walton - a camp, or an entrenchment, or something of that sort. Caesar was a regular up-river man. Also Queen Elizabeth, she was there, too. You can never get away from that woman, go where you will. Cromwell and Bradshaw (not the guide man, but the King Charles's head man) likewise sojourned here."
I found out that in this text the guide man is an author of a manual or guide and the head man is an executioner.
Could it be that in another context the guide man is a person who conducts a tour of the city and the head man is a leader of a group of people?
Top answer
The English of your excerpt is not very good. A person who conducts tours is a guide ; 'guide man' is non-native. And a headman (one word) is indeed a leader of a small group, as a tribe, village or clan.
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The English of your excerpt is not very good.
A person who conducts tours is a guide; 'guide man' is non-native. And a headman (one word) is indeed a leader of a small group, as a tribe, village or clan.
A person who conducts tours is a guide; 'guide man' is non-native. And a headman (one word) is indeed a leader of a small group, as a tribe, village or clan.
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Yes, but the phrase is more likely to be "guide" or "tour guide" (not "guide man"). And "head" is more common than "head man."
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Thank you very much for your quick replies. It is a bit confusing. It took me a while to guess what Jerome means. I would like to ask is this a common practice nowadays to use these expressions in a context in which Jerome uses them?
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Just to give you a little context for the quotation, Three Men in a Boat was written as a humorous guide back in 1889, so the style of language is, of course, out of date.
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