Bail

Filed Under January 2007, columns 

Get me out of here.

Dear Word Detective: I came across this expression while reading Treasure Island, and I thought I’d try asking you about it, even though it’s probably old-fashioned. It’s used in Chapters 6 and 8. Page references below are in the Oxford Classics edition. “I’ll go with you [in search of treasure]; and, I’ll go bail for it, so will Jim, and be a credit to the undertaking” (34). “…I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver” (45). I think it means something like “to risk oneself in an undertaking,” “vouch for,” or “stand security for,” but the two uses in the story are different from each other. I’m curious where the expression originated, and what the meaning of “bail” is here. Is it related to the legal use of the term (i.e., paying bail for someone’s release from custody), or perhaps to the action of bailing water out of a boat (though I can’t see the connection right now). — Steve.

“Bail” is quite a word. We “bail” our friends out of jail, the government “bails out” the airlines and automakers every few years, people “bail out” of airplanes or bad relationships, and we “bail” the water out of a leaky boat as fast as we can. As a noun, “bail” also means a cross-bar, especially the one forming the top of a wicket in the game of cricket, as well as being an archaic term for the wall of a fortress or the like. Several of these senses are definitely related, and some authorities believe they all are.

The root underlying several senses of “bail” is the Latin “bajulare,” meaning “to carry” or “to bear a burden,” which begat the French “baillier,” meaning “to take charge of” or “hand over or deliver.” This “take charge of” sense produced the most common sense of “bail,” that of “release of a person who would otherwise be in jail” either upon payment of a security deposit (also known as “bail”) or into the charge of one who swears to ensure the accused’s appearance at trial. This use of “to bail” meaning “to vouch for” or “to guarantee” produced, in the 16th century, the senses in the passages you cite, both of which amount to a solemn commitment to see the task through.

The “bailing” one does on a sinking boat comes directly from the French “baille,” meaning “bucket,” but that word may hark back to the “carry” sense of the Latin “bajulare” as well. “Bailing out” of an aircraft probably echoes the sense of bailing water from a boat (although in the UK it is often spelled “bale,” as if a bundle of something were being jettisoned).

 

 

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