Re: Pedestrian

I attended a concert presented by two somewhat popular folk artists the other evening. I suppose that this label attributed to them is slightly inaccurate, folk-music being a category too limited and limiting. So, let me call these performers with whom I visited singer-songwriters. But as I listened to the first performer whose songs I had heard streaming on my radio stations, I thought that these songs were dull and mundane and that the performance was mostly pedestrian. What I think I meant by this judgment is that the songs offered few thought-provoking phrasings and little insight into life circumstances; the melodies seemed to me flat and did not please or inspire. The performance of the headliner did not rise too far above that description. I left early.
            But I began to wonder to what the word “pedestrian” meant here. To what particularly did I refer when I called the performances ‘pedestrian.’ The OED records that in 1791 the word ‘pedestrian’ meant “On foot, going or walking on foot; performed on foot; of or pertaining to walking.” A pedestrian was one who goes or travels on foot. Well, that is what I expected the word to mean, but I was a bit surprised that the word did not attain that meaning until the end of the 18^thcentury. But I knew that Socrates was considered peripatetic walking about on foot, and this activity has been considered a good thing. I think Socrates was certainly a pedestrian but hardly commonplace or dull. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert, though referring them as pedestrians misunderstands their activity. There were no pedestrians per se in that wilderness. 
            I discovered this second definition of the word that dates from 1716, early in the 18^th century.. In that year pedestrian referred to “plain prose as opposed to verse or even to verse of a prosaic character; hence, prosaic, commonplace, dull, uninspired.” I was interested to consider that the definition of the word had generalized over the century from denoting dull prose to describing movers on foot. The OED suggests that this later definition of “pedestrian” was a descriptor meant to contrast to the winged flight of Pegasus. Thus it would seem that this latter definition of “pedestrian” referring to those who walked on foot came to be associated with an earlier iteration that identified pedestrian with commonplace, dull or uninspired prose or verse. Poetry and verse (though probably not that of popular song) was considered the more refined and higher art. “For if the matter be thoroughly considered,” writes Joseph Addison in 1709 in The Tatler, “a strong Argument may be drawn from Poesy, that a more stately Greatness of Things, a more perfect Order and a more beautiful Variety, delights the soul of Man, than any Way can be found in Nature since the Fall.” The generalization of “pedestrian” suggested that to walk on foot represented an inferior mode of transportation that was consigned to those who from a myriad of circumstances remained on the ground for a lack of means to raise them up into chariots, carriages, trains or planes; that is, to fly as did the winged horse, Pegasus, who was responsible for delivering thunderbolts to Zeus.
            I am intrigued how the meaning of ‘pedestrian’ had expanded from referring in 1716 to a description of dull, commonplace, prosaic prose to describing in 1791 people who walked on foot. Perhaps with the advent of public transportation requiring payment walking was thought to be left to the less economically fortunate and therefore, as the Puritans might aver, less worthy people. Certainly it was thought, that to ride in trains, planes and automobiles was deemed a more exciting, sanitary, and refined means of people movement than trudging through the muck and mud on the ground. Thus, by the end of the 18^th century pedestrian seemed to have come have pejorative connotations. Pedestrians could now be considered inferior types and even obstructive. Jaywalking became a crime because with the appearance of the automobile, so many “pedestrians” were being killed in the streets; it was believed that it would be easier to control people walking than police those driving automobiles. In such manner, “pedestrian” might have come to be identified with dull, commonplace prose because pedestrians were considered to be deprived of and even obstructive to exciting progress. Pedestrian mode of travel was not as respected as were the available transportation vehicles even as in the 18th century prose was not as esteemed as was poetry.
            As a noun “pedestrian” refers to one who walks on foot, but I must note that Thoreau might have loved to saunter but the word pedestrian does not appear in the index of the complete fourteen volumes of his journal. Walking, he does aver, may be a science, but only with regard to the direction! There was nothing ever commonplace or prosaic in Thoreau’s rambles on foot. I think that in his walks Thoreau carried thunderbolts to his Zeus.