comrade

   This word is similar to ‘chum’ in some respects. Both words originally meant ‘chamber-mate’ and both came to have the general meaning of ‘friend’. ‘Comrade’, however, was early associated with comrades-in-arms, fellow soldiers who shared one’s tent. It was therefore mainly used by men to men, especially if they were serving together. ‘Keep your spirits up, old comrade,’ says Festus Derriman to his friend Noakes, in Thomas Hardy’s The Trumpet Major. ‘Spur on, comrades,’ he adds, to the other fellow soldiers around him. In the 1880s the term ‘comrade’ was adopted by the communists and socialists as a title that would do away with social and sexual distinctions. This specialized usage, to fellow members of a union or political party, has made the ordinary use of the word, vocatively or otherwise, far less likely. The political use of ‘comrade’ is marked especially by its being used as a prefix, accompanied by a last name. ‘I am with you, Comrade Jackson,’ says Psmith to Mike, in P.G.Wodehouse’s public school story Mike. He continues: ‘You won’t mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I’ve just become a Socialist’ In Gideon Planish, by Sinclair Lewis, occurs: ‘He suggested their calling one another “Comrade” but it didn’t go. Gid and Hatch were still too close to the horrors of being called “Brother” by loud evangelical pastors.’ This conversation takes place at a meeting of the Adelbert College Socialist League. St Urbain’s Horseman, by Mordecai Richler, has ‘comrade’ used in a friendly conversation between two men, who also call each other ‘mate’.