auctioneer

   The original meaning of ‘auction’ is ‘to increase, augment’. The auctioneer is one who raises the sale price of an object in stages. His attention is usually gained by some kind of visual signal, but he may be addressed by his professional title. In The House with the Green Shutters, by George Douglas, the vocative is spelt ‘owctioner’, to indicate the Scottish pronunciation of the speaker. In Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, where Careless volunteers to act as an auctioneer for Charles Surface, we have: ‘But come, get to your pulpit, Mr Auctioneer; here’s an old gouty chair of my father’s will answer the purpose.’ Perhaps the most famous auction scene in literature occurs in The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy, when Michael Henchard offers to sell his wife. A bystander offers to act as auctioneer and is thereafter addressed as such by Henchard. A mocking offer of five shillings begins the sale, but Susan and her daughter Elizabeth Jane are eventually auctioned for five guineas. The rest of the novel examines the consequences of this action.