أعتقد أن المناقشة التالية تفيد في توضيح معنى مفردة "lobby" من خلال التطور التاريخي لاستخدامها:
lobby
Does "lobbyist" come from "lobby" or vice versa? Are they related to the verb "to lob"? And where does "lobby" come from (as a lunch partner wanted to know as we left the building Tuesday)?
Let's take your questions in reverse order, since that'll take care of the historical development too. The first appearance of lobby meaning roughly 'an entrance hall' is (of course) in Shakespeare: "How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood/And duly waited for my coming forth?" (Henry VI, Part II; Shakespeare's using "voiding lobby" here to mean a lobby that people pass through as they void or leave a room). The very first use came earlier in the sixteenth century and appears to refer to some sort of cloister in a monastery; there's only one example and it's not very clear. The word is borrowed from the medieval Latin lobia, which meant 'a covered way', and is related to the English word lodge.
The word developed a more specific sense in the seventeenth century, when it was used to refer to one of the anterooms of the House of Commons; in one of these anterooms, the public could meet with the members of Parliament and talk with them. This specific sense was itself generalized to mean the anteroom of any legislative assembly.
The verb "to lobby" arose in the early nineteenth century to mean 'to visit a lobby in order to influence members', and that's where we get the political use. The word lobbyist developed later in the nineteenth century from this verb. Both the verbal use and the word "lobbyist" were American developments.
The verb to lob is completely unrelated; it comes from a noun meaning 'a dangling object'.
المصدر:
هنا.
أشكر د. محمد اسحق الريفي لإثارة النقاش، والأستاذ أديب القصراوي لما أفادنا به.
كونا بخير،
مع فائق تقديري.
المفضلات