My personal understanding of the word thug is that a thug is someone I want to avoid because they are likely to clobber me, either to rob me or just because they think it’s some kind of fun.

But I see from a few very popular entries at Urbandictionary that rap music and hip-hop have gone some way to changing the meaning of thug. It seems to have become something of a legitimate badge of honor in some circles.

I suppose it was a badge of honor anyway for toughs who need to prove themselves through deeds of violence.

But the new meaning appears to be that someone from underprivileged origins toughs it through to be a legitimate success; so that in this case to be a thug means you’re toughing it through.

The origins of the word thug aren’t too honorable or legitimate though.

The word comes from Hindi and originally held a meaning not all that different from my original English understanding of the word.  It meant a robber or a cheat.

The word root reaches back into Indo-European where teg or steg meant “to cover”; a robber wants to cover up their crime.

But it was the antics of a weird Hindu religious cult a couple of hundred years ago that brought the word into English.

Hinduism has numerous gods but one of the main ones is Shiva. Shiva is, among other things, the god of destruction.

This particular cult though, they worshipped his wife Kali.

She seems to have been a pretty nasty piece of business and her worshippers followed suit.  By some delusion they regarded killing and robbing people as some kind of act of worship.

Their usual method was to strangle their victim but there are claims of poison, stabbing and dumping down wells.

These guys were called the Thugs in Hindi and the word was adopted by the British government in India.

A book published in 1837 called Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs claims that

“for many years after the British power had gained the ascendant in India the Thugs continued to practice their execrable trade…the evil seems to have been regarded in much the same light as the fixed inconveniences of the climate or the accidental inclemency of unfavorable seasons—as a thing greatly to be lamented but beyond hope of remedy and which it was the part of wisdom to endure with patience.”

Finally a lowly civil servant named William Sleeman started to point out to his government that it was really irresponsible of any governing body to let this go on.

For some time he was ignored as is the familiar lot of so many responsible civil servants even today, but finally a new Governor General arrived from England and took the issue seriously.

They say it took 50 years to stamp out the cult.

Today’s episode brought to you by Ammon Shea’s book Reading the OED.