“With a hey, ho, chivy / Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy”
Well ooh, la, la. What a fancy word we have here today!
Tantivy is an adverb, meaning “in a headlong dash or at a gallop”
This one just sounds wierd in a sentence. I mean shouldn’t adverbs pretty much end in -ly? “He charged tantivy at me.” Almost seems like it ought to be, “He ran tantivily at me,” doesn’t it? -ty ending usually denotes a noun. By the way, the noun form of this word is the same as the adverb. Most unusual!
No one seems to know where the word came from. The noun form can mean “the blare of a trumpet or horn” too. I don’t like repeating the weak theory at websters claiming the word sounds like the sound of horse hooves…not to my ears!
The best theory about the word’s origins comes from World Wide Words, which explains that the word sounds similar to the word “chivy” and is found in old British hunting songs. It also lets us off the hook by explaining the word is archaic. No one’s going to complain if you never use it!
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