Word of the week: Hustling on the hustings

Toronto's mayoral candidates are out on the hustings drumming up support. What are hustings, exactly? And why can you never have only one of them? In Old Norse (the language spoken by the Vikings who invaded England in the 10th century), a husthing (literally “house assembly”) was a type of royal council. Eventually it came to designate a court presided over by the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London, and more specifically the platform on which they sat. Mysteriously, only the plural was used. By the 18th century the hustings were a platform from which candidates were officially announced, and from which they made campaign speeches.

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