Etymology: < black adj. + guard n. The earliest uses apparently show simple phrasal uses, referring to a person or group of people (contextually or habitually) dressed in black or black in appearance, although many early uses also at least play on figurative meanings of black adj. (see further below). The increasing lexicalization of the compound, especially in senses in which figurative meanings of black adj. are dominant, is reflected by the pronunciations with loss of /k/ or its assimilation to /ɡ/ (recorded already in some 18th-cent. dictionaries, as Sheridan (1780), Walker (1791)) and in some cases reduction of the vowel in the second syllable, and by corresponding spelling forms. (Word division is a less safe guide for the earlier period.)In the earliest attested senses, A. 2, A. 1, and A. 4, the primary reference is apparently either to black clothing (in senses A. 2 and A. 4) or, probably, to soot stains (in sense A. 1). However, even the early uses in these senses seem frequently to play on the conventional connotations of menace, villainy, baseness, or other unfavourable associations of the word black or the colour itself. For example, in quot. 1570 at sense A. 2, while the primary intended sense of black is probably the colour sense (with reference to the black cloak of the Dominican friars; compare Black Friar n.), a pejorative connotation is likely, given that the quot. comes from a famous account of the persecutions of English Protestants during the reign of Queen Mary I. In later use the first element of the compound clearly came to be taken as primarily figurative (compare especially senses A. 3, A. 5, A. 6). In some early examples it is not entirely clear which sense is shown, e.g.:1532 Churchwardens' Accts. St. Margaret's, Westm. (MS) (Receipts for burials) Item Receyvid for the lycens of iiij. torchis of the blake garde vjd.1568 U. Fulwell Like wil to Like sig. B.iii.^v Thou art serued as Harry hangman captain of the black garde. Nay, I am serued..as Haman, etc.1578 H. Killigrew in Cal. State Papers, Domest. Add. Rolls Ser. 530 A woman has been murdered in Court by the black guard [compare p. 532 certain soldiers, for the murder of a woman were condemned to die].1633 J. Shirley Triumph of Peace 280 There rush in a carpenter, a painter, one of the black guard.a1640 R. Burton Anat. Melancholy (1651) i. ii. i. ii. 42 Some of them are inferior to those of their own rank in worth, as the black guard in a Princes Court. In sense A. 7, the snuff is probably so called on account of its pungency and reputation for causing sneezing, although a secondary reference to its dark colour is also possible; compare slightly later Irish Blackguard n. at Irish adj. and n. Compounds 3.

Etymology: < blackguard n.