[4] The project began through correspondence between Sir Henry Yule, who was then living in Palermo, and Arthur Coke Burnell, who was a member of the Madras Civil Service, and was holding posts in several places in South India, and particularly, in Thanjavur.
[5] Yule and Burnell compiled the text by using a variety of sources, including accounts of Anglo-Indian language and usages by other authors of the time, as well as government documents such as glossaries of revenue administrative and legislative terms, and contemporary dictionaries.
which is repeatedly chanted by Shia Muslims throughout the procession of the Muharram; this was then converted to Hosseen Gosseen, Hossy Gossy, Hossein Jossen and, ultimately, Hobson-Jobson.
[6] Yule and Burnell wrote that they considered the title a "typical and delightful example" of the type of highly domesticated words in the dictionary that also implied their own dual authorship.
In English, however, rhyming reduplication is generally either juvenile (as in Humpty Dumpty or hokey-pokey) or pejorative (as in namby-pamby or mumbo-jumbo); further, Hobson and Jobson were stock characters in Victorian times, used to indicate a pair of yokels, clowns, or idiots.
"[13] James A. Murray made extensive use of Hobson-Jobson in writing entries on South Asian words for the Oxford English Dictionary.