In 1624, William Bedell published a book with the riveting title Copies Certaine Letters. In it he posed a question, which has echoed down the centuries ever since: “Who were these quidams that laid hands on Scory?”
A couple of hundred years later, in 1832, the London Times pointed out that “If the doctrine of our English quidams be right, the French must be very short of brain.” And as recently as 2004, the Edmonton Journal reported that “It’s pretty risky to invite quidams from the audience… onto the stage.”
Just to briefly run down what we know so far: there were quidams around in the 1600s who were involved in an assault on Scory. Perhaps at the time, but certainly by 1832, at least some of them were English, and promoted a Francophobic foreign policy. And by the 2000s some number had emigrated to Canada, where they attended some form of performances, possibly (though this is speculative) entertainment-related.
However, Bedell’s original question has not been answered; we still don’t really know who the quidams are. Luckily for us, it turns out we’re perfectly correct anyway; a “quidam” is an unknown person. The word was borrowed directly from Latin in the 1500s, about the same time it appeared in French. And ever since it’s languished in comfortable obscurity, showing up only occasionally when somebody — nobody knows who — notices it for some reason, such as it once being the word of the day in the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
