I am looking for the etymology for the word "gingerly". All I can find is that it came into use in 1594. How they determined that, I'll never know. How did we get from ginger to gingerly?

I remember reading that carriage horses were made to move more "gingerly" by
putting ginger underneath base of tail, where the irritation allegedly made their
movements livelier.

From the Internet:
The other practice involving tails is "gingering" of Arabian horses. In contrast to the western
pleasure horse, the Arabian should be spirited and reactive. Therefore, his tail should be held up.
In order to achieve high tail carriage in phlegmatic horses, ginger is inserted into the anus or rectum.
The stimulation, presumably of pain receptors in the mucosa causes the horse to raise its tail. It
takes more manual pressure, as measured by a pressure gauge such as a
penetrometer, a device for measuring the pressure necessary to penetrate the fruit, but there are both false negative and false positives. The sensation of heat produced by the application of ginger leads to vaso-constriction of the perianal area and consequent cooling of the surface temperature. This can be measured accurately by thermography under constant conditions, but not under field (i.e., show) conditions [17].

so far, from:
http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/g2etym.htm

ginger - O.E. gingifer, from M.L. gingiber, from L. zingiberi, from Gk. zingiberis, from Prakrit (Middle Indic) singabera, from Sansk. srngaveram, from srngam "horn" + vera- "body," from the shape of its root. The bread in gingerbread (early 15c.) is M.E. folk etymology; the word is from O.Fr. ginginbrat "preserved ginger," from M.L. gingimbratus "gingered." Gingerbread in the sense of "fussy decoration on a house" is first recorded 1757.
gingerly - 1519, perhaps from O.Fr. gensor, comp. of gent "dainty, delicate," from L. gentius "(well)-born."

probably makes for more questions than answers! but that's really why we're here, right?

all I can say, after reading wwh's post, is O Crap! Poor Horses!

That being said....I thought "gingerly" implied tentativeness. My Cdn Oxford says this:

adv. in a careful or cautious manner; adj. showing great care or caution; gingerliness, n. [perhaps from Old French gensor delicate, comparative of gent graceful from Latin genitus (well-)born]

So how did we get from inserting ginger in a horse's arse to make it step lively, to doing things carefully?

Aha....perhaps you very gingerly ginger a horse, because they doesn't like it and are apt to give you a swift kick....?!

Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.

: "When I was your age, young and full of ginger, I wanted to take a bite out of every pretty girl I saw."
quoted in "The Wolfpen Notebooks" by James Still (The University Of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Ky.,
1991).

Gingerly is the way an explosives expert disarms a bomb. Like porcupines making love,
very alertly, carefully.
Not like incident at VA Hospital almost thirty years ago. A psychologist left his
briefcase outside entrance, while he went in to make a phone call. Someone thought
it might be a bomb, and called hospital police, who took it away, and shot it full of
holes. Inside the briefcase was the only copy of a thesis not yet submitted.

..and shot it full of holes. Inside the briefcase was the only copy of a thesis not yet submitted.

As the product of a psychologist, it was in all probability full of holes already.


retreats gingerly (i.e. with back to wall)

I was intrigued by this use of 'gingerly' in a post on another board I frequent:

We are NOT butt-kissers nor any of the other names we have so gingerly been called recently.

To me, gingerly means 'very cautiously'. I vaguely recalled Quinion having discussed the word recently: http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-gin1.htm, and wondered whether it had also been discussed here. Although he doesn't discuss the meaning 'hot-tempered', which it seems to have above, his discussion does rule out the story of horses having ginger thrust up their rear ends.

Bingley

rule out the story of horses having ginger thrust up their rear ends.

Or we could just reject that story outright on the simple basis of the fact that ginger and gingerly are totally unrelated words.

That is what I meant. Quinion makes it clear that ginger and gingerly come from different roots (so to speak). My apologies for any lack of clarity.


Bingley

Mea culpa for not going to the Quinion link, besides of which, Mr gehakte leber shrdlu (AKA cygnus) said much the same thang back up there almost two years ago.

Mr gehakte leber shrdlu

hehe...