Miss MacDonald has kindly allowed me to devote a small corner of 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly' to the meaning and origin of English words and phrases (the study of etymology), a subject that we both find fascinating and absorbing. It is intended to be a lighthearted look at some of the common words and phrases that we all use in everyday speech. In addition, I hope to regularly include one or two anecdotes, and finish off with some famous ‘last words’. I hope it will prove both educational, and raise a smile as well.

Many words and expressions in common use have a nautical origin – often from the days of the great sailing ships. Here are some examples:

Rostrum

The Latin name for the ram fitted to the bow on early Mediterranean ships was rostra. In 338 BC after the Battle of Actium the Roman victors took some of the rostra from captured vessels as souvenirs, carried them home to Rome, and displayed them in front of the speaker’s stage in the Forum. Gradually the entire assemblage took on the name of rostra. How the plural rostra was changed to the singular rostrum nobody knows!

Son of a gun

This comes from the time when women shared the gun deck of a ‘man of war’ with men aboard ships in port, and sometimes at sea. Since the working spaces and gangways had to be kept clear, the only undisturbed place a woman could give birth to a child would be behind screens between the guns. The expression also meant being conceived alongside a gun, since a hammock wasn’t convenient for that sort of thing.

     The following is an extract from the Captain’s Journal of a brig sailing off the Spanish coast in 1835:

'This day the surgeon informed me that a woman on board had been labouring in child for 12 hours and asked if I could fire a broadside to leeward. I did so and she was delivered of a fine male child'.

     In cases where the paternity was uncertain, the child was entered in the deck log as 'son of a gun'.

Wallop

After the French fleet had raised and burnt Brighton on the Sussex coast in the reign of Henry VIII, Sir John Wallop was ordered by the king to carry out a reprisal raid. Sir John sailed with his fleet to Normandy, where he is reported to have burnt twenty-one towns and villages, and to have demolished several harbours. Ever since, the name Wallop has been synonymous with a beating or good hiding.

1) Sir Thomas Beecham (the world famous conductor) was travelling in a no-smoking compartment of a train, in the days when the Great Western Railway was still in existence, when he was joined by a lady passenger. Having settled herself, his companion took out a cigarette and lit it, saying, ‘I’m sure you won’t mind'.
‘Not at all,’ said Beecham, provided that you don’t mind if I am sick'.
‘I don’t think you know who I am', she retorted haughtily. ‘I am one of the directors’ wives'.
‘Madam,’ replied Beecham, ‘if you were the director’s only wife, I should still be sick'.

[The 'don't you know who I am?' theme reminded me of a couple of famous ripostes. At a London dinner party, a particularly self-regarding guest was relating his experience at a party he had attended recently. ' They simply ignored me, until  they found out who I was', he related. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then the brilliantly waspish English critic Kenneth Tynan asked, 'And who were you?'

The other event took place at Peter Cook's famous Establishment Club in London the early 1960s. An American businessman became tired of having to queue to gain entry, and angrily challenged Cook, 'Don't you know who I am??' Peter Cook simply picked up a microphone, and announced, 'May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen. There is a man at the door who doesn't know who he is. If anybody present can help establish his identity...' at which the businessman spat out an unprintable vulgarism.
'I am sorry sir', replied Cook in the exquisitely haughty, saturnine way that he performed so well, 'I am afraid you will have to stand in line for that too'.

This latter story has been somewhat corrupted over the years, and has been ascribed to several people, as often happens with especially funny responses. This is the true story, as many celebrated British comics of the period would confirm. Very few people could be so lightning witted, but the late Peter Cook was certainly one].

2) Sarah Bernhardt enjoyed great public acclaim playing the part of Cleopatra in George Bernard Shaw’s play. Night after night she played to packed houses. Audiences particularly enjoyed her dying scene, in which she systematically set about wrecking the palace with exuberant ferocity, before expiring among the debris. After which the house rose applauding wildly. At the end of one performance the commotion was dying away as one elderly woman in the stalls was overheard remarking to her companion, ‘How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear queen’. 

Raymond Maria Narvaez (1800-1868)
When this Spanish statesman, whilst on his deathbed, was asked by a priest if he had forgiven all his enemies, he replied: ‘No need to forgive them – I have had them all shot'.
 

Saffy – March 2001