Klarinet Archive - Posting 000738.txt from 1998/06

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: [kl] Some etymological observations on crap
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 12:52:00 -0400

Ed Maurey wrote:

>Sir Thomas Crapper was a brilliant 19th Century hydraulic engineer who
>invented the flushing toilet! Countless toilets were marked with his
>company name. The resulting development of the word "crap" was
>inevitable.

I had always heard that Crapper was a master plumber, but of course, he
could also have been a brilliant hydraulic engineer. Anyway, his invention
-- examples of which were still in service here and there in England when
last I was there - involved a tank mounted high on the wall, with a chain
hanging down to release the water. The modern chain-and-ball-float
mechanism and the various improvements on it, such as the flapper valve,
were not, I believe, Crapper's inventions.

"The crapper" quickly became a slightly impolite word for what nice Brits
called the water closet or WC. By the linguistic process called
back-formation, it became a verb, to crap, and soon after, or perhaps
almost at the same time, the noun appeared in slang. The word crap, with a
variety of non-related meanings, is recorded from the late 18th century,
and the dice game craps has nothing to do with Crapper. It antedated his
invention by a century or more.

It would be interesting to know when and how our word traveled across the
Atlantic to the US and Canada. My microprint 1979 edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary, with Victorian delicacy, takes no notice of crap and
crapper in the sense under discussion. The 1987 supplement, somewhat less
prudish. does, but makes no mention of Sir Thomas. The word is recorded in
England from the 1890s on. One supposes it was common in slang well before
that, but not written down. The first American citations are from the
1920s. Did men of the AEF bring it home after World War I?

This concludes my lecture. If there are no questions, there will be a short
quiz, after which we will return to the topic of clarinets and music.

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