Bowdlerize

I think there are a few words, including bowdlerize, that will be more evident in the media this year as we hear more about censorship in its many forms. "Expurgation" is a form of censorship in which something deemed noxious or offensive is purged. It is often used in the context of an artistic work.

Bowdlerization is a pejorative term for that practice. Usually, it is when material (particularly in books) is deemed as "lewd."

The origin of this eponym comes from Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of the plays of William Shakespeare. Bowdler expurgated the plays before publishing them to make them "more suitable for women and children."

Bowdler was was an English physician and philanthropist, but is best known for publishing his 19th century version titled The Family Shakspeare. This expurgated edition was edited by his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler.

Bowdlerise (or the American spelling bowdlerize) is now associated with the censorship of literature, movies and television programs.

You may also se the term "fig-leaf edition" used to describe an expurgated/bowdlerized text. That phrase comes from the old practice of covering the genitals of nudes in classical and Renaissance statues and paintings with fig leaves.

Silhouette

A silhouette is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single color, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette does not have any features or details. It is usually on a light/white background, or none at all. A silhouette is not an outline, since it appears as a solid.

Silhouette images can now be created in any visual media, but originally they were pieces of cut paper, put on a background, and then framed.

The word silhouette is an eponym, a word derived from a person's name. In this case, it was Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister. He was no artist, and he did not make silhouettes. In 1759, he imposed severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy. His austerity measures made his name synonymous with anything done or made cheaply. Portraits of people made by doing inexpensive cutouts (this was pre-photography) on black cards were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance.

The term silhouette was around since the the 18th century, but only applied to the art of portrait-making in the 19th century. The pieces were also called “profiles” or “shades.”

They could be painted on ivory, plaster, paper, card, or in reverse on glass. Ones that were “hollow-cut” meant the negative image was traced and then cut away from light colored paper which was then laid atop a dark background. The most common was "cut and paste” where the figure was cut out of dark paper (usually free-hand) and then pasted onto a light background.

Pogo Stick

A pogo stick is a device for jumping off the ground in a standing position, through the aid of a spring.

They can be used as a toy, exercise equipment, or extreme sports instrument. It has had peaks and valleys in its popularity. It was very popular in the late 1960s and 70s, and is enjoying some renewed popularity now in extreme sports via the new sport of extreme pogo or "Xpogo".

It consists of a pole with a handle at the top and footrests near the bottom, and a spring located somewhere along the pole. The spring joins two sections of the pole, which extends below the footpads. It can be steered by shifting one's weight off the centerline of the spring in the desired horizontal direction thus producing horizontal locomotion.

A pogo stick that was not called a pogo stick was patented in 1891 by George H. Herrington of Wichita, Kansas "for leaping great distances and heights". This was an antecedent of the pogo stick as well as today's spring stilts.

We can call the pogo stick an eponym because the modern pogo stick name supposedly comes from a redesigned version that looks like the one we know by Hans Pohlig and Ernst Gottschall whose combined names give us "PoGo." They applied for a German patent in 1920 and described their device as a "spring end hopping stilt."

Kafkaesque

An illustration from R. Crumb's book Kafka

"Kafkaesque" is an eponym used to describe concepts, situations, and ideas which are reminiscent of the literary work of the writer Franz Kafka.

The term generally means a senseless, disorienting, frightening complexity. It is similar to the bureaucracies found in his novels The Trial and The Castle, and some stories such as "The Metamorphosis."

The term has become used in a less literary and looser sense as surreal situations and ones where reality seems distorted in some bizarre way or are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical.

In Woody Allen's Annie Hall, a woman tells Alvy after sex that it was a Kafkasque experience. "I mean that as a compliment," she adds when he seems understandably baffled.

In The Trial, the protagonist is supposed to go to a meeting but isn't told the time of the meeting. He assumes it will be at 9 o'clock, but arrives an hour late and is told he should have been there at 8:45. The next week, he shows up at 8:45, but no one is there. He feel absurd when arriving early and guilty when late.

Rolls Royce

  
Another product eponym is found in the famed automotive manufacturer Rolls-Royce.

Stuart Rolls and Henry Royce, one a motor enthusiast and the other an engineering genius, lent their names to the cars.

Rolls-Royce Limited was a British car and aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce in 1906.

Odd Job and a Rolls-Royce from James Bond

In 1884, Henry Royce started an electrical and mechanical business. He made his first car, a two-cylinder Royce 10, in his Manchester factory in 1904, and was introduced to Charles Rolls at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 4 May of that year. Rolls was proprietor of an early motor car dealership, C.S.Rolls & Co. in Fulham.





Rolls-Royce from the Inside: The Humour, The Myths, The Truths
Rolls-Royce and Bentley: Classic Elegance (Open Road)
The Rolls Royce (Shire Library)

Toyota

     

Toyota, is a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan. At its peak, Toyota employed approximately 320,000 people worldwide. It is the world's largest automobile maker by sales.

The eponymous company was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. The letter change in the family name was thought to have made the name clearer for pronunciation outside of Japan.

In 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA.

Toyota also owns and operates Lexus and Scion brands and has a majority shareholding stake in Daihatsu and Hino Motors, and minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors, and Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation. The company includes 522 subsidiaries.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi and in Tokyo. In addition to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota provides financial services through its Toyota Financial Services division and also builds robots.

The Toyota Way
Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way

Chanel No 5 Perfume

Chanel No. 5 is actually the first (not the fifth) fragrance launched by Parisian couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. It has been on sale continuously since its introduction in 1921.

It has been described as "the world's most legendary fragrance," and ranks on the top places in the perfumery sales charts. It remains the best-selling fragrance of Parfums Chanel, and the company estimates that a bottle is sold worldwide every 55 seconds.

The scent had been created by the French perfumer Ernest Beaux. Beaux had his first big success in 1912 with the "Bouquet de Napoleon." His "Bouquet de Catherine" was not successful and because the German descent of Catherine the Great was held responsible for that, the scent was renamed "Rallet Nº 1" at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The name change did not improve the sales due to the difficult economic circumstances at war time, and the October revolution.

At the end of 1919, Beaux, as one of the last former employees of Rallet at Chiris in La Bocca, France which had bought Rallet. To adapt his perfumery formula to the raw materials available there and the price situation then, Beaux continued his work on Rallet Nº 1. This was how the series of adaptation trials originated. Coco Chanel would later chose the vial labeled  "Nº 5" as her first signature scent.




The creation and conception of this exceptional perfume is surrounded by many legends, to which Coco Chanel and Ernest Beaux contributed themselves considerably.

Browse Chanel No. 5 products

Figure Skating Jumps

Ever see a figure skater do these jumps? An AXEL, LUTZ or a SALCHOW?

All three are good examples of eponyms. The AXEL Paulsen, the Alois LUTZ or the Ulrich SALCHOW are all named after the skaters who created them.

Figure Skating's Greatest Stars
The Complete Book of Figure Skating

DVDs
Skating Through Time
Olympic Figure Skating - Vol. 1
Olympic Figure Skating - Vol. 2
An Evening With Scott Hamilton & Friends