Other words discussed in this article: Bascule Bridge Cul-de-Sac Culet Cul-de-Lampe Cule To Culbut Cule de Four
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Donner la Bascule
This phrase, donner la bascule, means literally ‘to give someone the seesaw.’ La bascule is an old French word for teeter-totter or seesaw. In Québec, one of the old birthday traditions is to grab the birthday girl or boy by the shoulders and the ankles and to toss her or him into the air as many times as their age. Thus eight-year-olds are flung up heavenwards eight times in such a birthday toss.
Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip, 1872 Other Québec Children’s Games Madeleine Doyon, in Games, Toys and Entertainments of la Beauce (an area of Québec located about 15 kilometres south of Quebec City, bordering the Chaudière River and stretching out right to the border of the American state of Maine), describes more than 200 different children’s games played in Québec’s school playgrounds. Such games include: les quatre coins (four-corners) le saute-mouton (leap-frog; in French it’s the much more delightful sound of leap-sheep!) la tournette (spins) la tague malade (sick tag) la course à cloche-pied (blister foot) le mouchoir (hanky in the hand) cache-cache (hide-and-seek or la cachette, jouer à la cachette) donner la bascule (birthday toss) tirer du poignet (fisties, ‘fist-draw’)
Etymology of Bascule The most cogent origin I’ve encountered suggests this Middle French word bascule (first print appearance 1549 C.E.) is a development of the earlier baculer, a verb in print by 1377 C.E., that meant ‘knock your ass against the ground’ from bas, Old French adverb of place ‘low + cul ‘ass, behind, buttocks.’ That is precisely what happens on a seesaw, of course. First you are on the low side that touches the ground; then, when your partner pushes upward with his feet, you rise up into the air while he descends on the teeter-totter to basculer ‘bump his arse on the ground.’ So bascule is ‘low-arse,’ the form possibly influenced by other similarly formed verbs like baculer ‘ to punish by beating the buttocks against the ground.’ The removal of the s suggests a folk mistake, the error of imagining that baculer derives from baculum Late Latin ‘stick, cudget, baton of office.’ We have clear evidence of what happened to baculum and related words when we examine their descendants, Old French and English forms like bachelier, bachelor and baccalaureate.
Bascule Bridge “A bascule bridge is a drawbridge with a counterweight that continuously balances the span, or ‘leaf,’ throughout the entire upward swing in providing clearance for boat traffic. Shown above, Tower Bridge across the Thames River in London, England, is the best known bascule bridge in the world. Bascule is a French term for seesaw and bascule bridges operate along the same principle. They are the most common type of movable bridges because they open quickly and require relatively little energy to operate.” (quoted with revisions from Wikipedia) “A bascule bridge is a bridge that has moveable sections that move up and down to allow ships to pass through. The bascule is an apparatus that uses a first class lever. One end of the lever is counterbalanced by the other with weights. The moveable sections that rotate upward are called leaves and are operated by a system of counterweights, gears, and motors. The counterweights are typically made of concrete and are normally located below the roadway. A motor turns the gears that move the counterweights down, while the leaves move up and open a passage for shipping.” (quoted from internet description)
Culling Other Culs The French word for ass cul appears in cul-de-sac literally ‘bottom of a bag,’ a passage open only at one end, like the bottom of a sack, or a street or alley that abruptly ends and has no thoroughfare.
Dead-end streets don't come more “cul-de-sac” than this one.
Suit of Swiss armour, 1480 The Armourer's Culet Slightly more obscure (okay, vastly more obscure) is this delightful little word from the technical vocabulary of the armourer, culet, the piece of armour that covers the buttocks. Culet is a diminutive form of cul, so its English semantic equivalent, which probably never existed, might be ‘asslet.’ We may imagine some stern medieval sergeant of Gloomy Olde England chastising his armoured knights on their steeds with a rebuke such as this: “Lancelot, burnish your culet. It’s filthy, sir! What are you, French?” The definition in the current Oxford English Dictionary is a wonderfully red-faced example of Victorian prudery: culet, “a part of ancient armour, consisting of overlapping plates,
Etymology of Cul Cul is Old French ‘bottom, backside,’ from the low Street Latin of Roman soldiers posted to Gaul culus ‘arse.’ Thus cul is related to other reflexes of this root in Indo-European languages, reflexes like Old Frisian sk
Cul de Four & Culbut & Cul de Lampe & Cules A few more obscure cul phrases words show up in the larger English dictionaries. To culbut an enemy is to drive him back in disarray. In the jargon of architecture, the cul de four of a niche denotes the arched roof of a niche on a circular plan. In French cul de four is literally ‘bottom of the oven.’
In printing, an ornamental piece of non-literal type is often used at the end of a chapter or long passage to mark its termination for the reader or merely because it completes a pleasing page layout. This can be called a cul de lampe, possibly because some early one of these “printer’s flowers” resembled the stand of an ancient lamp. More common English names for these pieces of type are: fleurons or printer's ornaments.
Obscure Synonym for Buttocks If ever you require an obscure synonym for ass or buttocks, you may resurrect this English rarity, cule. A cule is one of the buttocks, or a rump. Thus, instead of shouting “Kick him in the ass!” you may call out “Calcitrate him in the cules!” If you yell that in the midst of a British soccer game, I cannot be held responsible for what will surely follow. Of course we no longer know or use calcitrate, but one of its relatives is still alive in English prose, namely, recalcitrant, literally ‘kicking back,’ but with the developed meaning of ‘disobedient, refractory, obstinately defiant of authority.’ Instead of kicking him in the butt, you may decide that a toss in the air would work as well, and thus your shout might be “Donne-lui la bascule!”
In this 1540 engraving, a pikeman's armour no doubt protects his cules.
© 2012 copyright William Gordon Casselman
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protecting the hinder part of the body below the waist.” Quelle délicatesse! Still, the English words used to name the various segments of medieval armour are among the most delightful of our obsolescent vocabulary, strange terms like vambrace, pauldron, couter, tasset and greave. It sounds like a most imposing firm of London barristers. The armour words all have fascinating etymologies which we shall not pursue here. But, to whet your knightly interest, here are two charts that label some parts of medieval body armour. 
l ‘hiding place,’ Middle Low German sch
l, Old Norse skj
l ‘hiding place, refuge, barn,’ Old Irish c
l ‘hiding place,’ Welsh cil, and Old English hydan ‘hide.’ 
