Word Discovery: To Parp a Klaxon? Every now and then I traipse past a British phrase that trips me up, flummoxes me, stops me dead in my polyglot tracks, and induces the onset of IWH (instant word humility). It happened today with ‘parping klaxons.’ How many North Americans, I wonder, would recognize that phrase? I certainly did not know what it meant when I read about the last night of the Prom Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England. The BBC Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts (“The Proms”) are one of the most pleasant and civil of London traditions. Can an event be civil and raucous all at the same time? Indeed yes! Londoners who attend the last night of The Proms are given to tossing paper birds which drift by the dozens under the vaulted span of the great hall's ceiling. The audience also brings to the concert all manner of noisemakers and horns and they do stand up, shout, and “parp klaxons.”
There are 70 concerts every year from July to September. On the last night of The Proms, sundry and variegated Brits flock together like clustering rooks to caw out in song all the old warhorses of the inspirational British hymnal. One anthem always sung is that glorious summons of mystico-patriotic effluvium, “Jerusalem,” William Blake’s mighty poem, set to music in 1916 by C. Hubert H. Parry, usually played at The Proms in a vibrant orchestration by Sir Edward Elgar. The last night of The Proms often concludes with the rafter-thwacking roar of a thousand people singing “Rule, Britannia.” If you can’t go, there is a superb EMI recording of The Last Night of The Proms, on which you may listen in stereo to a vast and happy crowd of distinctly unphlegmatic Londoners bellowing their joy. There is also a BBC DVD, whose cover art is pictured below. Check out the words of the songs at the bottom of today’s column.
Please Parp Pleasingly Parp first appears in print in 1936 as an interjection imitating the sound of a car horn. Parp! Parp! By 1943 it was a noun meaning ‘a honking sound.’ Soon afterward to parp was a verb meaning to speak in a loud, honking manner or to utter words abruptly. Parp also means to sound the horn of an automobile. In one developed meaning of the word parp it represents the sound of emitted flatulence, and is thus a synonym for fart.
Sound of the Klaxon: Ah-OOOOOO-Gah! When I was a kid watching too much television, one of the early series was “The Silent Service,” all about American submarines in World War Two. It began with repeated blasts of a klaxon: AH-OOOOO-GAH! AH-OOOOO-GAH! Then the submarine captain would bark an order, “Dive! Dive! Give me a five-degree down-bubble.” My brother and I often tried to reproduce a down-bubble in the bathtub on Saturday evening. Neither of us drowned. The Klaxon was a trademarked horn for automobiles, the electric version invented by Dr. Miller Reese Hutchison, an American inventor and an associate of the more famous inventor Thomas Edison. The Oxford English Dictionary has a charmingly old-fashioned and quaint definition when it refers to the klaxon as “the hooter on a motor vehicle.” How very retro! Hooters in America are almost always a vulgarism for breasts. There was, and may still be, a chain of restaurants called Hooters where bare-breasted waitresses bring you your meal, their tits abobbling as they bound up to the table. One prays that nothing untoward has flopped into one’s vichyssoise on the way from the kitchen, necessitating a quick rendition of Bob Hope's theme song, “Thanks for the Mammary.” One imagines, because it is a cold soup, that it would tend to erect the server's nipples. But perhaps that is a desideratum at Hooters? The idea of breasts stirring one's food is supposedly erotic to Americans. No wonder psychiatry throve there. Hutchison’s electromechanical klaxon horn was eventually used on trains, ships, and model-T Fords. I’m going to review the etymology, but first here is part of the Wikipedia entry on the famous horn: “The Klaxon's characteristic sound is produced by a spring-steel diaphragm with a rivet in the centre that is repeatedly struck by the teeth of a rotating cog-wheel. The diaphragm is attached to a horn which acts as an acoustic transformer as well as controlling the direction of the sound. In the first klaxons, the wheel was driven either by hand or by an electric motor. The Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing Co. of New Jersey bought the rights to the device in 1908. Klaxons were first fitted to automobiles and bicycles in 1908. Electric klaxons were the first electrical devices to be fitted to private automobiles. They were originally powered by 6-volt dry cells, and from 1911 by rechargeable batteries. Later hand-powered versions were used as military evacuation alarms and factory sirens. The klaxon is also famous for its use as a submarine dive alarm. The English company Klaxon Signals Ltd. has been based in Oldham, England for the last 80 years, with premises also in Birmingham. The French Klaxon company was acquired by the Italian Fiamm Group in the 1990s.” Etymology of Klaxon F. W. Lovell, the founder of the American company refered to above, coined the name klaxon from the Greek verb klazein, ‘to make a loud noise,’ one of whose forms is klazon. Akin is the Greek noun klange which meant ‘a loud twang of the string of a lute’ or other stringed instrument that accompanied the recitation of Homeric epics. So we can imagine this distant ancestor of the Klaxon car horn twanging loudly to represent some dramatic pause in Odysseus’ adventures. Related to that Greek word is the Latin (and now English) noun clangor ‘a loud noise.’ Even more interesting relatives of the Indo-European root are German Gelachter and English laughter, both loud noises too. Intermediate forms of the root include Old Frisian hlakkia. All descend from the echoic Indo-European *klak- ‘to make a loud noise.’ The word was also borrowed into modern French where le klaxon is still the common word for ‘car horn.’ To honk the horn of your car is klaxonner.
……EXTRA NOTES……
Rule, Britiannia! When Britain first, at heaven’s command,
Jerusalem , the poem by William Blake And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of Desire; Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of Fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant Land.
Notes on Jerusalem from The Wikipedia: “The text of the poem was inspired by the legend that Jesus, while still a young man, accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to the English town of Glastonbury. Blake's biographers note that he believed in this legend; however, the poem's theme is subject to much sharper debate, probably accounting for its popularity across the philosophical spectrum. As a paean to a mythical Englishness the poem has come under criticism. Consequently some see it as unsuitable as an English National Anthem, and its reference to a foreign city as puzzling to other nations. It is unlikely that Blake intended such a literal interpretation, however, or that most who sing and love the song believe in such a literal reading of the lyrics; legends contain important truths to many people. One particular line from the poem, “Bring me my chariot of fire” inspired the title of a film “ Chariots of Fire.” Blake here draws on a passage from 2 Kings 2:11, where the Old Testament prophet Elijah is taken directly to heaven: ‘And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.’ A church congregation sings “Jerusalem” at the close of the film. The song also appears in Tony Richardson’s film “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” as the Borstal hymn.” And so we bring this anfractuous journey to an end, as we utter a modest parp, a humble Ah-OOOOO-Gah!, and klaxon off into the Canadian autumn.
© 2006 william gordon casselman
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