To bowdlerize is an example of eponym. We give this name to
words derived from names of people, real or imaginary, e.g. macadam,
named after its inventor, the Scottish engineer John Loudon MacAdam
(1756-1836), or aphrodisiac, from Aphrodite, the goddess of love and
beauty in Greek mythology.
To
bowdlerize, meaning 'to
expurgate', comes from Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated
edition of Shakespeare: The Family
Shakespeare, from which all the words that could not be read aloud with propriety in a family were excluded.
Other examples of eponyms:
to
boycott - to refuse to
take part in sth or to buy from sb), after Charles Boycott (1832-1897), land
agent for the Irish landowner the Earl of Erne, who was a victim of such a
practice for refusing to accept a reduction of rents.
daltonism
- colour
blindness, esp. the inability to distinguish red and green, after the English
scientist John Dalton (1766-1844), who himself suffered from this disability
and was the first to give a detailed description of it.
hoover ® - a type of vacuum cleaner, after
the American William Henry Hoover (1849-1932) who, curiously enough, was not
its inventor, but the owner of the company that registered and produced it
after buying the rights from a J. Murray
Spangler, a caretaker in an Ohio department store, who had invented it.
sandwich
- two or more
slices of usually buttered bread with a filling of ham, cheese, etc. between
them, after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), a compulsive
gambler who is said to have eaten food in this form rather than leave the
gaming-table.
spoonerism - transposition of the initial consonants of
two words: “this place is occupied, I´ll sew you to another sheet”, instead of
“I´ll show you to another seat”, after W.A. Spooner (1844-1930), an English
clergyman renowned for slips of this kind.
to
tantalize - to torment sb with the sight of sth greatly desired but inaccessible,
after Tantalus, a mythical king of Phrygia ,
condemned to stand in Tartarus up to his chin in water which receded as he
stooped to drink.
Recommended book: The Wordsworth Dictionary of Eponyms, Martin H. Manser, Wordsworth Editions.
Recommended book: The Wordsworth Dictionary of Eponyms, Martin H. Manser, Wordsworth Editions.
