"blimp"

[Laurence Horn]

I just received this inquiry (or, since the item is British, enquiry)
from a friend and ex-student, Robin Cragg Barr:

>do you know anything about the etymology of Blimp?  I find it
>really hard to believe the anecdote that lighter-than-air craft were
>classified in two categores:  A.  dirigible , and B. limp.  It sure smacks
>of etymythology to me, but the American Heritage Dictionary doesn't
>contradict it.

I notice that while AHD4 indeed doesn't contradict this lovely story,
it doesn't really support it, except for the "limp" part, while the
OED similarly supports the "limp" but doesn't speculate about the
"b", although the 1939 source included at the entry tells (a variant
of) the tale Robin alludes to.  Interesting cite from Tolkien, too.
Evidently there's no connection (at least the OED assumes none) with
Col. Blimp.
================
[Of uncertain origin. Said to have been coined by the aviator Horace
Shortt (see quot. 1918) or by Lieut. A. D. Cunningham (1951 Aeroplane
5 Oct.), and to have been based on the adj. limp. ]

1918 Illustr. Lond. News 27 July 96 Nobody in the R.N.A.S. ever
called them anything but 'Blimps', an onomatopoeic name invented by
that genius for apposite nomenclature, the late Horace Shortt.
...
1926 J. R. R. Tolkien in Year's Wk. Eng. Stud. 1924 52 It is perhaps
more in accordance with their looks, history, and the way in which
words are built out of the suggestions of others in the mind, if we
guess that blimp was the progeny of blister + lump, and that the
vowel i not u was chosen because of its diminutive
significance-typical of war-humour.
...
1939 War Illustr. 29 Dec. 538/1 The term `blimp' originated in the
last war, when British lighter-than-air aircraft were divided into
A-rigid, and B-limp (i.e. without rigid internal framework). The
modern barrage balloon may therefore be classed as a blimp.
========
Various web sites repeat the "B-limp" story with different degrees of
skepticism.  Anyone with anything more solid to go on?  (By the way,
there is evidently no connection, or at least none made by the OED,
with the caricature figure of the jingoistic Col. Blimp created by
cartoonist David Low.)

larry