albatross (was Re: submariner)

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:43 PM -0400 7/15/07, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>... Is the primary current
>>meaning of _albatross_ (sense 2b in the OED entry, senses 2a,b in
>>AHD4) the only example of such a primary sense arising through a
>>metaphorical association from a particular poem?
>
>Here are a few candidates (courtesy of MW3):
>
>enoch arden
>jabberwocky
>meddlesome mattie
>odyssey
>pamphlet
>pandemonium
>pander
>pied piper
>polypheme
>sinon
>syphilis
>tam-o'-shanter
>xanadu
>
I should have made it clearer that I wasn't referring to eponyms
derived from poems.  These words for the most part don't involve the
same process, in which a word (not a proper name!) with an
established referential meaning shifts its meaning according to the
reference in the poem.  Most of the above didn't have standard
referential meanings to begin with, as far as I can see at first
glance--some are eponyms from proper names ("enoch arden", or
"pander", or "odyssey", or "sinon"), some were coined for the
occasion in the poem in question ("xanadu", "syphilis"), and so on.
("jabberwocky" is kind of cross between the two.)  If there had been
a common noun "xanadu" denoting, say, an octagonal gazebo, and if
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" had named his luxurious land after its
famous gazebo with precisely this shape (situated just behind the
stately pleasure dome), and then the primary reference of "xanadu"
had shifted from 'octagonal gazebo' to, well, 'xanadu', it would
definitely qualify, but as it is...

Pied piper is certainly a viable candidate, although the shift there
isn't quite as dramatic as with albatross.

LH

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