[Ads-l] "blimp" antedating

[Jonathan Lighter]

The crucial difference, not to be overlooked by the OED or anybody else, is
that a blimp is powered and therefore "dirigible" over distances. Like the
Goodyear Blimp, which like all true blimps carries a crew. That makes it a
kind of "dirigible airship" or "dirigible" (n.) a word once universally
known (and applied also to the similarly shaped but considerably larger,
rigid-frame zeppelins).

A blimp also exhibits variations of a now-iconic, aerodynamic shape. The
crewless, tethered barrage balloons of WW2 - big as blimps - had a similar
shape, so that level of confusion is forgivable. The recent, unmanned, and
rather exotic "surveillance blimps," also tethered, are likewise very large
and of a comparable shape. Like barrage balloons, they're not moved along
by hand in parades.

Outside of Inglish - the Language of Tomorrow Today (TM) - a Macy's balloon
or a Trump balloon or a hot-air balloon or a toy balloon is as much a
"blimp" as a banjo is an electric guitar. Or a piano.

JL

On Sat, Jun 8, 2019 at 9:33 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have seen the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons called blimps, so
> the tethered balloon definition makes sense to me.
>
> On Sat, Jun 8, 2019, 6:34 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The OED has:
> >
> > 1. A small non-rigid airship. Also: a large tethered balloon, as a
> barrage
> > balloon.
> > 2a. colloquial and depreciative (orig. and chiefly North American). An
> > excessively fat person.
> >
> > BB
> >
> > > On 8 Jun 2019, at 15:31, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > This gives me the chance to observe that the celebrated British balloon
> > > that depicts Donald Trump as a squalling infant is generally described
> on
> > > cable news as "the Trump baby blimp."
> > >
> > > Despite its tubbiness, it is not a "blimp" at all.  It is a "captive
> > > balloon" or "aerostat."
> > >
> > > JL
> > >
> > > On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 11:32 AM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> My latest Wall Street Journal column is on the history of the word
> > "blimp."
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/blimp-a-world-war-i-term-thats-taken-on-a-weighted-meaning-11559918882
> > >>
> > >> The OED and various other references give as their earliest citation
> of
> > >> "blimp" a letter written by Royal Naval Air Service pilot Harold
> Rosher
> > >> dated Feb. 11, 1916, collected posthumously in "With the Flying
> > Squadron"
> > >> (also titled "In the Royal Naval Air Service"). By searching on the
> > British
> > >> Newspaper Archive I was able to make a small but important antedating.
> > >>
> > >> "This Morning's Gossip," Daily Mirror, Jan. 25, 1916, p. 12, col. 2
> > >> I was amused to hear what the Air Service call the lighter-than-air
> > >> machines, i.e., the airships and balloons. They call them "blimps,"
> > >> "submarine searchers" and "babies." But why "blimps," I wonder.
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000560/19160125/100/0012
> > >>
> > >> Even pushing back the earliest print date a few weeks is significant,
> > since
> > >> the most widely accepted origin story for "blimp" is that it was
> coined
> > on
> > >> Dec. 5, 1915 (by Lt. A.D. Cunningham, commanding officer at the
> > >> Capel-le-Ferne air base, where Rosher encountered the term).
> > >>
> > >> You can see a page image of the Daily Mirror item here:
> > >> https://twitter.com/bgzimmer/status/1137014809814286338
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
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>


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