[Ads-l] It=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_a_bird=3B_It=E2=80=99s_a_plane=3B_It=E2=80=99s_?=a boffin

Sat Mar 19 01:16:47 UTC 2022

The term Boffin was linked to birds by March 1943.

Date: March 28, 1943
Newspaper: Sunday Dispatch
Newspaper Location: London, England
Article: Seeks RAF Boffins
Author: Alan Tomkins
Quote Page 4, Column 6
Database: British Newspaper Archive

[Begin excerpt - double check for typos]
One chap told me that Boffins were named after birds. I could find no
Boffin in the books of reference.
[End excerpt]

[Begin excerpt - double check for typos]
BOFFINS are civilians. The Chief Boffins and most of the staff work in
offices at Command Headquarters. Minion Boffins haunt operational
stations.

At meal times and on social occasions they mix with operational crews.

They are scientists, mathematicians, and accountants. They are
students of human nature—especially the nature of boys who fly large,
expensive, complicated lethal weapons.

Between them they possess just about all the knowledge in existence
concerning meteorology, aerodynamics. ballistics, explosives,
metallurgy, air pressure, and sea pressure.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 8:43 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There was an ADS discussion thread back in 2014.  Hugo found pertinent
> evidence dated February 1942.
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2014-June/133031.html
>
> Here is the Puffin-Baffin explanation for Boffin in August 1945.
>
> Date: August 15, 1945
> Newspaper: Daily Herald
> Newspaper Location: London, England
> Article: How Boffins Won Battles with Echoes
> Author: Charles Bray
> Quote Page 2, Column 3 and 4
> Database: British Newspaper Archive
>
> [Begin excerpt - double check for typos]
> CHARLES BRAY “Daily Herald” Air Correspondent, who watched Radar’s
> secret triumphs in many battles, tells the story today.
>
> He also has something to explain:
>
> “Once upon a time a Puffin, a strange and peculiar bird, was crossed
> with a Baffin, an obsolete Fleet Air Arm aircraft of equally peculiar
> habits; and the result, according to Service fantasy, was a ‘Boffin.’
>
> “This was a creature of intensive energy, strange appearance and
> unbelievable inventive capacity, whose eggs, as fast as you pushed
> them away from you, rolled back again.
>
> “That, then, is the origin of the nickname ‘Boffin,’ given to the
> civilian scientists who perfected Radar.”
> [End excerpt]
>
> [Begin excerpt - double check for typos]
> This is “Boffins’ Day,” because for the first time it is permissible
> to tell something of the war saga of the “Backroom Boys,” known
> throughout the Services of the United Nations as “Boffins.”
>
> It is a dramatic and romantic story of a battle of wits, brains and
> inventive genius between the scientists of the United Nations and
> those of the enemy, and the United Nations team won hands down.
>
> They were not impressive to look at, these Boffins who haunted Army,
> Navy and RAF stations in usually rather shabby civilian clothes, and
> were ever ready to argue on almost any subject except their own work.
>
> But generals, air marshals and admirals treated them with respect, for
> only the very senior officers knew much of their activities.
>
> Theirs was the best-kept secret of the war. They were conducting what
> has been aptly described as the very “heart” of  the United Nations
> war effort.
>
> Their greatest achievement of many was the discovery, development and
> perfection of Radar, radiolocation ...
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 11:59 AM Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
> >
> > [Puffin; Baffin, plane discontinued in 1941;…]
> > OED has boffin n. as “elderly Naval officer” from 1941 [though it’s 1942 cite I find from 1945 and maybe 1943, author elsewhere given as Edward Horace Crebbin, Royal Navy] and “person engaged in…technical research” from 1945 [though both senses come from air and sea coastal protection and may not be quite distinct?]
> > M-W has the latter sense from 1942
> > Green’s Slang adds “[ety. unknown, although according to Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973), the inventor of radar, the term ‘has something to do with an obsolete type of aircraft called the Baffin, something to do with that odd bird, the Puffin’ (Three Steps to Victory, 1957)]”
> > Wikipedia has some useful links.
> > Of course, Boffin is a family name and was used also by Dickens and P. G. Wodehouse, though without evident relevance here.
> > WP cites: Radar at Sea (1993) 86,  a text it dates as Ap. 1, 1941:
> > [We] played cards waiting for the weather to deteriorate. At last it did & both ‘boffins’ were so sick that they could only just make it to the set. … [They] turned over to me all the drawings of circuits and layout etc., & wished me luck … They couldn’t get away quick enough! [Sub-Lieutenant Orton, RNVR].
> > Watson-Watt [aka “archboffin”] wrote the above accounting also earlier, in 1953:
> > https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4051258
> > Discover Dec. 1946 [GB]:  PAGE 358 They are brilliant , cranky and downright bigoted ; right at the beginning they are christened ' Boffins ' - a term derived by crossing ' Puffin ' ( a bird with a mournful cry ) with ' Baffin ' ( an obsolete type of R.A.F aircraft )
> > RAF officer (various ranks) George Philip Chamberlain, assigned to coast protection in early WW II, is sometimes proposed as the coiner. In any case, he was apparently an early adopter.
> > A self-designation has also been claimed.
> > Stephen Goranson
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org