[Ads-l] body bag

[Daphne Preston-Kendal]

‘Bodybag’ is also one of the classic German false friend pseudo-anglicisms. In German it refers to a messenger bag. None of the German–English dictionaries I have to hang knows of this sense, but German Wikipedia knows the term and has it cross-language linked: <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodybag_(Tasche)> It suggests a clipping of ‘cross-body bag’ is to blame for the confusion.

Curiously, there are very few results for Bodybag in the corpora on dwds.de. Some are in fact uses in the sense of ‘strong bag for a corpse’, especially recent ones. First results are 1999 (for ‘Bodybag’) and 2000 (for ‘Body Bag’) — apparently they were very fashionable around then. Already in 2006 there are results explaining the cross-linguistic confusion. I suspect the term is now possibly actually better known in Germany as a popular example of a false friend, than purely in its original German sense.


Daphne

> On 24 Nov 2023, at 22:00, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> OED has it from 1947 as "a strong bag in which a corpse is carried, esp.
> from a battlefield or the scene of an accident or crime."
> 
> 1936 _Albany [N.Y.] Evening News_ (Nov. 23) 19: The firemen...[neglected]
> to encase the body of John Bermudez in a canvas "body bag" prescribed by
> department regulations
> 
> 1937 _Buffalo [N.Y.] Evening News_ (Feb. 13) 6: Showing how a person who
> has  been burned in a fire is removed in a "body bag."
> 
> But there was another related sense:
> 
> 1934 _Jersey Journal_ (Jersey City, N.J.) (Oct. 9) 1: It was necessary for
> members of the Emergency Squad to strap Kennedy in a body bag and quiet him
> with spirits of ammonia.
> 
> 1937 _Jersey Journal_ (June 3) 17: A "body bag"...can be roughly described
> as a flexible strait-jacket. It is used to hold in restraint insane persons
> or those temporarily, but violently deranged.
> 
> As a military term, however, I don't find it before 1965 (OED: 2001).  In
> WW2, the dead were generally wrapped in government-issue white mattress
> covers or else tarps, blankets, or whatever was available.
> 
> Missing from OED is the once common sense "a tall, heavy punching bag used
> in training by prizefighters and others."
> 
> 1922 _Plain Dealer_ (Cleveland, O.) (Oct. 13) 18: We...saw...Gibbons
> playing handball, then skipping rope, abusing the pulley weights and body
> bag and winding up with a few rounds of shadow boxing.
> 
> 1923 _Casper [Wyo.] Sunday Morning Tribune_  (July 1) 1: He also punched
> the body bag for two rounds.
> 
> Etc., etc.
> 
> JL
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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