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Άλλη μια σημασία για το fender - παρωχημένη, σκουριασμένη σαν παλιό, τρακαρισμένο, πεταμένο φτερό, αλλά όχι ακόμα εξαφανισμένη - εκείνη της τιάρας, του μεγαλόπρεπου διαδήματος, η οποία, όπως τα
διαμάντια (αλλότροπο του άνθρακα) που συχνά έχει ένα τέτοιο διάδημα, έχει κι αυτή στενή σχέση με τα κάρβουνα
(όπως το *αλεξικάρβουνο με το αλεξιβόρβορο).
Από το
προηγούμενο ηλεδελτίο του Κουίνιον:
From Laurelyn Collins: I’ve just read Josephine Tey’s book The Expensive Halo, published in 1931. She referred to a character being able to wear her diamond fender to an evening affair. I can’t find this term anywhere else — a tiara? A necklace? What would it be?
The word is poorly recorded in print and there are too many other sorts of fender to make searching for examples easy, even though few incorporate diamonds, apart from the occasional “blinged-out” Fender Stratocaster. However, I’ve found my way to the origin.
The full quotation you mention is this:Mother goes because the opera is the only place in London nowadays where you can wear a diamond fender without looking a fool.
We may deduce from this that a fender is jewellery of a rather old-fashioned sort, albeit elegant or upper class. This next appearance shows that you are right to suppose it is a kind of tiara, one of a particularly grand and expansive nature:
“Eleanor always says that when she puts on the Mershire diamonds she feels the respected shades of her ancestors-in-law closing around her,” said Esther, still smiling; “and that with a diamond fender on her head and a diamond poultice on her chest a woman can face anything.”
Her Ladyship’s Conscience, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, 1913.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for fender, which fails us utterly by not mentioning the jewellery sort, does include a citation from the Temple Bar magazine of 1893. Some delving shows that this came from the serialisation of a novel:
Presently she moved away with Lord Frederick in the direction of Madeleine, who had installed herself at the further end of the room among the fenders, as our latter-day youth gracefully designates the tiaras of the chaperones.
Diana Tempest, by Mary Cholmondeley, 1893.
We may presume that the youth of late Victorian times referred to the tiaras as fenders because their wearers’ function was to defend their charges from unwanted male attention. We may guess that the tiaras were substantial enough to be figurative battlements.
Since we are in an urban environment in the days before motor cars, the most likely fender for the allusion would be the sort placed around open fires to protect the room from cinders and to prevent children from getting too close. This next extract confirms both the allusion and the monumental nature of the tiaras:
“I will wear what Jack calls the family fender,” said Dodo. “Tiara, you know, so tall that you couldn’t fall into the fire if you put it on the hearthrug.”
Dodo Wonders, by E. F. Benson, 1921.
What is odd about it is that no editor of any dictionary of slang of the period has thought to include this sense of fender, though it was well enough known that authors expected readers of the period to understand it.
Και από
το σημερινό:
Ken Thornton commented, “Fender’s non-inclusion in slang dictionaries raises yet again the question of when does a comparison become widespread enough to attain the usage threshold required for lexicographers? I can imagine many once-popular terms have slipped through the word gratings of doom.”
Jonathon Green, of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, commented. “I would suggest that slang lexicographers missed it because one very rarely looks far beyond the gutter in one’s researches. The middle classes largely fail on slang creation, as do their social superiors, though J Redding Ware, in Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909), who does offer examples labelled society, might have been expected to have picked it up.”
The term is not as obsolete as I had presumed. Dennis Glanzman told me James Sherwood used it in his blog The London Cut Diary about the US presidential visit to London in May 2011: “I also thought the Duchess of Cornwall looked terribly grand in her diamond fender.”
“Just a brief note,” added Erik Kowal, “to applaud your exemplary exegesis of this term in this week’s newsletter. It’s the kind of detective work that demonstrates that, while not glamorous in the conventional sense, in its own way etymology can be an exciting and even thrilling enterprise. Anyway, thanks for the ringside seat!”
Μια που μιλάμε για φανταχτερά στολίδια, ο Κουίνιον αναφέρει το ρήμα
bling και το νήμα έχει θέμα τα φτερά, λεξιλογικώς:
bling-bling και
fascinator.
Βιντεάκι,
Diamonds and Rust, από την Τζόαν Μπαέζ φυσικά:
)
