In which the previous post is proved correct
Published at 9:21 am on August 18th, 2007
Filed under: Geekery.
Further to Thursday’s post: Hurrah! If you read the comments, you’ll see that both Wikipedia and the BBC are both talking nonsense. The OED’s first reference to the word “botched” goes back to 1568; and Thomas Carlyle used it in its modern spelling in the 1830s. As a verb, “botch” goes back to John Wyclif, in the 14th century. Sir Thomas Bouch had nothing to do with it. Thanks to Mr Treefell – who, I believe, works at my old university library – for looking the entry up for me.
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Keyword noise: bodge, botch, dictionary, etymology, fake etymology, urban myth, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Thomas Bouch, Tay Bridge, Thomas Carlyle.
In which we discover something wrong on the internet
Published at 5:16 pm on August 16th, 2007
Filed under: Geekery.
Last night, on TV, I was idly watching a documentary, Real Men, about the maintenance of the Forth Bridge. Rather interesting it was, even if the risks were a bit overstated sometimes.* One thing, though, puzzled me. It started off, as you might expect, with the history of the bridge: in the 1870s construction had begun on a Forth Bridge designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, previously responsible for designing the train ferries the bridge was to replace. In 1879, though, Bouch’s Tay Bridge collapsed catastrophically, so work on his Forth Bridge was stopped.
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Keyword noise: botch, Edinburgh, etymology, fake etymology, Fife, Firth of Forth, Forth Bridge, inaccuracy, urban myth, Scotland, Thomas Bouch, Tay Bridge, Wikipedia.