Etymology of "bail/bale out"

the who?

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Guy

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I see your musical reference, and raise you a US president

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The edict of Lord Poopington the Third expressly forbade the misuse of bail/bale in 1763. It led to the great pickle war of Upper Wooton and the death of Sir Percy Percy Percy of Percy.

UK facts.

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Check

The parachute is a bundle, or bale.

There is also the sense of inelegant haste, of a solid object pitched (or bundled, come to think on’t) unceremoniously out of a vehicle (farm cart or aircraft) possibly to hit the ground hard.

None of this applies to the water imagery, so its relatively inappropriate.

Can’t say its wrong, per se, since, at least in British English, both forms are apparently in use.

Its just not as good.

And think of the confusion for flying boat crews.

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Maybe just a mistake. “Aluminum”, for example, is alleged to have arisen as a transatlantic telegraphic error.

As I’m sure you’re aware, most historians regard Lord Poopington’s edict of 1763 as just one of many factors that gave rise to the baleful pickle-purveyors massacre (AKA night of the long gherkins) and the subsequent Great Pickle War. I personally find the psychoanalytic explanation very convincing: free floating anxiety caused by the sudden outbreak of peace at the end of the Seven Year War led to mass hysteria in the form of acute castration anxiety whereby almost the entire male population of England became convinced that what was being put in those jars of brine was something other than cucumbers.

I don’t speak English or American, but in Australia and NZ there’s the idiom “to bail someone up”, which means to detain, buttonhole, or rob someone. It is derived from bailing a cow, that is not say, attaching the cow by the head to a post (the bail) before doing things to its other end. Like milking it

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The plot thickens.

I would have said ‘bale out’ means to get the hell out

Whereas bailout is something about money.

Two completely different words.

People on forumosa are just too easily confused. Nice try jinyu :grin:

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Well met, fellow historian. To this day my father proudly still stands in the chippie, points at the pickles and states, “259 years ago, that would have been Lord Poopington’s todger in that brine.” It’s true, nobody expected the Seven Year War to end so abruptly after Lord Percy Percy Percy of Percy choked to death laughing at his horse.

UK facts

Have you read, The Business Secrets of the Pharaohs? Mark Corrigan has a few (thousand) left over.

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I just googled that and it’s true, what the?

Then the online dictionary suggested I needed to know the meaning of crassulaceous. Sounded promising but apparently it’s just a kind of plant

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…and hence the modern day euphemism can be traced back to Lord Percy: “to point Percy at the porcelain” so Poopington’s claim seems more like a conspiracy brought about by their chivalrous rivalry for the charms of sweet Fanny Adams, Duchess of Netherbottom

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Bringing in Ozzies and Kiwis is a sure way to thicken any discussion. I’m sure you’ve familiar with the immortal couplet by Australia’s greatest poet, Steve Irwin? “I am an Australian born and bred / Long in the legs, thick in the head.”

Actually even to this day if you venture out into the bogan badlands of Western Sydney and peer over the asbestos fence of someone’s back yard, you may still see, between between the outdoor dunny crawling with funnel webs and the death adder sunning itself in the couch grass under the Hills Hoist, a waist high wooden stanchion, with a rope attached (the “bail” that was used back in the day in Australia on cattle ranches to secure cows). What, I hear you ask, do people keep cows in their backyard in the suburbs of Sydney? No indeed. What then? A sundial so the homeowner knows when to head out to the pub for the 5 o’clock swill? An Australian with an intellect capable of operating a sundial? You having a lend of me, mate? To put you out of your suspense before this yarn grows much shaggier, lets head over to Ancient Sparta. As all you learned Latinists would have read in Plutarch, Spartan men lived apart from womenfolk until the age of 30 - before then their only sexual experience was with other men. On their wedding night, Spartan brides would cut off their hair and dress in men’s clothing, apparently to gently ease the Spartan males into heterosexual copulation. Which brings us back to the tradition of the great Ozzie bail pole. In the 19th and early 20th century single men would go out into the bush for years and earn a hard living herding cattle before they had enough money to come back to the city to marry. It was a life devoid not only of womenfolk (as for the Spartans) but involving long stretches of isolation from all human contact, alone with the cattle… Hence, to alleviate the anxiety of the skittish bridesgroom on his wedding night (and often for years into the marriage) the bride would dress in leather and allow herself to be tied to the backyard bail which she mooed softly at the Southern Cross. Of course nowadays feminists want to ban the practice, but it’s become something of an Ozzie tradition

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This tale from down under does support the possibility of reading your forumosa moniker as “chicken cow” rather than “golden jade” as noted some time ago by @Dr_Milker .

It’s nice to have that finally cleared up. :rofl:

Guy

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I’m absolutely delighted to have found yet another person so well steeped in the history of Britain. Of course, today we still find village names referencing this most unsettling of rivalries. In Norfolk alone one can find the village of Little Pickle nestled between Netherbottom Well and Fanny Cross.

UK facts

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AKA ‘The Hard Bard.’

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Hadn’t we already established that I was just a poor waif-like ji1nü3 who didn’t know how to umlaut her ewes? By ji1nü3, of course, I mean 繼女, weaving girl, with the ji pronounced in the proper Taiwanese fashion: first tone not forth. And that’s what I am, a girl who weaves the warp and the woof of her shaggy dogs. But I do like the sound of Gold Jade. If I ever do get in on the prostitution gig, that can be nom de boudoir. I’ll wear nothing but golden body paint and role play King Midas’ daughter for my mythologically minded punters (touch me, Daddy!)

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I guess he was at least accurate in suggesting that it was a ‘tale from down under’ then :grin:

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Okay, but who throws hay bales out of an airplane? That’s some seriously remote cattle feeding, especially for a country as small as UK.

It used to snow. Bale bombing was a seasonal feature on the news.

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Interesting.