As spring approaches and flower buds start appearing, I have a few eponyms for you. Yes, we’ve gone over some eponyms in the past, but this is a new (partial) list based on an article from Merriam-Webster, called: 10 Unpleasant People Whose Names Became Words.
Burke
Definition: to murder by suffocation or strangulation in order to obtain a body to be sold for dissection.
If you’re like me, you’ve seen more than one movie that has talked about selling bodies. In many cases, the idea was to steal the already dead bodies and sell them for science. In the case of Mr. Burke, he decided it was too lucrative to wait for the bodies to be dead. He and a friend would lure in folks that probably wouldn’t be missed, get them drunk, smother or strangle them, and then sell them to the local anatomy school.
Sixteen bodies later, the men were caught and Burke was condemned to hang. As he was being hanged, the crowd shouted, “Burke him.” It came to mean death by suffocation or strangling, and later just meant “cover-up.”
In a grisly twist—and as part of his punishment—Burke himself was dissected after his execution. His skeleton hangs in the Anatomical Museum of the Edinburgh Medical School; his skin was supposedly turned into wallets, calling-card cases, and a pocketbook.
Ponzi Scheme
Definition: an investment swindle in which early investors are paid with sums obtained from later ones to create the illusion of profitability. [KC – Compare to “pyramid scheme.”]
Charles Ponzi was an Italian (Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi) who came to the U.S. in the early 1900s. His first attempts at business were unsuccessful, but eventually he devised a plan that was initially profitable. Ponzi convinced people to send him money via mail and promised they would make up to 50 percent profit on their investment. He paid off the first investors with money he got from the next investors, paid those investors with the newer investments, and so on. It wasn’t long before authorities discovered him and convicted him of mail fraud.
Bowdlerize
Definition: to expurgate (as a book) by omitting or modifying parts considered vulgar.
I never thought of Shakespeare as vulgar, but I guess if you were particularly sensitive, you might see him that way. In the 1800s, a man named Thomas Bowlder thought that Shakespeare was a little “much” for young people and “delicates,” so he decided to publish his own version of pieces written by The Bard. He rewrote, omitted, cut, chopped, and censored Shakespeare.
Bowdler was finally able to come up with an edition of Shakespeare that he felt comfortable reading with his family, and managed to forever enshrine his name with censorship to boot. Within 11 years of his death in 1825, the word bowdlerize was being used to refer to expurgating books or other texts.
See the link at the very top of this email if you’d like to read the full list.
Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Knowledge Enablement
Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com
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