Cannon (metaphor)

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Cannon generally referred to understanding a large-caliber , the artillery assigned weapon with a long gun barrel . But cannon is also used - directly as a word, in combination with other words, or as an idiom - in various forms of expression in warfare and everyday life, both in literature and in everyday language, metaphorically in a variety of ways.

Semantic origin of cannon metaphors

The semantic area of warfare is considered to be an extremely productive “metaphor supplier” and “image donor”. Many words (for example, attack , bomb , fight , grenade , ambush , gun , commando , war , fight , march , contactors , tactics , etc.) and compositions containing these words (for example, sex bomb , mock battle , command structure , grave struggle , protecting aid , truce etc. ) are used in colloquial language, the media and literature with varied meanings and diverse metaphors.

The metaphorical idioms explained here relate solely to the use of cannon .

Cannon metaphors from the war

The following cannon metaphors were created in the context of war and the military and are directly related to these areas.

Cannon fever

Cannon fever describes a feeling of fear with physical effects of an approaching war battle, for example “severe stage fright in the face of war”, to symptoms of illness such as insomnia, cramps, vomiting and loss of control of the sphincter muscle . Early mentions can be found in 1791 by Carl Gottlob Cramer and in 1792 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe .

Cannon fodder

Cannon fodder is a term for often poorly trained or poorly equipped and therefore “worthless” soldiers.

The name is a free translation of the words food for powder by Falstaff in Shakespeare's drama Henry IV (written 1596/97), 1st part, 4th act, 2nd scene. The word can be found in German as early as 1801 and more frequently from the early 19th century. In the same early period in 1814 in the French, anti-Napoleonic pamphlet De Buonaparte et des Bourbons by François-René de Chateaubriand, the expression “chair à canon” (about meat / fodder for the cannon (s) ) is found. The analogous expression cannon fodder did not appear in English until the middle of the 19th century and increasingly, also with mention of the German word, during the First World War ; the metaphor first appeared in English, was then changed in German, and then returned to English with this change.

Gunboat Policy

Gunboat politics (more rarely gunboat diplomacy ) is a metaphor for the "demonstration of military power [by sending warships] to achieve political goals". It originated in the era of imperialism , when militarily powerful states tried to intimidate less powerful states by demonstrating their superior sea power off the coast, possibly accompanied by the firing of cannons - before the negotiations began.
It was first mentioned in English ( gunboat policy ) in the 1860s, in The London and China Telegraph , 1869. In German, the metaphor appeared in the early 20th century in the book Die Zukunft by Maximilian Harden .

Goulash cannon

Goulash cannon , a humorous neologism from the language of soldiers , is the name for a mobile field kitchen . The metaphor originated before the First World War and was established around 1910. The use of the synonym food cannon was much less common.

Education cannon

Education cannon, a name for a war book wagon (field library), was created (like goulash cannon) during the First World War and lasted until the beginning of the Second World War . In the post-war period , the meaning of this metaphor was lost and education cannon was occasionally used as neo-semantism for a person with a high level of education.

English: loose cannon

In English, a designated loose cannon (dt. A unvertäute ( "loose, unleashed") cannon ) an unpredictable person (situation may be), of which one assumes real and serious danger. The term also suggests that it would be better (or necessary) to really get this person under control before the impending disaster happens.

The term is attributed to seafaring language from the 17th century, although there is no evidence that the term was used that early. Warships were equipped with cannons that were wheel-maneuverable for transport and alignment. These cannons were moored for safety, but had play so that the ropes could absorb the recoil when fired. If the mooring came loose, the cannon could roll freely to and fro, damaging the superstructure and injuring people.

It is believed that this danger was first portrayed in literature by Victor Hugo in 1874 in his work Quatre − vingt − treize . In the second book La Corvette Claymore , Hugo describes in section IV. Tormentum Belli :

“A cannon that bursts from its position suddenly becomes an indescribable, supernatural beast. It's a machine that turns into a monster. This mass moves on its wheels, like a billiard ball, its head bowed, lurching, leaping forward with the pounding of the ship; it comes and goes, stops, seems to be thinking, resumes its course, crosses the ship at one end as fast as an arrow on the other hand, turns, breaks sideways, escapes, rears up, injured, breaks through, kills, destroys. "

Henry Kingsley took up this image in his novella Number Seventeen (1875): "Of course, immediately the ship was in a trough, a far more terrible, dangerous machine of destruction than the famous unleashed cannon of Mr. Victor Hugo." In 1889 the loose cannon appeared as a metaphor in an American newspaper.

Cannon metaphors with the meaning "special achievement"

Sports

Goalscorer cannon

From the 1930s - and based on football - sports journalists used the word cannon , football cannon , or the stepping-up firing cannon , for athletes ( shooting strikers or attackers , later also bombers ) who were perceived as particularly successful. Since 1965/66, the most successful goalscorer in a Bundesliga season - the Bundesliga top scorer - has received a symbolic trophy, a top scorer cannon , a miniature cannon on an engraved base.

From football coverage, the metaphor spread to other sports such as tennis ( tennis cannon ) , cycling ( cycling cannon ) and skiing ( ski cannon ) and became part of everyday life as a sports cannon .

everyday life

Based on sport, other compound terms emerged in colloquial language: party cannon (a person who achieves something important in a party) and sales cannon (a sales genius) were seldom used and rarely used today. More often and still in use today, the colloquial joking term “ mood cannon ” (also known as “ fun cannon” ) is used for a person who “ strikes ” and spreads the mood quickly and for a long time.

The colloquial and fiction (from around 2002) used in bed to be a cannon can refer to both a man and a woman.

General Cannon Metaphors

Cannon describes - in addition to the actual firing sound of a gun - a very loud, "rolling" sound that - as natural thunder - repeated can be heard.

Kanonenschlag is a firecracker in cylinder - or cube form , which after ignition with a particularly dull thud - like a cannon - explodes .

The metaphor shooting at sparrows with cannons means that you are making a disproportionate effort, exaggerating a measure or generally overreacting completely. An early poem by Anton Alexander Graf von Auersperg from 1831 contains this metaphor with sparrows and larks.

(Oh you) holy cannon barrel is a surprised exclamation, the origin of which is not clear, but which was popularized by Carl Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent .

Cannon metaphors unrelated to the gun

There are metaphors that use the word cannon but have nothing to do with the cannon. Sometimes misunderstood from the Greek word κανών (canon, measuring rod , straightedge ).

  • The value judgment under all cannon - an extraordinarily poor achievement - goes back to the Latin judgment sub omni canone ( below any standard ). The Latin canon ('norm, rule') goes back to the Greek (Richtscheit) as a measure and comes from the language of students .
  • Metaphors like canonize (drink excessively), cannon full , drunk like a cannon , drunk like a beach cannon and finally drunk like a beach howitzer emerged from the term cannon , which (Halle) students used for a tall, tubular beer mug.

Non-metaphorical use

The following terms and designations are used to distinguish them from the metaphorical cannon uses mentioned above.

Tubular

Terms that - like cannon for a cannon - are not understood as metaphorical are derived from the Greek word κάννα kanna 'reed' via the Latin canna and the old Italian cannone in the general meaning 'big pipe' and therefore something else with an or describes several "large tubes".

Hitting students; two people on the left are wearing gun boots.
  • As cannons or cannon boots high, tubular - shaped riding boots that reached above the knee , especially among students, were referred to.
  • Cannon leg or cannon bone is an outdated name for the overgrown metapodia III and IV in artifacts . The term more common today is cannon bone .
  • A cannon furnace takes its name from its cylindrical shape.

Functional cannons

Likewise, there is no metaphor when machines that can fire different materials are provided with the additional cannon . Examples: snow cannon , chicken cannon , potato cannon , confetti cannon , etc.

literature

  • Werner Haubrich: The imagery of sport in contemporary German , dissertation at the University of Cologne (1963)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lisa-Malin Harms: Metaphors in Language Contrast - War Metaphors in the Political Reporting of German and French Daily Newspapers
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Walter De Gruyter Incorporated: J - N . Walter de Gruyter, January 1, 1954, ISBN 978-3-11-086229-4 , pp. 91-92 (and references there).
  3. ↑ August Vetter: Illumination of the letter, concerning the cholera, of President Rust to Alexander von Humboldt . Rücker, 1832, p. 30.
  4. ↑ Erich Maria Remarque: Nothing new in the west . Psychology Press, November 15, 1984, ISBN 978-0-203-97773-6 , pp. 76-77.
  5. ^ Carl Gottlob Cramer: The German Alcibiades . Reformer Sincerus, 1791, p. 111.
  6. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethe all works ... . Tempel-verlag, 1792, p. 52.
  7. ↑ Falstaff: “ Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder . They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men. "
  8. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna (1896), 5th edition, 9th volume, p. 853.
  9. ↑ G Merkel: Letters to a Woman About the Most Important Products of Fine Literature 1801, p. 606.
  10. ^ Hans von Held: Ueber and against the familiar letters and new fires of the Prussian War Council of Cölln 1808, p. 72.
  11. ^ " On en était venu à ce point de mépris pour la vie des hommes et pour la France, d'appeler les conscrits la matière première et la chair à canon. “Dt. “ One had come to a point of contempt in this regard, both for human life and for France, in calling the conscripts raw material and cannon fodder. "
  12. ^ "De Buonaparte et des Bourbons" (full text in Wikisource )
  13. ^ Charles Alfred Lister (Hon.), Thomas Lister Baron Ribblesdale, Thomas Lister Ribblesdale (4th Baron): Charles Lister: Letters and Recollections, with a Memoir by His Father, Lord Ribblesdale . C. Scribner's sons, 1917. , p. 133: "I am not mechanically enough minded to be any use at modern warfare and look upon myself purely as kanonenfutter ."
  14. ↑ Current History 1916, pp. 172 and 533.
  15. ↑ Duden: Gunboat Policy
  16. ↑ Cord Eberspächer: The German Yangtze Patrol. German gunboat policy in China in the age of imperialism 1900-1914. Bochum (2004).
  17. ^ Ngram Viewer (1850-2008): gunboat policy
  18. ^ The London and China Telegraph 1869, p. 352.
  19. ^ Ngram Viewer (1900-2008): Gunboat Policy, Gunboat Diplomacy
  20. ↑ Maximilian Harden: The future . G. Stilke, 1911, pp. 24-25.
  21. ↑ Alfred Brie: From our goulash cannon: juicy chunks collection from the trenches 1915.
  22. ↑ August Plöhn: The goulash cannon: March song fe Singst. m. Companion d. Pianoforte; op. 29 . Vetter, 1914.
  23. ↑ Fritz Graas: The field kitchen: funny collection of cheerful home purring and Schelmerein ... . E. Bertelsmann, 1942.
  24. ↑ NgramViewer goulash cannon
  25. ^ Gordon L. Rottman: FUBAR: Soldier Slang of World War II . Osprey Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84603-175-5 , p. 223.
  26. ↑ As feed gun , a device is known today, can be distributed with the feed pellets evenly over fish ponds.
  27. ↑ Ine Van Linthout: The book in the Nazi propaganda policy . Walter de Gruyter, November 30, 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-025273-6 , p. 197, footnote 112.
  28. ^ Association for Rhenish and Westphalian Folklore, Elberfeld: Journal of the Association for Rhenish and Westphalian Folklore ... 1915, p. 37.
  29. ↑ Heinz Steguweit: Die Bildungskanone , in With the book into the people , advertising and advisory office for German literature at the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (1940), pp. 17-20.
  30. ↑ Christian Democratic Union of Germany (Germany: West). Federal Party Congress : 13th Federal Party Congress of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany: 23.-31. March 1965, Düsseldorf . Sator Advertising Publishing House, 1965.
  31. ^ Maria Elisabeth Brunner: The destruction of myths by Elfriede Jelinek . Ars Una, 1997, ISBN 978-3-89391-303-9 , p. 129.
  32. ↑ Olivia Isil: When a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse There's the Devil to Pay: Seafaring Words in Everyday Speech . McGraw-Hill Education, April 1, 1996, ISBN 978-0-07-032877-8 .
  33. ↑ Victor Hugo: Quatre − vingt − treize ( Memento of the original from September 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogene.ch
  34. ↑ In the original: Un canon qui casse son amarre devient brusquement on ne sait quelle bête surnaturelle. C'est une machine qui se transforme en un monstre. Cette masse court sur ses roues, à des mouvements de bille de billard, penche avec le roulis, plonge avec le tangage, va, vient, s'arrête, paraît méditer, reprend sa course, traverse comme une flèche le navire d'un bout à l'autre, pirouette, se dérobe, s'évade, se cabre, heurte, ébrèche, tue, extermine.
  35. ^ A b Max Cryer: Common Phrases: And the Amazing Stories Behind Them . Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated, December 13, 2013, ISBN 978-1-62873-154-5 , p. 107.
  36. ↑ Free translation
  37. ↑ Original: At once, of course, the ship was in the trough of the sea, a more fearfully dangerous engine of destruction than Mr. Victor Hugo's celebrated loose cannon.
  38. ^ Gary Martin: The Phrases Finder loose cannon
  39. ↑ Der Arbeitskamerad 1941, p. 139.
  40. ^ A b Manfred Bues: The transport of the German language in the 20th century . University Press L. Bamberg, 1937.
  41. ^ Maud von Ossietzky: Die Weltbühne . Weltbühne Verlag, 1973, p. 63.
  42. ↑ SIX-DAY RACE - So what sucks , Spiegel No. 2, 1951
  43. ↑ Günther Flaig: ski cannons 1947-48: a Skififel over 50 Austrian top runners in words and pictures . Keys Publishing House, 1947.
  44. ↑ Thomas Gross: The Last Good , Die Zeit, No. 29, July 15, 1999.
  45. ↑ Duden: Mood cannon
  46. ↑ Vera Studier: How long does a thousand years take? . BoD - Books on Demand, October 2002, ISBN 978-3-8311-3542-4 , p. 68.
  47. ↑ Citizen_b: The gay divorce: until a murder do you part! . Himmelstürmer Verlag, 2002, ISBN 978-3-934825-18-5 , p. 199.
  48. ↑ Anastasius Grün: Walks of a Viennese Poet . Hoffmann et al. Campe, 1831, p. 47.
  49. ↑ Hans Reimann: The Literazzia 1952-1968.
  50. ↑ Duden. The dictionary of origin , p. 325, sv Canon
  51. ^ W. Pape, Greek-German dictionary , volume 1, page 1321 f.
  52. ↑ Harry Horstmann: The soldier: In language and tradition . BoD - Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8603-9 , p. 201.
  53. ^ A b Duden, Dictionary of Origin (Volume 7), Bibliographisches Institut & EA Brockhaus AG, 3rd edition (2001), Mannheim, p. 387.
  54. ↑ J. Vollmann: Burschicoses woerterbuch: or: Explanation of all customs, expressions, words, idioms and comments that occur in student life, along with an indication of the corps existing at all universities . Unteregger, 1846, p. 255.
  55. ↑ κάννα , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon , on Perseus
  56. ^ Definition and etymology of "cannon" . Webster's Dictionary . Retrieved May 26, 2008.
  57. ↑ Etymology of "Cane" . Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved May 26, 2008.
  58. ^ Definition and etymology of "cane" . Webster's Dictionary . Retrieved May 26, 2008.
  59. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna (1896), 5th edition, 9th volume, p. 852.
  60. ↑ Handbook of Zoology . W. de Gruyter & Company, 1963, pp. 13, 14 and 66.
  61. ↑ Nova acta Leopoldina; Treatises of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . JA Barth., 1910, p. 21.