#58 Swoggle My Horn

So I’m at my club the other day. That phrase sounds so English doesn’t it? You picture sitting around in huge, overstuffed, high-backed leather chairs, a fire crackling from the grate under the ornate mantelpiece, a butler depositing a hot toddy on the cherry-wood table at your elbow while he hands you a copy of the Times to peruse as you discuss the latest cricket game with your crony across the Persian rug.
Of course, what I mean by club is a sweat-soaked bench in a smelly locker room in a tired building with a few racquetball courts and a couple of rooms of stinky weight equipment.
Anyhow this guy at the club—let’s call him Joe—was telling me how he liked to work out with another guy—let’s call him Fred—cause Fred really knew his stuff when it came to weights and Fred also called Joe “whipper-snapper.” Makes me feel young, Joe said to me. “The voice of experience is good,” I agreed, “but you know, the mere fact you know the term whippersnapper proves you’re at least some old.
And that of course, got me to thinking. Did I know what whippersnapper meant? I use it. And when I do, I use it to indicate youth. But actually, I remember in the old days I always heard it as part of the phrase, “young whippersnapper.” As if there was an older whippersnapper somewhere about. The dictionary wasn’t much help. It defines whippersnapper as “an extended form of whip-snapper: an insignificant, especially young person who appears impertinent or presumptuous.” Hmm. That’s what I always call a twerp.
Another term, “whipping boy,” seemed a little closer to the mark: “Originally, a boy brought up with a young prince and required to take the punishment for the prince’s misdeeds.” There’s a good child-rearing technique. Let’s train our rulers to have someone else take the consequences for their mistakes. Getting punished and beaten while they sit back and enjoy a vacation. Thank God we live in modern times and that stuff doesn’t happen today. How’d they ever hornswoggle people into putting up with that stuff?
And where did that word come from? Hornswoggle? Back to the dictionary. “Fanciful coinage originally associated with cuckoldry. Now meaning to swindle or hoax or trick.” “Cuckoldry” has something to do with the cuckoo bird’s habit of changing mates. I don’t think so.
Thinking maybe it was a compound word I looked up its parts. Horn is pretty obvious. But no entries for either swoggle or woggle. What a waste. Two perfectly good, easy to spell words: woggle and swoggle. And something else to rhyme with toggle. And what did I learn today? Um…Even if I’m a whippersnapper I shouldn’t be anyone’s whipping boy when they try to hornswoggle me into a boondoggle? It makes the mind boggle.
America, ya gotta love it.