Is there a better moniker?

I was unclear about the word "bodger" and curious to understand what it might mean. I found the following on the 'net fast enought and thought there might be others to whom this word might be unclear -- enjoy.

An itinerant chair-leg turner. This term was once common around the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, between London and Oxford (so much so that the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers, is nicknamed The Bodgers). Bodgers were highly skilled itinerant wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods on the chalk hills of the Chilterns. They cut timber and converted it into chair legs by turning it on a pole lathe, an ancient and very simple tool that uses the spring of a bent sapling to help run it. Their equipment was so easy to move and set up that it was easier to go to the timber and work it there than to transport it to a workshop. The completed chair legs were sold to furniture factories to be married with other chair parts made in the workshop.

The word only appears at the end of the nineteenth century. There may be a link-through the idea of a itinerant person-with a much older sense of the word, for a travelling merchant or chapman. The Oxford English Dictionary finds examples of this meaning from the eighteenth century, but there's a much earlier one from Holinshed's Chronicles of 1577 (a major source for Shakespeare) in which William Harrison rails against bodgers who bought up supplies of wheat to sell abroad, leaving nothing for local people to make their bread with.

But that leaves us with another sense, the more common one (at least in Britain and Australia) of an incompetent mender of things, which Americans and some British people may prefer to see spelled botcher. In both spellings this comes from the Middle English bocchen, which had a sense of repairing or patching. It could be significant that in medieval times it was a neutral term that had no associations with doing a job badly. It's possible that this old sense of the word survived in dialect or local usage, and evolved into the furniture bodger, while its meaning in the standard language changed.

Yet another sense of bodger is hinted at by a line in the Flanders and Swann song that mentioned the rhinoceros having a "bodger on his bonce". Many people have written to say that they know a bodger as a pointed instrument for various purposes. For example Doug Dew wrote: "From my childhood in Surrey, I have a vague memory of the use of the word bodger to mean a blunt stick or tool used to make holes in the ground for seeds". Alan Harrison added: "Bodge is certainly in use in Black Country dialect for poking or making a hole. I have heard my father use bodger of an instrument used to make holes, as for example when making an extra hole in a belt when the wearer has gained or lost weight". Tony Chadwick, Professor of French at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, remembers the late Dr George Storey, co-editor of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English, applying bodger to one of those pointed sticks for picking up litter. Others have mentioned that it is the usual name for the tool used by scaffolders, which has a spanner/wrench at one end and a point at the other.

It seems extremely likely that this is a variant of podger, recorded from the nineteenth century in various engineering contexts. Indeed, several subscribers wrote to say that they knew of pointed instruments under this name. It is said to derived from podge or pudge for something short, fat or thick-set.

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Bowler? LignumTorner? Lather? Woodwhirler? Woodgouger? Woodtwister? In my case, woodcatcher, surely not Woodpecker!

*********************************************** I think Woodturner is the best moniker. If we weren't using it, we would prefer it. :) Yogi B. (aka Arch)

Fortiter,

Oh gee, I don't know... I guess for folks of Arch's demeanor it would work out well - I mean, folks will likely mis-hear and think you just told them you're a codger - and that's pretty darned close to a coot.

How about a Lathier - sounds strong and noble. Sorta sounds like rapier, as in our wit, and images of swords, chivalry and heraldry. One wouldn't know it to look at us geeky, dust covered, folks in our batter's helmets; old fingerless gloves; smocks, tyvek bunny suits or old windbreakers (so we don't drag a trail of dust into Her Majesty's domain); and Resp-O-rators, DustBeGones or AirMates, but we're modern day knights wielding razor-sharp gouges, chisels and parting tools, outfitted for battle against nature. Damn it, a noble breed, I tells ya.

_____ American Association of Woodturners Cascade Woodturners Assoc., Portland, Oregon Northwest Woodturners, Tigard, Oregon _____

(clip) How about a Lathier - sounds strong and noble(clip) ^^^^^^^^^ I like that--it seems to put us on a par with luthiers, but I am afraid we would have difficulty getting it adopted. The language seems to "drift," more than it responds to deliberate modifications.

OT: I would like to see the word, "hexelu", used in place of "double-u-double-u-double-u," just to speed things up, but I am afraid it will never happen.

only if they happen to be sweet baby James, otherwise it is tailor

I don't like bodger due to the sense of low quality implied, see

which says:bodge Verb. 1. To do a poor job or repair.2. To cobble (something together). E.g."I bodged together that furniture outof driftwood and old egg boxes."* Compare with 'botch'.bodge job Noun. A job done poorly, something cobbled together, a makeshiftrepair.

• Compare with 'botch job'.

The word is often used on "Junkyard Wars" and implies even a step down from the normal hasty, low-quality construction. By the way, I am not disparraging this show, as I think it is incredible to have working prototypes of things within a day. What if companies had runoffs of concepts in this way before they did their thoroughly engineered designs?

Derek

Lathier, a person who makes lathes. ;)

If clay turners are called potters, then wood turners are called bowlers. ;)

fyi: tailor

but ...but...I make so many things that are NOT bowls! I suspect 'bowls' make up only about 10-15% of what I do...I'm just a 'turner'..(and isn't that the origin of the surname...like Potter?

I'm casting my vote for "spindle head"

I just say "dubba dubba dubba".

Ugh! Sounds like you belong on "Scrapheap Challenge."

-- Chuck *#:^) chaz3913(AT)yahoo(DOT)com Anti-spam sig: please remove "NO SPAM" from e-mail address to reply. <

September 11, 2001 - Never Forget

Maybe you could try a little change at a time, like, "treble-double-u" then move on to the shorter version.

-- Chuck *#:^) chaz3913(AT)yahoo(DOT)com Anti-spam sig: please remove "NO SPAM" from e-mail address to reply. <

September 11, 2001 - Never Forget

Ah yes, but how to be discerned from a yo-yoist...or wheelright, for that matter?

-- Chuck *#:^) chaz3913(AT)yahoo(DOT)com Anti-spam sig: please remove "NO SPAM" from e-mail address to reply. <

September 11, 2001 - Never Forget

Then we have vesseler, penner, bowler, spindler, handler, candlesticker, etc.

Lathe Jockey?

Barry