Burl (pronounced burl)
(1) A small knot or lump in wool, thread, or cloth.
(2) A dome-shaped growth on the trunk of a tree; a wart-like
structure which can be 1 m (39 inches) or more across and .5 m (19 inches) or
more in height; typically harvested and sliced to make the intricately
patterned veneers used in furniture or car interiors.
(3) To remove burls from (cloth) in finishing (which
technically means the same as to de-burl).
(4) In Scottish, Australian and NZ slang (1) an attempt; to
try (especially in the phrases “give it a burl” & (2) “going for a burl” (going
for a drive in a car) (both largely archaic and the latter restricted to the antipodes).
1400–1450: From the late Middle English burle (a small knot or flaw in cloth),
from the Old French bouril & bourril (flocks or ends of threads which
disfigure cloth), from the Old French bourre
& burle (tuft of wool) and akin
to the Medieval Latin burla (bunch,
sheaf), from the Vulgar Latin burrula
(small flock of wool), from the Medieval Latin burra (flock of wool, fluff, coarse hair; shaggy cloth). The source of the Latin forms is
unknown. The slang forms are probably
from the Scottish birl (a twist or
turn) but use in this sense seems now to be restricted to Scotland and the
South Island of New Zealand. The large,
rounded outgrowth on the trunk or branch of a tree can be highly prized if on a
species (most famously walnut) where the timber of a burl develops the
swirling, intricate patterns which are used as thinly sliced veneers in the
production of furniture and other fine products, notably in car interiors. Burls develop from one or more twig buds, the
cells of which continue to multiply but never differentiate so the twig can
elongate into a limb. In American
English, burl has been used to describe "a knot or excrescence on a walnut
or other tree" since 1868 but burr is now often used interchangeably. Burls rarely cause harm to trees but careless
(often unlawful) harvesting can cause damage.
The related noun is burler; the noun plural is burls. The present participle is burling, the simple
past and past participle burled.
Burl was productive in English although some forms have a
tangled history. The adjective burly is
derived from the circa 1300 borlich (excellent,
noble; handsome, beautiful), probably from the Old English borlice (noble, stately (literally "bowerly", ie fit to frequent a lady's apartment)). The sense evolved by circa 1400 to mean "stout,
sturdy" and later "heavily built". Some etymologists also suggest a connection
between the Old English and the Old High German burlih (lofty, exalted) which was related to burjan (to raise, lift). In Middle
English, it was applied also to objects (even transitory things like cloud
formations) but has long been restricted to people.
The noun burlesque (piece composed in burlesque style,
derisive imitation, grotesque parody) had been in use since the 1660s, the
earlier adjective (odd, grotesque), from the 1650s, from the sixteenth century French
burlesque, from the Italian burlesco (ludicrous), from burla (joke, fun, mockery), presumably
from the Medieval Latin burra (trifle,
nonsense (literally "flock of wool" and thing something light and
trivial)). The more precise adjectival
meaning "tending to excite laughter by ludicrous contrast between the
subject and the manner of treating it" is attested in English by 1700. Comedy and burlesque represent the two great
traditions of representational ridicule, the former draws characters in
conventional form, the latter by using a construct quite unlike themselves. As long ago a 1711, one critic described burlesque
as existing in two forms, the first represents mean persons in accoutrements of
heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest
among the people. By the late nineteenth
century, it typically meant "travesties on the classics and satires on
accepted ideas" and vulgar comic opera while the modern sense of something
risqué ("a variety show featuring striptease) is an invention of American
English which co-evolved during the same era and became predominant by the
1920s..
The noun burlap (coarse, heavy material made of hemp,
jute, etc., used for bagging) dates from the 1690s, the first element probably
from the Middle English borel (coarse
cloth), from the burel or the Dutch boeren (coarse), although there may have
been some confusion with boer (peasant). The second element, -lap, meant "piece
of cloth". There has been debate
about the noun hurly-burly (originally hurlyburly)
(commotion, tumult) which in the 1530s was apparently an alteration of the phrase
hurling and burling, a reduplication of the fourteenth century hurling (commotion,
tumult), from the verbal noun of hurl. Shakespeare
had hurly (tumult, uproar) and the early fifteenth century hurling time was the
name applied by chroniclers to the period of tumult and commotion around Wat
Tyler's (circa 1341–1381; a leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England) rebellion.
In the early nineteenth century a hurly-house
was said to be a "large house in a state of advanced disrepair" and
there is presumably some connection with the dialectal Swedish hurra (whirl round) but it’s all quite
murky and whether burly in this context is related to burl in the sense of
something rough or merely coincidental a rhyme is uncertain.
Burr (pronounced bur)
(1) A
rough or irregular protuberance on any object, as on a tree (spelled also as
burl).
(2) A
small, handheld, power-driven milling cutter, used by machinists and die makers
for deepening, widening, or undercutting small recesses (technically called
burr grinders which, with a revolving disk or cone with abrasive surfaces are
used to smooth burr holes).
(3) In
metal fabrication, a protruding, ragged edge raised on the surface of metal
during drilling, shearing, punching, or engraving (spelled also as buhr); a
blank punched out of a piece of sheet metal.
(4) A
washer placed at the head of a rivet.
(5) In
ceramics, a fragment of brick fused or warped in firing.
(6) In
any form of engineering, to form a rough point or edge on.
(7) In
structural phonetics, (1) a pronunciation of the r-sound as a uvular fricative
trill, as in certain Northern English dialects (of which the Northumberland is
an exemplar) or the retroflex r of the West of England, (2) a pronunciation of
the r-sound as an alveolar flap or trill, as in Scottish English or (3) any
pronunciation popularly considered rough or nonurban.
(8) To
speak with a burr (to speak roughly, indistinctly, or inarticulately) (can be
applied neutrally or as a (usually class-loaded disparagement).
(9) A
whirring sound or rough, humming sound.
(10) In
the sense of a broad ring on a spear or tilting lance (placed below the grip to
prevent the hand from slipping), a variant of burrow (in obsolete sense:
borough) (dating from the sixteenth century and now rare except in historic
reference).
(11) In
geology, a mass of hard siliceous rock surrounded by softer rock.
(12) A
sharp, pointy object, such as a sliver or splinter (regionally specific).
(13) As
bur; a seed pod with sharp features that stick in fur or clothing.
(13) In
anatomy, the ear lobe (archaic).
(14) In
zoology, the knot at the bottom of an antler (analogous with the burrs (or
burls) on trees.
1375–1425:
From the late Middle English burre (possibly
related to the Old English byrst
(bristle)), burrewez (plural) & buruhe (circle), a variant of brough (round tower), an evolutionary
fork of which became the Modern English broch.
It was cognate with the Danish burre
& borre (burdock, burr) and the Swedish
borre (sea-urchin).
The
spelling burr was a variant of the original bur, the addition probably a
tribute by the written to the spoken long R sound, the use in phonetics noted
from the 1750s, presumably both imitative and associative, the sound being
thought of as rough like a bur; the onomatopoeic form may be compared with the French
bruire. The original idea of "rough sound of the
letter -R" (especially that common in Northumberland) was later extended
to "northern accented speech" in general and was soon integrated into
the English class system as one of many class identifiers. It may be the sound of the word is imitative
of the speech peculiarity itself, or it was adapted from one of the senses of
bur (the late fourteenth century phrase “to have a bur in (one's) throat” was a
figure of speech suggesting the choking sensation or huskiness associated with
having something rough caught in the windpipe) but the authoritative Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) notes that despite the similarity, the Scottish -r- is
a lingual trill, not a true burr.
The
circa 1300 bur (prickly seed vessel of some plants) from the Middle English burre was from a Scandinavian source,
either the Danish borre, the Swedish hard-borre or the Old Norse burst (bristle), from the primitive
Indo-European bhars. In the 1610s, it was transferred to refer to
a "rough edge on metal" which led ultimately to the use in phonetics
and the name give to various tools and appliances. The noun burstone dates from the late
thirteenth century and was an adaptation from the Middle English burre, the stone so-named presumably
because of its roughness. Aaron Burr (1756–1836,
US vice-president (1800–1804)) fled after killing a political rival in a duel
and plotted to create an independent empire in the western US. In 1807 he was acquitted on a charge of
treason. To remove a burr (typically in
engineering or carpentry) is to deburr (or debur). The noun plural is burrs, the present
participle burring and the simple past & past participle burred. The homophones are Bur & brr.
The
noun rhotacism dates from 1830 in the sense of “an extensive or particular use
of 'r'”, from the Modern Latin rhotacismus,
from the Ancient Greek rhotakizein,
from rho (the letter -r-), from the Hebrew or Phoenician roth. A technical adaptation
from 1844 was the use to describe the conversion of another sound, usually
"s" to "r" (as in Aeolian Greek, which at the end of words
changed -s to –r, the related forms being rhotacize & rhotacization.
European burr (or burl) walnut with extensive “bud eyes”.
Regarding timber veneers, the conventional wisdom is that
burl is American English while burr is used in the rest of the English-speaking
world. That’s not accurate although burl
in this sense is an American innovation from 1868 and probably a useful one. In the specialized arboreal branch of botany,
the words cancer and canker were also once used to describe the growths on trees
but these uses seem never to have extended beyond the profession.
Burr (or burl) walnut interior detailing on 1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) Landaulet (top) and 1963 & 1965 Jaguar Mark Xs (bottom).
In another specialized field, those in carpentry concerned with fine veneers, there are further distinctions, some defining a burr as an English word meaning a type of growth on a side of a tree which is full of “bud eyes” (the most distinctive pattern associated with expensive veneers) while burl is of US origin and refers to any type of growth on the side of a tree, including burrs. That would seem to suggest burl would thus include the healing growth over surface damage or broken branches. Others, notably timber merchants seem most often to regard burls as any highly figured wood with twisted and contorted grain regardless of whether it comes from a growth on the side of a tree, root, stump, or has grown all the way up the trunk, and whether it contains bud eyes or not. In commerce, this is doubtlessly useful because people buy timber for veneering on the basis of appearance rather than where it happened to grow. It would of course be useful if one word could be accepted to mean the growth on a tree and the other the harvested timbers from these growths but, being English, such things never happen.
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