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 (or those with a Scottish accent) 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 as trim in the interiors of cars. 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 since 1868 been used to describe "a knot or excrescence on a walnut
or other tree" but burr is now often used interchangeably while "burlwood", once common, seems now restricted to industry use and commerce. Burls rarely cause harm to trees but careless
(often unlawful) harvesting can cause damage. The adjective burly (a man large, well-built and muscular) is unrelated and of uncertain origin; the related noun is used of this quality and not the character of timber. The noun, verb & adjective burlesque is also unrelated. Burl is a noun & verb, burler is a noun and burled & burling are verbs; the noun plural is burls.
European burr (or burl) walnut with extensive “bud eyes”.
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.
Burrs (or burls) on a tree. Burls should not be confused with galls which are small and form along twigs and leaves. Burls are much larger and form on trunks and branches as an integral part of the tree. Galls grow outside and are independent of the tree.
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. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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 non-urban.
(8) To
speak with a burr (to speak roughly, indistinctly, or inarticulately) (can be
applied neutrally or as a (usually class-loaded) disparagement. The use to describe the classic Scottish pronunciation is merely descriptive and thus usually neutral although it can be modified such as "...spoke in a strong and almost incomprehensible Scottish burr".
(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 (similar to hayseed).
(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. Burr is a noun & verb, burred & burring are verbs and burrish, burrless & burrlike are adjectives; the noun plural is burrs.
1962 Facel Vega Facel II.
Powered by Chrysler V8s, the Facel Vegas (1954-1964) were France's finest cars of the post-war years and followed the template of the trans-Atlantic hybrids (a powerful (and cheap) US V8, atop a bespoke platform clothed with stylish European coachwork) which flourished until the first oil crisis in 1973 but were in many ways a "cut above most", featuring aluminum panels and stainless steel rather than chrome trim. The equipment levels were lavish with leather and interior appointments of the highest quality but one curiosity was the extensive "burl walnut" was actually painted metal, so well executed by Facel's craftsmen it demanded a inspection to reveal the nature of the material. Facel production ended in 1964, the company bankrupted by the flood of warranty claims which flowed from the chronic unreliability of the French-built four-cylinder engine adopted for a smaller range. The Facellia (1960-1964) was a good idea because the market for such a thing existed but by the time Facel had re-engineered it to used reliable power-plants (a Volvo four and Austin-Healey six), the debts had become unserviceable and the company was doomed.
1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III (plastic wood).
By the mid 1960s Detroit mostly had abandoned the use of timber. The internal frames went first, only a handful of low-volume specialist vehicles still using the technique when production resumed in the post-war years. Next to go were the partial-timber bodies, the best known of which were the "woodie" ("woody" once preferred the preferred used in the UK but "woodie" seems now global, presumably because most such surviving wagons were US-built) station wagons although there were also high-priced convertibles and sedans, the latter pair appealing on the basis of the look but those prepared to pay a premium proved a vanishing breed and that was understandable because the manufacturers recommended an annual re-varnishing, a tiresome task and a financial imposition even in an age when unit labor costs were low. None were left by 1951 and the station wagons followed within a few years as improved production techniques made "all metal construction" a cheaper path to follow. However, inexplicable though it may have been to the rest of the planet, Americans liked the "woodie" look on pick-ups (some car-based) and especially station wagons so for decades the manufacturers happily supplied the market with "faux woodies" which were created by gluing on 3M's Di-NOC appliqué, framed by fibreglass spars, all components designed to look like timber. Sometimes with (limited) success and sometimes not, there were even convertibles, an attempt to cash in on any lingering nostalgia for what was around in the days of the administration of Harry S Truman (1884–1972; POTUS 1945-1953).
1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III (real wood).
In the 1960s, as the "real stuff" became rare, "
plastic wood" did proliferate in interiors and increasingly it was
"faux" rather than "fake" in that often it was obviously phoney although in the higher-priced lines more effort often was taken to try to fool people. One strange example was Ford's Lincoln Continental Mark III, produced over three seasons with the design imperative having been: "
Put a Rolls-Royce grill on a Thunderbird." Astonishingly profitable because in terms of engineering it was exactly that and not a great deal more, its success inspired Ford to upgrade a few aspects and one change was to replace the plastic wood in the interior with genuine walnut, once part of a tree. For whatever reason, Ford opted not to emulate Jaguar or Rolls-Royce and use a burl walnut veneer, opting instead for a straight-grain timber which looked almost exactly like the previous year's plastic fittings. A very close inspection would reveal the truth but it's doubtful many bothered and Ford must have reached the same conclusion, wondering why they bothered. When the Lincoln Continental Mark IV was released in 1972, it kept the leather but reverted to a plastic wood that blatantly was phoney; over four seasons, it was a great success and is regarded still as the classis "
land yacht".
Lindsay
Lohan (top left) with luggage, on-location for the filming of
Liz & Dick
(2012); the car is a Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) four-door
Pullman. The early versions of the 600 had the most timber trim.
Buyers of the 600 could
choose from a variety of timbers when ordering a 600 although the tale of one
customer from the Middle East arriving at the factory with his preferred tree
is believed apocryphal. Not all opted
for the burl walnut (Zebrano and the dramatic Macasar Ebony among the choices)
and one true eccentric sent his 600 to a French coachbuilder to have all the
factory’s timber covered in leather but, because the many other modifications
included a vast, single-piece transparent Triplex panel spanning the entire
length and width of the roof, the absence of walnut may not immediately be noticed. Unfortunately, after 1967, the veneer no longer
appeared on the instrument binnacle, replaced by a leather covering. Officially, the explanation was the use had
proved vulnerable to sun-damage on the W111 (1961-1971) and W112 (1962-1967)
cabriolets which used a similar fitting but production costs were high
because, with so many curves and crevasses, applying veneer to the binnacles
was labour intensive so although the cabriolets were a small part of the model
mix, the decision was taken to standardize a leather covering. Especially on the W111 coupés &
cabriolets the veneered binnacles are much admired and some have been
retro-fitted to later models. 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; VPOTUS 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 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. 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.
1965 Jaguar Mark X (1961-1966, renamed as 420G 1966-1970) with the rare manual gearbox. The Mark X never realized Jaguar's sales expectations in the US market but it could have been a great success if one potential development path had been followed. Not all the Mark Xs & 420Gs had the burl walnut finish (many with a bland, honey-colored timber) but they are the most desired. Like the E-Type (XKE, 1961-1974), the Mark X is a classic example of "1960s Jaguar syndrome": Another few months of development and an additional £40 spent on the production line and most of the problems wouldn't exist. With the burl timber, the Mark X's interior was one of the most atmospheric of the era but although impressive in appearance, the dashboard's timber top rail obviously was a safety issue (it was a time when the wearing or even fitting of seatbelts wasn't obligatory and airbags were generations away) and when the 420G appeared in October 1966, a full-width (with central clock) padded section had replaced the upper wood; visual appeal sacrificed for safety.
1959
Bentley S1 Continental Two-Door Saloon (Design 7500) by H.J. Mulliner.
Before the
marque’s late century revival of differentiation, the Continentals (1952-1965)
were regarded by some dedicated aficionados as “the last ‘real’ Bentleys” although there was once a purist faction
which held none had been built since Rolls-Royce assumed ownership in 1931 and
undertook an elaborated form of “badge-engineering” which, by the mid-1960s, evolved
to the point where a Bentley was listed at a few pounds less than the equivalent
Rolls-Royce because “it took less time to
manufacture the grill”, there being no other difference between the
two. In their day, the Continentals were
among the most expensive cars available and being coach-built, although there
were “standard body designs” there were many variations and detail differences
so it may be no two exactly were alike.
The R-Type Continental (1952–1955) was the one which established the car’s
reputation and there’s a high survival rate among the 208 units produced. The S-Series Continentals (S1, S2, S3, 1955
to 1965) were more numerous with over 1,100 built and while the lines weren’t
exactly avant-garde, compared with the contemporary Rolls-Royce models which
showed obvious pre-war roots, they were quite rakish. The interiors too were notable for the burl
walnut trim that could be astonishingly ornate, even the instrument bezels sometimes
delicately finished with a matching veneer.
Lindsay
Lohan behind the wheel of 1972 AMC Javelin SST, photo-shoot for
Cosmopolitan magazine's Work Issue, October 2022: dress and
boots by Alexandre Vauthier (b 1971), earrings by Carolina Neves (b 1986), ring
by Sauer, photographed by Ellen Von Unwerth (b 1954).By 1972, the US manufacturers largely no
longer attempted to make the fake wood look “realistic” and the obviously plastic
appliqué became almost a motif in itself.
Like many manufacturers, AMC liked three letter designations and they
also had a trim package called “SST” which, according to internal documents,
stood for “Super Sports Touring” and not “Stainless Steel Trim” as has been suggested (although use was made of the metal for some of the bright-work so
the assumption was not unreasonable).
Doubtlessly AMC expected some positive association in the public mind
with the SST (supersonic transport) projects several US aerospace manufacturers
were in the era pondering as competition for the Anglo-French Concord(e). 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 a logical distinction didn't evolve.
