1400-1450:
From the Late Middle English pumpe,
cognate with Middle Low German pumpe
and Middle Dutch pompe (water
conduit, pipe). Later variations were
the Dutch pompen, the German pumpen, and the Danish pompe.
All are thought derived from the Spanish bomba of imitative origin, the source thought to be North Sea
sailors, either an imperfect echoic or something imitative of the sound of the
plunger in the water. The earliest use
in English was in reference to a device to raise and expel bilge water from
ships and the Late Old French pompe probably is from something Germanic. The mystery is that pumps are ancient
machines so the late appearance in the Germanic word is odd in that no evidence
has been found of a previous descriptive word.
The use as an "an act of pumping" is attested from the 1670s. Pump & pumping are nouns & verbs, pumper is a noun, pumpy is a noun & adjective and pumped is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is pumps.
Pump-action, in reference to a type of repeating
firearm equipped with a rapid loading mechanism is attested in advertisements from
1912 but it’s unknown whether this was an invention by a manufacturer or
retailer or an adoption of existing slang.
The metaphoric extension in pump (someone) for information is from
1630s. To pump iron as a term for the
lifting of weights for fitness was first noted in 1972; pump-classes in gyms
became popular in the 1990s although label wasn’t (virtually) universal until
circa 2002. The meaning “low shoe without fasteners"
dates from the 1550s and is of unknown origin but was perhaps (very
speculatively) echoic of the sound made when walking in them or, more
plausibly, from Dutch pampoesje (type
of sandal worn in the Dutch East Indies), derived from the Javanese pampoes and ultimately of Arabic
origin. Some sources propose a
connection with pomp but it’s undocumented.
The name pump was applied to many shoes with a very low heel, convenient
in situations where freedom of movement was required and thus preferred by dancers,
couriers, acrobats, duellists and such. In
the shoe business, the definition soon wandered with differences noted between
British and North American applications.
The now obsolete nineteenth century phrase “keep
your toes in your pump” was dialectal for "stay calm, keep quiet, don't
get excited", in the same sense as advice not to “get your knickers in a
knot”, the latter which has survived. In slang, to "be pumped" is (1) to be excited in anticipation of something, (2) having muscles in an engorged state following exercise, (3) in body-building, having muscles which have responded as expected to steroids or other drugs, (4) in rock-climbing, being severely fatigued, (5) in cosmetic surgery & certain non surgical treatments, having a fuller appearance (lips, breasts etc) by virtue of the insertion of implants or an injection of some chemical and (6) among models and other women, the sense of relief upon replacing fetching but uncomfortable shoes with a pair of welcoming and accommodating pumps.
Of pumping ship
Pumps
are of great importance on ships because of the need quickly to be able to remove
unwanted water from inside a hull. At
sea, when a ship is "taking on water", if pumps fail or the entry of water exceeds pumping capacity, a ship will
become unstable and it may sink. In the
smallest vessels, hard-pumps are used while mechanical devices are installed on
anything larger than a modest dinghy. In
admiralty jargon, the command “Pump Ship!”
is an instruction to begin pumping with all pumps and, in the way sailors adapt
such things, it entered naval vernacular as the phrase meaning “I intend to
urinate”.
It
was picked up by nautical types in civilian life but was probably unknown to most
until the publication (in three volumes, 2021-2022) of the unexpurgated diaries
of Sir Henry "Chips" Channon (1897–1958), a US-born English MP and
socialite who quickly became "more English than the English". Edited by Dr Simon Heffer (b
1960), the entry of interest was from 19 November 1936 when Channon hosted
one of his many glittering dinners in the dining room designed by Parisian interior
decorator Stéphane Boudin (1888–1967, his House
of Jansen later decorating the White House for Jacqueline Kennedy
(1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963)) and modelled on the interior of the Amalienburg,
an eighteenth century hunting lodge in on the grounds of the Nymphenburg Palace
Park outside Munich, a place notorious for the intricacy of its fittings, even by
the standards of Rococo. The Amalienburg
was built for someone who would later be Holy Roman Emperor, just the sort of
crew with whom Channon identified and he had the elaborate style replicated in
the dining room of his London house in Belgrave Square, including even the Bavarian
national colors of blue & silver.
Unfortunately, no color photographs appear to have survived and the room
was later disassembled, the extendable mirrored table, which could expand to a
length of 25 feet (7.7 m), occasionally offered at auction. By all accounts, the room truly was “breathtaking”
and it was one of the few things in life of which Channon could find no grounds for criticism, it living up to his expectation it would “shimmer in blue and silver” and “shock and stagger London”. For that alone he seemed to think the Stg£6,000
(mostly money he had married) cost (some Stg£525,000 adjusted for 2023) well
worth it. To illustrate the relativities,
the next year he would purchase a 7.3 litre (447 cubic inch) V12 Rolls-Royce Phantom III (1936-1939) for a sum (Stg£1900
for the chassis & another Stg£1100 to have a coach-builder fabricate a
body) which would then have bought six houses in a middle-class London suburb
although it’s not known if that’s something he’d have known, “middle class” being about the worst
thing he could think to say of anyone.
Dining Room with table in eight-place configuration, 5 Belgrave Square, London, circa 1937.
On
that November evening the guest of honor was King Edward VIII (1894–1972; King
of the UK & Emperor of India January-December 1936, subsequently Duke of
Windsor) and Channon noted in his diary his surprise at the monarch’s “modern”
turn of phrase when he rose and announced “I
want to pump shit.” A dutiful host,
Channon recorded he “…led His Majesty to
our loulou! He proceeded to pass water without shutting the door, talking to me
the while”. That fragment of royal
history was printed in the first volume (2021) of the published diaries (it was
a measure of the deference which still applied in the England of 1965 that when first
they appeared in heavily redacted form the passage was omitted) but
comments soon appeared suggesting neither Channon nor Dr Heffer were
well-acquainted with the sailors' slang the king would have learned during his brief naval career.
Dr Heffer responded by examining closely the original entry in the
diarist’s hand and concluded the relevant character really was a “t” and not a “p”
so the words on the night were either “misheard
or misunderstood” and there’s little doubt what was said was “pump ship” and not “pump shit”. He added that like
Channon, he had “no naval connections”
and was as thus just as “unfamiliar with
the sea-dog slang” but that when the paperback edition was proofed, the
text would be changed and an explanatory footnote (the diaries worth reading just
for Heffer’s detailed footnotes) added. Rising
to the occasion, he observed this meant the “the hardback edition is destined to become a collector's item.” The dinner proved the apogee of Channon’s
social life because he’d backed the wrong royal horse, Edward VIII abdicating
within weeks of having pumped ship in Belgrave Square.
Of pumping breasts
Unambiguously, breast pumps
do exactly what is said on the tin: They pump milk from the breasts. Confounding the expectations of some, there
is no direct correlation between breast size and the volume of milk produced;
as a general principle, all else being equal (general health, stress levels,
nutrition etc), the determining factor is the performance of the milk
glands. Breasts are comprised mostly of (1)
glandular tissue (which produces milk) and (2) fatty tissue (which determines
breast size), it being the glandular tissue which affects milk production, not
the overall breast mass. What most
influences milk production is (1) Hormonal balance (prolactin and oxytocins the
most significant), (2) the frequency of breast-feeding sessions (the more
frequent the feeding (or pumping), the more milk the glands are instructed by
the brain to produce (the process works on a supply-and-demand basis), (3)
overall health and nutrition and (4), efficiency of latching to the nipple by
the baby (inefficient latching can affect the supply & demand curve). There is though some (sketchy) evidence to suggest
women with larger breasts enjoy a greater “milk storage capacity” so, although
they don’t produce more, they might have more of a “buffer”, meaning they can
go longer between feeding or pumping.
Breast pumps are devices to extract milk from the breasts
and can be manually operated (hand pumps) or electric, both of which work by
emulating the “sucking” technique of a baby, as opposed to the “hand expressing”
method which is simply what for centuries milk-maids did when “milking the cows”. Whether manual or electric, the basic design
of a breast pump includes (1) a suction cup that fits over the nipple, (2) a tube
through which the milk flows and (3) a collection bottle. Generally, women use breast pumps for
convenience, the advantage being they can “pump and store”, enabling them to
give their babies the advantage of being fed with breast milk without being
tied to the time-consuming activity of nursing.
Additionally, women often complain breast-feeding is tiring; to those
who will never breast-feed, its sounds a pleasant relaxation rather than
anything tiring but they all say it so it must be true. Milk can be refrigerated and stored for
months and there are now “milk banks” where those whose output is extraordinarily
high can donate, their surplus output re-distributed to those with low
production or who can for whatever reason not successfully breastfeed. One recent innovation is the battery-powered “wearable
pump”, worn inside the bra with the collection bottles directly attached. Most sites recommend these are best
suited to being worn at home, the advantage being one can, hands-free, go about
one’s tasks.
Of Pumps, Courts and Flats
Lindsay Lohan in curved-heel stiletto pumps.
The homogenization of English was well-advanced
long before the ubiquity of the internet but well into the twentieth century,
different meanings for words could evolve in parallel in different regions of
the same country, let alone between different states or provinces. In British English, a court shoe was a
woman’s shoe with a low cut vamp, sometimes with no instep fastening and
otherwise adorned with a shoe buckle or a bow as an ostensible fastening. In US English, such a shoe is a pump; pumps
and court shoes may or may not have an ankle strap. Pumps today, on either side of the Atlantic,
are almost exclusively worn by women but historically were also formal shoes
for men, the male variation called an opera slipper or patent pump. For men, the pump gained ascendency over the
dress boot as modern road-making techniques rendered cities less muddy places
and dress pumps remained the standard for evening full-dress until the Second
World War. They remain the usual choice
for black tie events and are obligatory with white-tie; the original design
with steel-cut buckles, otherwise long extinct, still part of British court
uniform and dress.
The construction of pumps is simple, using a
whole-cut leather top with a low vamp, lined with either quilted silk or plain
leather, trimmed with braid at the opening. The full leather sole is either
glued onto the bottom, common on cheaper styles, or sewn, as on more costly
bespoke styles still made traditionally, using a shallow slit to lift a flap of
leather around the edge to recess and hide the stitching. The sole is, as on
ordinary shoes, several layers of leather put together. The bow is made of
grosgrain silk or rayon, in a pinched or flat form. Pumps, which may have an ankle strap, if also
constructed with a strap across the instep, are called Mary Janes.
Lindsay Lohan in ballet flats / pumps / slippers. Ballet pumps in the UK, ballet flats in US English.
Most of the UK fashion business adopted the US use
of pump because it simplified the mechanics of trade. Otherwise, in the UK (and most of the Empire
and Commonwealth) a pump implied a flat or low-heel ballet slipper or even
rubber-soled canvas plimsolls. Ballet slippers
(now more often called flats) date from the medieval period, their popularity
declining in only in the seventeenth century when higher heels became
fashionable. After a brief nineteenth
century revival, heals again prevailed until the 1960s when they became
suddenly and wildly popular after Brigitte Bardot (1934-2025) appeared in a pair of Rose
Repetto’s (1907-1982 hand-stitched ballet flats.
These days, between heals and flats, it seems a draw although the trend increasingly
to prefer the comfort of the flat as the years pass is noted.
Lindsay Lohan in kitten-heeled pumps.
Except for court dress, historic references or
the exact (if not always enforced) rules for white-tie, there’s now less
precision attached to the use of pump and the word should be thought of as
referencing a range of closed and open-toed shoes, with and without straps,
bows or buckles, the other useful modifier being some reference to the height
or type of the heel. This means anything
from a modest kitten to an elongated stiletto and, depending on the airport at
which one lands, a flat may be a ballet flat or a ballet pump.
In US use, pumps are exclusively women's shoes with a kitten or higher heel; flats are never pumps and Canada, always more influenced by US linguistic imperialism, followed; that influence is now almost universal and the notion of the flat pump, while not extinct, has declined. Heels for pumps vary, from the kitten 1-2 inch (25-50 mm) to the stripper (200-250 mm), the bulk of stiletto sales in the 3-5 inch (75-125 mm) range. They can be made from any material though the classic is patent leather and, under rules formalised by Donald Trump's (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) Miss Universe contests, white, stiletto pumps were once obligatory in the swimsuit section of beauty pageants. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the swimsuits have survived much criticism as have the stilettos although they're no longer exclusively white and, open-toed and strappy, in most places they wouldn't be thought of as pumps.
Of
the Holley Double Pumper
Even
in an age when electronic fuel-injection (EFI) has long been the standard form
of induction in ICEs (internal combustion engine), there remain silos in which the now arcane languages of carburetors are spoken and while there is some
commonality of terms among the shortcuts, abbreviations & euphemisms of
these vernaculars, a trained ear can pick the differences between the flavours to tell which dialect (SU, Weber, Holley, Rochester,
Carter etc) is in play. One part of
the Holley tongue is “double pumper”. A
Holley double pumper is a four barrel carburettor with two accelerator pumps (the
source of the moniker) and a mechanical linkage connecting the primary and
secondary sides of the device. Widely
used during the classic era (1964-1974) of the US muscle cars, the main
advantage of the design was the twin accelerator pumps prevented the transitory
leanness in the fuel-air mixture which could happen during rapid throttle blade
movements if only a single pump was fitted.
All multi-barrel carburetors use an accelerator pump circuit but many have
only one feeding the primary barrel(s). These pumps spray a quick shot of the mix to compensate
for the split-second lag which will happen before the main circuit fully
responds to a throttle pushed suddenly wide open. All double pumper carburetors use an accelerator
pump circuit on both the primary and the secondary sides.
Holley
850 CFM (cubic feet per minute) double pumper carburetor (part number 0-4781C)
(left). The double accelerator pump outlets
for both the primary and secondary throttle bores are are arrowed (right), in
this case on a HP (high-performance) version in which the choke housing has
been removed to optimize the air inlet path, making it less suitable for street
use but ideal for competition.
It’s
important not to refer to vacuum secondary carburettors (VSC) as any sort of pumper. A VSC uses a secondary opening
controlled by a vacuum diaphragm which opens the secondary barrels only when
there is sufficient airflow demand to require it so no accelerator pump is
required on the secondary side. So, a VSC
is technically a “single pumper carburettor” but that term is never used and anyone
referring to one as such will lose face.
There's also a point of etiquette of which to be aware. While “VSC” is an accepted
term, a double pumper is never referred to as a “DP” because use in the pornography
industry has made “DP” exclusively their own and it seems mere politeness not to intrude on their noble linguistic traditions.
Weiland tunnel ram inlet manifold for big block Chevrolet V8 (396-402-427-454) with dual Holley 750 CFM double pumpers. What the "tunnel ram" did was use the physics of fluid dynamics (ie of the fuel-air mix) to create a slight "forced induction" effect.
There is an (unverified) industry legend that the "double buffer" terminology adopted in 1991 when Microsoft released version 4 of the Smart Drive (smartdrv.exe) disk cache was the coining of a coder who used a Holley Double Pumper in his (unspecified) muscle car. That may or may not be true but "double buffer" lives on in the memory management of graphics processing units (GPU) as a description of the temporary storage areas in main memory where data is held during the transfer process. The trick is that rather than processes being sequential, while program x is being read, program y can be written and vice versa. It's not exactly quantum mechanics but means things simultaneously are happening in two places; for the gamers for whom GPUs are a fetish, every millisecond matters.
