Bumbling buffoon

[The Baron]

Its also the absence of any evidence the man is a viable Suspect, so a waste of time all round.

Very true. Thats alone should be enough to dismiss him completely.



The Baron

[erobitha]

'Bloated Buffoon' from 1835.

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/1391-one-incontrovertible-unequivocal-undeniable-fact-which-refutes-the-diary?p=740680#post740680

[The Baron]

'Bloated Buffoon' from 1835.

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/1391-one-incontrovertible-unequivocal-undeniable-fact-which-refutes-the-diary?p=740680#post740680

Sorry, but NO.


It is Bumbling buffoon!


The Baron

[The Baron]

More than two years now and not a single example of 'Bumbling buffoon' from the 19th century had been found!

And the search continues...


TB

[paul g]

Think Suzie Dent would of loved Mr B as a contestant on countdown.

[MrBarnett]

Think Suzie Dent would of loved Mr B as a contestant on countdown.

Would have not would of.

And Countdown should have a capital ‘C’.

I think Susie (with a z not an s) would have accepted that the printed word is a but a pale shadow of the spoken word.

The fact that no one, so far, has found an example of ‘bumbling buffoon’ in print prior to the mid 20th century does not prove that it never entered anyone’s mind in the late 19th. It really doesn’t. End of.

[paul g]

You would not believe I was on the programme in 2001 lol .

[MrBarnett]

You would not believe I was on the programme in 2001 lol .

I’m impressed, sir!

Obviously, we’re not discussing dictionary definitions here, just whether it is at all possible that someone might have come up with the term ‘bumbling buffoon’ in the 1880s. Of course they could have. It’s absurd to argue otherwise.

[Iconoclast]

I’m impressed, sir!

Obviously, we’re not discussing dictionary definitions here, just whether it is at all possible that someone might have come up with the term ‘bumbling buffoon’ in the 1880s. Of course they could have. It’s absurd to argue otherwise.

Hi MrB.,

I think Lord Orsam's argument would be that there is no evidence of anyone using that term prior to the 20th century and that - therefore - if the scrapbook were authentic then that would mean that the only evidence we have of that expression being used in the late 19th century would be from James Maybrick himself, who possibly might even have had thus to be the originator of it. I think most of us would accept that Maybrick was unlikely to be the originator of 'bumbling buffoon' but -if that is the case and the scrapbook is genuine - why have we not yet discovered other LVP examples of it?

I definitely agree with you that inappropriate use of 'of' for 'have' needs to be called out (sorry, paul g) - its steady creep into common usage deeply concerns me - though I'm considerable more flexible about the misspelling of 'Susie'. You correctly note, of course, that Countdown requires a capital 'C', but does it also require inverted commas too or - perhaps - to be italicised?

Yours grammatically and pedantically,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Hi MrB.,

I think Lord Orsam's argument would be that there is no evidence of anyone using that term prior to the 20th century and that - therefore - if the scrapbook were authentic then that would mean that the only evidence we have of that expression being used in the late 19th century would be from James Maybrick himself, who possibly might even have had thus to be the originator of it. I think most of us would accept that Maybrick was unlikely to be the originator of 'bumbling buffoon' but -if that is the case and the scrapbook is genuine - why have we not yet discovered other LVP examples of it?

Fairly stated, but at the risk of being even more pedantic, mid-20th Century.

One can easily find many examples of this well-known and readily recognizable insult in print from WW II onward. But before the 1940s? Nada.

Further, editions of the OED contemporaneous with Maybrick's life list the adjective 'bumbling' as obsolete. Which renders all the misguided examples of bloated buffoon, etc., irrelevant. It's the adjective bumbling that poses the problem.

Yet, strange to say, when the photo album was first brought to light by a pathological liar in 1992 this same phrase—first coined by Maybrick in the 1880s--was now in wide circulation, despite the journal having been hidden under a set of floorboards for 103 years.

It’s a baffling mystery.

[Iconoclast]

It’s a baffling mystery.

I agree that it is a baffling mystery, but it isn't as difficult to rationalise as Lord Orsam's 'one off instance' (which he interprets as 'one-off instance', of course). 'Bumbling' may very well have been defined as 'obsolete' in Maybrick's time, but such reports of its ultimate obsolescence are clearly grossly exaggerated given its preponderance in the modern age. It clearly survived that particular tumble towards obscurity and disuse which makes me imagine that it would not have required a semantic shift in the lexicon for it to have been mated with 'buffoon' more often than simply the one time in Maybrick's scrapbook.

The connection of 'one-off' with 'instance' requires a semantic shift in the lexicon (which the great Lord harps on about at equally great length) and that's a genuinely baffling mystery. Indeed, perhaps a bumbling baffling mystery.

[Harry D]

I’m impressed, sir!

Obviously, we’re not discussing dictionary definitions here, just whether it is at all possible that someone might have come up with the term ‘bumbling buffoon’ in the 1880s. Of course they could have. It’s absurd to argue otherwise.

Many things are possible. That doesn't mean they are likely. Are we giving the diary a pass based on non-evidence now?

When considered with the unreliable provenance, the historical errors, and the different handwriting, the anachronistic phraseology is just one more leap of faith for the diarists to take.

[rjpalmer]

'Bumbling' may very well have been defined as 'obsolete' in Maybrick's time, but such reports of its ultimate obsolescence are clearly grossly exaggerated given its preponderance in the modern age.

A classic Maybrickian non sequitur. Methinks that people with actual empirical evidence don't reason thusly.

Look up the term "convergent evolution" sometime, if you aren't acquainted with it. The concept applies to language as well as to evolution and to anthropology. Why the adjective 'bumbling' --no doubt a corruption of 'bungling'--would re-emerge during World War II, when millions of English-speaking people were deployed worldwide under deeply challenging and frustrating logistics and hastily thrown under the control and supervision of incompetent others is not particularly difficult to fathom. That it did so does not suggest that a secret cabal had been keeping the adjective alive during the intervening years, nor that James Maybrick was part of this secret cabal.

[Iconoclast]

A classic Maybrickian non sequitur. Methinks that people with actual empirical evidence don't reason thusly.

Look up the term "convergent evolution" sometime, if you aren't acquainted with it. The concept applies to language as well as to evolution and to anthropology. Why the adjective 'bumbling' --no doubt a corruption of 'bungling'--would re-emerge during World War II, when millions of English-speaking people were deployed worldwide under deeply challenging and frustrating logistics and hastily thrown under the control and supervision of incompetent others is not particularly difficult to fathom. That it did so does not suggest that a secret cabal had been keeping the adjective alive during the intervening years, nor that James Maybrick was part of this secret cabal.

I would suggest that that requires a tremendous leap of faith, something which we were very recently being informed was something 'diarists' did.

[paul g]

No need to apologise regarding my grammar or lack of. I’m aware it’s bad but I am comfortable with the reasons or the cause.
13-16 years of age choice was girls & football or English homework, you can deduce what I chose.