Perhaps the world's greatest showman, promoter, publicity genius and some would say, trickster, hoaxer and swindler as well, was born on July 5 near Danbury, Conn., in 1810. Phineas Taylor Barnum is remembered today as the creator of the modern circus, but he had made and lost several fortunes in a variety of enterprises before he created "The Greatest Show On Earth" and took it on the road.
No one knows whether P.T. Barnum ever really said "There's a sucker born every minute," but our language is indebted to him for such creations as the "human cannonball," the "three-ring circus" and the word "jumbo."Today, we commonly hear of things that are of unusually large size described as "jumbo": "jumbo jets," "jumbo-sized" boxes of cereal, "jumbo shrimp" (a combination of seemingly contradictory terms). But just a little more than a century ago, "jumbo" meant nothing at all to Americans, for it was just the name given to a certain African elephant who lived at the London Zoological Gardens. But what an elephant this was! When Barnum bought Jumbo in 1882, the elephant weighed almost 7 tons, stood 12 feet tall at the shoulders, had a 7-foot trunk and could nibble on leaves that were 26 feet above the ground. No elephant this size had ever been seen before, in or out of captivity.
Jumbo became the most popular attraction in the Barnum & Bailey Circus, and for 31/2 years he led each circus parade waving a huge American flag with his trunk, he helped load and unload tons of equipment from the circus flatcars using his enormous strength, and he brought delight to countless children who were allowed to ride on a special platform that had been fitted with several benches and strapped onto the elephant's broad back like a saddle.
But after the last show of the season in 1885, in the Canadian town of St. Thomas, Ontario, while Jumbo was being led back to his private railroad car, he was struck and killed by a speeding freight train as he crossed the tracks in the darkness. The circus world, and the world in general, mourned Jumbo's passing, but his name lived on as a way to describe anything huge or of unusually large size.
The word "jumbo," then, is an "eponymous" (ee-PAH-nimm-us) word because it is derived from someone's or something's name, just as the eponymous word "saxophone" is derived from the name of its inventor, Antoine-Joseph Sax, and "sideburns" from the name of Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside (they were originally called "burnsides").
Many of the stories about how various eponymous words got created are fascinating, and they can help adults and children alike to improve their vocabularies and gain insights about unusual or troublesome spellings, as well. Word-history collections by Charles Earle Funk, Willard R. Espy and Eric Partridge can be found in the 422 section of your local library, but you can also trace many eponymous words back to their human roots by looking at the word origins given at the end of each entry in your family dictionary. (Try "guppy," "gardenia," "hooligan," "dunce" and "czar.")
Eponymous words can be derived from the names of places as well as people, and so we can get a geography lesson by looking up the origins of words like "bologna" sausage, "parmesan" cheese, "lima" beans, "frankfurter," "hamburger" and even "denim" and blue "jeans."Dr. William F. Russell's books for parents and children include "Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children" and "Classic Myths to Read Aloud." Send your questions and comments to him at Family Learning, 2400 E. Main St., Suite 266, St. Charles, IL 60174-2414.