The NFBSK origin of the word "goosebumps"

[Lady Luzhin]

If need be, feel free to move this to NFSBK.

I once read something in high school about the origin of the word goosebumps. I don't mean the book series, by the way.

The story I heard was that 'goose' was an old term for a prostitute, most likely cockney slang if I recall correctly. The term 'goosebumps' was used to describe, not the heebie jeebies normally assoicated with them, but an STD (Most cases it was syphilis).

Has anyone heard this story?

[Eddylizard]

I've never heard of Goose referring to a prostitute, but I have heard it as a term for a "feel-up".

The explanation I heard is that goose bumps are caused by tiny muscles attached to the follicles of the hair raising the follicle in response to cold or perhaps fright. Useful when our forerunners actually had significant amounts of hair. With the little wisps we have today, the bumps resemble the skin of a plucked goose (or other fowl.)

ETA: Winchester Goose is apparently an obsolete term for both a prostitute and the sores caused by syphilis, but whether that is directly related to the term goosebumps I don't know.

[Hans Off]

Originally Posted by Lady Luzhin

, most likely cockney slang if I recall correctly.

For what?

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

For what?

Goosebumps = Prosti-chewts lumps.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

For what?

Well "goose and duck" is apparently rhyming slang, according to The Cassell Dictionary of Slang. (I'm sure you can work it out. Actually, there are two meanings given and one of them is "truck".)

"Goose" on its own could mean "woman" in the late 19th century, but it doesn't mention prostitutes in particular. According to the same source, "goose bumps" does just refer to the skin looking like a plucked goose, though.

(I always called them "goose pimples" but that's not listed.)

(eta) Cassell's only gives the VD meaning of "Winchester goose", from the 16th century. But apparently the connection is that the brothels in Southwark at the time were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, so another meaning of "prostitute" would also make sense.

[mags]

Yeah, why assume the most obvious explanation (that they are called goosebumps because they literally look like the bumps on the skin of a plucked goose) when a false etymology is so much more interesting.

I have never heard that story. However, once my grandmother told all of us to stop standing around "like a bump on a c**t." When she noticed we were all staring at her with our mouths hanging open, she said "what, isn't that the phrase?"

I really miss my grandma.

[Floater]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

The explanation I heard is that goose bumps are caused by tiny muscles attached to the follicles of the hair raising the follicle in response to cold or perhaps fright.

True, and that condition is called gåshud, goosehide, in Swedish where we have none of that rhyming slang tradition.

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by Floater

True, and that condition is called gåshud, goosehide, in Swedish where we have none of that rhyming slang tradition.

Same here - it's "Gänsehaut" (goose skin) in German.

The scientific explanation of why you get it is, of course, that somebody is walking over your grave.

Don Enrico

[Dropbear]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

Same here - it's "Gänsehaut" (goose skin) in German.

The scientific explanation of why you get it is, of course, that somebody is walking over your grave.

Don Enrico

My dutch mother always said it was a "goose walking over your grave" - this clearly produced goosebumps to my thinking.

Drop-didn't we have this discussion on the boards recently-bear

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by Dropbear

My dutch mother always said it was a "goose walking over your grave" - this clearly produced goosebumps to my thinking.

Drop-didn't we have this discussion on the boards recently-bear

I can debunk that: Since most people in the first world will be buried on cementeries, and since the appearance of geese on cementeries has been declining dramatically over the last decades, the occurance of goosebumps should have been declining too, at least in the aformentioned first world. Since it didn't, it can't be geese causing goosebumps, but anybody or anybeing walking/hopping/crawling over your grave.

Don "q.e.d" Enrico

[Dropbear]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

I can debunk that: Since most people in the first world will be buried on cementeries, and since the appearance of geese on cementeries has been declining dramatically over the last decades, the occurance of goosebumps should have been declining too, at least in the aformentioned first world. Since it didn't, it can't be geese causing goosebumps, but anybody or anybeing walking/hopping/crawling over your grave.

Don "q.e.d" Enrico

Ah but you neglect the temporal issue here. As I am not yet dead the goose in question must be wandering across my grave in some future time. And it will be in the future - when geese walk this world freely. In that glorious future when geese have claimed their rightful place as planetary overlords - avian masters of all creation!

Dropdear

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by Dropbear

As I am not yet dead the goose in question must be wandering across my grave in some future time.

I always took it as "someone is just now walking over the place where my grave will be" and was wondering how I could find out who was causing me goosebumps in order to find out where my grave will be.

Don "morbid" Enrico

[Dropbear]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

I always took it as "someone is just now walking over the place where my grave will be" and was wondering how I could find out who was causing me goosebumps in order to find out where my grave will be.

Don "morbid" Enrico

Well if you bought your own plot in advance you could set up some sort of fencing. Perhaps with an automated recording - "Hey you get off my grave!"

Dropbear

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by Dropbear

Well if you bought your own plot in advance you could set up some sort of fencing. Perhaps with an automated recording - "Hey you get off my grave!"

Dropbear

And if I still got goosebumps despite nobody (goose or not) could step on my grave, I could sell the plot again, knowing that I somehow won't be buried there anyway.

Don "off to Ohlsdorf" Enrico

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by Don Enrico

Same here - it's "Gänsehaut" (goose skin) in German.

The scientific explanation of why you get it is, of course, that somebody is walking over your grave.

Don Enrico

In Dutch, the equivalent translates to "chicken-skin". It seems that goosebumps/goosepimples simply means skin that resembles a plucked fowl.

[Avril]

I think the idea that one looks like a plucked poultry is probably most accurate, but isn't French slang for a prostitute poulet, the word for chicken?

But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Avril

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by mags

I have never heard that story. However, once my grandmother told all of us to stop standing around "like a bump on a c**t." When she noticed we were all staring at her with our mouths hanging open, she said "what, isn't that the phrase?"

I am going to use that phrase at the next opportunity.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

I am going to use that phrase at the next opportunity.

You're just going to sit there like a bump on a c*nt waiting for an opportunity? Surely you have to make your own opportunities in life!

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by Richard W

You're just going to sit there like a bump on a c*nt waiting for an opportunity? Surely you have to make your own opportunities in life!

Curses! Beaten to it...

[moonfall]

In Japanese, the term translates to "chicken bumps." I suspect that's where the band Bump of Chicken got their name.