Horsing Around With Cars
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 27, 1990
EVEN in the ancient days of my immaturity I was never a motorbike fan. My breath has therefore been entirely unbated while Mr Greiner tried to gain the motorcycle grand prix for Sydney.
The television spectacle of cars rushing one after another around the streets has likewise failed to excite envy in me of Adelaide's possession of the Australian Grand Prix. Others disagree, and a couple of readers have mentioned the words of the track.
On November 5, as cars slid and crashed on the Adelaide course in blinding rain, some commentators referred to the "carnage". There were damaged cars and the odd injury, but carnage? Fortunately, no.
Carnage does not involve cars, but the slaughter of a great number, as in battle. Butchery qualifies, and so does massacre. Carnage has to do with flesh. Our language took it from French in the 17th century. It had originated in the Latin caro, flesh, which developed into the Italian carnaggio, meaning slaughter or murder as well as flesh-meat.
Why, a reader asked me, do we persist with the French grand prix for motor racing events? It means only great or chief prize.
It started with horses. They have been carrying and working for people for probably 4,000 years, but we still hold regular events to prove that in certain conditions of weather, track and handicap one horse can run faster than others. Some people even invest good money in support of their judgment.
An international event for three-year-olds, run annually in June at Longchamps, was given the title Grand Prix de Paris. It was disheartening for the French that an English horse won the first of these races, in 1863, two years after the first Melbourne Cup.
The motor car challenged the horse and even claimed the names of its trophies. In 1906 the French, who started the grand prix for horses, organised one for cars, near Le Mans. Five years later a new series of races began for the Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France. Now grand prix can be applied to any of various motor races held annually in different countries and governed by international rules.
Another reader, Mr A.W. Erickson, of Rossglen, NSW, has found package"sticking most uncomfortably in my craw". He wrote that he heard a politician use a "package" in each of three one-clause sentences during an interview.
Indeed we hear continually of package deals, package offers, package holidays, package tours and package arrangements for payments.
Two noticeable things about these are that they consist of sets of proposals agreed as a whole and they never actually come in packages. The concept was originally American. The earliest recorded example of what developed into a vogue word was a reference to an insurance package in quotation marks in 1931. An isolated reference in 1846 mentioned a package ticket, entitling the holder to a specified number of journeys.
When package first came into the language in the 16th century it meant the packing of goods. An odd, and now obsolete, sense was applied to the privilege, formerly held by the City of London, of packing cloth and other goods exported by aliens or denizens. The denizens were aliens admitted to residence and to certain rights of citizenship.
Package has been exploited widely in slang. Some of the meanings it has conveyed in the past 50 years have been kidnap victim, a girl in jive talk, an attractive, usually small and neat, girl or young woman, and, in criminal jargon, a dead body with three or more bullets placed in a most efficient manner at the base of the skull.
A mixed lot, like a baggage.
© 1990 Sydney Morning Herald