The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q
Why do we call the front area of a plane a cockpit?
Philip Engelen, Cape Town, South Africa
A
The earliest mention of cockpits was in relation to the arenas used for cockfights, popular from Tudor times until the sport was banned in 1835. Most towns had at least one cockpit, and London was littered with them, with many street names still giving a nod to their gruesome past. In Westminster, you can find Cockpit Steps, which once led down to the Royal Cockpit – a more upmarket version, which kept out the lower classes due to its high five-shillings admission charge.
In the 18th century, soldiers used “cockpit” to describe an area of combat in an enclosed space, and the term was also used by First World War pilots, when referring to cramped quarters in fighter planes.
Several aviation terms have been lifted from the nautical world, and there’s also a connection to “coxswain”, used to describe the person in charge of a small vessel – cock from the old English term meaning boat, and swain from “servant”.The steering compartment where the coxswain sat on a smaller boat became known as the cockpit.
After the Second World War, Boeing started using “flight deck” for its larger aircraft, and the two terms are pretty much interchangeable these days.
Q
While at St Catherine’s hospital in Birkenhead,
I saw a sign saying that it used to be a workhouse. What sort of work was done there? Jan Lloyd, Bromborough, Wirral
A
A workhouse was indeed opened in 1863 in Tranmere, which later became part of St Catherine’s. Victorian workhouses were intended to provide work and shelter for the poor but they became more of a prison, with families divided and parents only able to see their children for a few hours on a Sunday.
The able-bodied had to work, and for women that meant laundry cooking, cleaning and darning. Men had to chop wood, crush stones or grind corn by rotating heavy mill stones.Another job was oakum picking – hours spent teasing apart ropes into raw fibres, which would make fingers bleed. The fibre would be sold to ship-builders, mixed with tar and used to seal ship linings to keep them watertight. Bone crushing – smashing bones into dust for fertiliser – was banned in 1845 after it was discovered starving inmates in a workhouse in Andover had resorted to eating rotting meat off the bones.
Dickens highlighted the horrors of the workhouse system, and Oliver Twist would have been denied “some more” as second helpings were forbidden.
In the late 19th century, some workhouses gave inmates more useful work such as plumbing.
The introduction of pensions and the formation of the NHS removed much of the need for workhouses and many were converted into hospitals.
Q
When did our transatlantic cousins start altering English spellings? Were we out of favor, did they apologize for removing the color from our language? Michael Thompson, Pitstone, Bucks
A
NoahWebster can take much of the blame, with his 1828 American English guide discarding many spelling conventions.
In his American Dictionary of the English Language, colour, analyse, defence and plough became color, analyze, defense and plow, and of its 70,000 words, 12,000 had never appeared in British English dictionaries, including “skunk,” “chowder” and “immigrant”.
The New England native, who shaped the Merriam-Webster dictionary, sought to simplify spelling, bringing it closer to American pronunciation, and rejecting the King’s English was also seen as a rejection of the king.
The “u” was dropped in many words, leading to “color” and “humor”, although in many cases that ending came from the Latin, as in “honor” and “favor”.
But English was also fluid here until Johnson’s 18th-century dictionary, with “honor” appearing in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays more than 500 times, while “honour” crops up 400 times.
Webster also switched the “s” to “z”, as with “civilization”, and through his work “re” became “er”, as in “center”.
Although you might be pleased to know many of his words did not catch on, for instance “tung” for “tongue”, and “wimmin”.
PLEASE SEND US YOUR INTRIGUING QUESTIONS ON ANY SUBJECT:
● By email: put “questions” in the subject line and send to kay.harrison@reachplc.com
● By post: to Any Questions, Daily Express, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AP
● Unfortunately we cannot reply individually, but we will feature the best questions on this page.