Title : "His wonderful performance, lifting the human dumbell."
link : "His wonderful performance, lifting the human dumbell."
"His wonderful performance, lifting the human dumbell."
That's "Today's featured picture" at Wikipedia, from the article on Eugen Sandow.
I love the poster, and I love the idea of a literal human dumbell.
Is "dumbell" the correct spelling? The OED has "dumb-bell." The double "B" is important to understanding the meaning. From the unlinkable OED:
1. (a) Formerly, An apparatus, like that for swinging a church-bell, but without the bell itself, and thus making no noise, in the ‘ringing’ of which bodily exercise was taken. (b) Also, applied to a similar apparatus, used in learning bell-ringing.You need "dumb" (for silence) and "bell" (for the familiar object, a bell).
The slang term, meaning a stupid person, goes back to the 1920s:
1920 Collier's 3 July 8/1 The gent..stands alone as the Crown Prince of dumb-bells.
1922 S. Lewis Babbitt xviii. 227 The poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dance.
a1930 D. H. Lawrence Etruscan Places (1932) i. 21 They gave the usual dumb-bell answer.
1936 Punch 15 Apr. 430/3 Next came one of those series of Dumb-bell Letters which seem to be very popular, a dumb-bell being the kind of person who writes to the manufacturer asking him to replace a gadget that has been lost, and then adds a postscript telling him not to bother as the missing gadget has just been found.
Thus Article "His wonderful performance, lifting the human dumbell."
That's an article "His wonderful performance, lifting the human dumbell." This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
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