Date: Feb. 5th, 2020 03:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peteralway.livejournal.com
I have a kit to make a toy wooden bascule bridge.

Date: Feb. 6th, 2020 03:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fflo.livejournal.com
I've only just learned "bascule".

Ooh, check out this etymology:

late 19th century: earlier denoting a lever apparatus of which one end is raised while the other is lowered, from French (earlier bacule), ‘see-saw’, from battre ‘to bump’ + cul ‘buttocks’.

Date: Feb. 7th, 2020 12:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peteralway.livejournal.com
That's not what I expected! I thought maybe the first one built was erected across the Bascule river in Étagère, France in eighteen eleventy-three.

Date: Feb. 7th, 2020 03:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fflo.livejournal.com
Yours seems more plausible.

But then we'd still maybe wanna trace the origin of the river's name. So maybe we'd end up at a buttocks anyhow!

Date: Feb. 8th, 2020 01:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peteralway.livejournal.com
It was probably named for the bare buttocks of the skinny dippers the river was famous for in the middle ages..
fflo: (Default)
fflo

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