Metaphors for woo and war

My previous post was about the use of metaphor and framing in the fight against pseudoscience. I continue this theme with some amusing examples of metaphor and onomatopoeia for woo and war.

Woo

I'm using the word woo as a synonym for pseudoscience and quackery (and because it rhymes better with war than bullshit).

Quack

Quack is short for quacksalver, which is derived from the Dutch kwakkensalver. Kwakken refers to boasting, salve an ointment. Quacksalver therefore literally boasting about an ointment. The term therefore was literal initially. Somewhere along the line it became associated with the sound ducks make, therefore quacking like a duck. The initial literal kwakkenzalver became the metaphor quack. See for instance this image of a duck on Dr Stephen Barrett's well-known website Quackwatch:

Based on the sound it makes and its flocking behaviour, South Africans know of an equally appropriate avian simile or metaphor for quacking, the Redbilled Woodhoopoe, or the more telling Afrikaans name, the "kakelaar" (literal English translation, the cackler). This is how it's described in Newman's Birds of Southern Africa:

"The call is a high-pitched cackling started by one and taken up by others to produce a cacophony of hysterical laughter similar to but more musical, less mechanical-sounding than the Arrowmarked Babbler (see Katlagter later in post). Fly from tree to tree in a straggling procession, settling low down and working their way to the top before flying of to the next tree."

A single kakelaar. Their crazed cackling and seemingly senseless scurrying behind each other from the the bottom to the top of a tree before flying off to the next, make for great entertainment. An appropriate metaphor for a quacking granfalloon? (Did I mention that kakelaars stink?)

War

The Devil's Paintbrush

Some years ago I did research on the use of Maxim machine-guns in the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902). The Maxim was the first really effective mass-produced machine-gun. Hiram Maxim, an American, invented it after being told by friend that the way to get rich was to:

"... invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility."

The Vickers-Maxim machine-gun and its licenced German version, the Spandau, were in large part responsible for the horrible slaughter that occurred in no-man's land between the opposing trenches of the First World War. This earned the Maxim the grim nickname and descriptive metaphor, the Devil's Paintbrush.

A Maxim Extra-Light Model 1895 used by Boer forces.

The "katlagter" (literally, the laughing cat)

Maxim's machine-guns were used extensively by both sides in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War. Some interesting similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia describing Maxim's machine-guns and their effect, arose during the conflict. One of the Boer soldiers' names for the Maxim .303 caliber machine-gun, was the katlagter. It is the Afrikaans name of a bird, the Arrow-marked Babbler. Roberts Birds of South Africa describes its call as follows:

"... a grating churr which is uttered by all the birds in a party one after the other. The effect is a whirring, grating, crescendo of sound, getting louder and louder as each bird joins in and dying away as they stop one by one."

Some years ago a friend and I went hunting in the Northern Tranvaal (a bushveld area of South Africa). At our campsite, I suddenly heard a racket exactly as described above. It sounded exacly like a machinegun and I knew it had to be katlagters (babblers). I scanned the noisy culprets through my binoculars and checked my Roberts bird book. Yes, they were Arrow-marked Babblers. The nickname my Boer ancestors had given the Maxim machine-gun was quite appropriate.

A katlagter (Arrow-marked Babbler), thank you to Dries vd Merwe's photostream.

The Pom-Pom

The Maxim-Nordenfelt, or Pom-Pom, was an overgrown Maxim machine-gun that fired one pound shells. It was quite ineffective, but scared the enemy and was a great morale booster on your side. Its nickname was an onomatopoeia, based on either the sound of the shells being fired, or the explosion of its shells one after the other. Here are some more descriptions of the Pom-Pom, rich in figurative language:

Arthur Conan Doyle (describing how hardened soldiers):

"... found a new terror in the malignant 'ploop-plooping' of the automatic quick-firer".

In another account Pom-Pom shells are described as having:

"... flapped and clacked along the ground in a straight line like a string of geese".

A Boer War Maxim-Nordenfelt Pom-Pom.

To call a quack a quack has become politically incorrect and even illegal in some places. A war a hundred years ago provides us with some alternatives. How do cacklers, babblers and pom-poms sound?