What is a 'bumper'?

Subject: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST,Martin Farrell
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:11 AM

As in to drain a bumper? Is the bumper the vessel or the measure of the ale or wine?

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:38 AM

Googling produced ---

Definition of bumper (noun) - a cup or glass filled to the brim, especially one to be drunk as a toast or health.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:43 AM

Thanks Michael.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 02 May 11 - 10:49 AM

Thats the O E D definition too !

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST,Brad Sondahl
Date: 02 May 11 - 11:26 AM

Pour, oh pour the pirate sherry, fill, oh fill the pirate glass!
And to make us more than merry, let the pirate bumper pass!
(Pirates of Penzance)

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: cobra
Date: 02 May 11 - 11:38 AM

A bumper is also the last race on a National Hunt meeting card. Not over jumps but a flat race for steeplechasers/ hurdlers.

So, draining the bumper could well be the act of taking the bookies to the cleaners!

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 02 May 11 - 02:05 PM

from "The Ophean Lyre", No. 7, 2nd Series.
Cantaining a Collection of the Most Harmonious
Glees, Catches & Duets:
Arranged With Accompaniments for the Piano Forte.

"Here's a Health to All Good Lasses" (1837)
[a Glee for Three Voices (TTB)]
arranged for the Piano Forte by a Professor.

Boston: Oliver Ditson, 117 Washington St.
[Source: 098/100@Levy]

[With various repititions and overlapping voices]
Here's a health to all good lasses,
Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses
Let a bumper toast go round.

May they live a life of pleasure,
Without mixture, without measure,
For with them true joys are found.

All good lasses
Here's a bumper.

Here's a health to all good lasses,
Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses
Let a bumper toast go round.

The Mellstock Band do a wonderful version of this!

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 May 11 - 02:36 PM

Or, as are residents used to sing

Let every man here drink of his full bumper
(Drink it of, drink it of)
Let every man here toss back his full glass
(Toss him off, toss him off)

Doesn't take much to bring it to the gutter I suppose.

Sorry...

MP

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 May 11 - 02:46 PM

Or upstreet- "Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore."

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 02 May 11 - 03:28 PM

Harry 'Breaker' Morant uses the word in his poem 'Butchered to Make a Dutchman's Holiday'

Let's toss a bumper down our throat, -
   Before we pass to Heaven,
And toast: "The trim-set petticoat
   We leave behind in Devon."

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Gurney
Date: 02 May 11 - 08:08 PM

Also, in English: The fender or nerf bar of a car/automobile, and

in English slang: a canvas shoe, particularly one with high rubber edges like a baseball shoe.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST,Pete
Date: 03 May 11 - 09:52 AM

That's a plimsoll surely. What we soft southern shandy drinking poofters wore before trainers came along.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 May 11 - 10:09 AM

What's the meaning of the O'Carolan tune called "Bumper Squire Jones"?

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 May 11 - 10:57 AM

"Bumper" is also used to mean large or extra-large - as in "The Boy's Bumper Christmas Annual For 1932", etc.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:25 AM

Will ~~ I take this last usage to derive from the "full to the brim" implication of the noun under discussion: a "Bumper" issue being one even fuller of good things than usual.

~M~

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:31 AM

That's exactly what I was going to say, Michael. It has a wider meaning 'full to the brim'.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:33 AM

You may well be right, Michael. It's a book title usage that seems to have been popular before the war (WWII) and then fallen away. When I was a kid and had some of these children's annuals - usually around Christmas time - I never gave the actual much thought! Just assumed it meant "bigger than ever", etc.

We still hear the phrase "a bumper crop", though.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:34 AM

"I never gave the actual much thought"

should, of course, have read: "I never gave the actual word much thought"

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 May 11 - 11:48 AM

I should have remembered to check my unabridged dictionary, which says that bumper is 'colloq' and may mean:

unusually large, good, fine or successful.

O'Carolan's Bumper Squire Jones was probably all of the above.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 May 11 - 06:13 PM

A quick look in my broadside index gives us 'A Bumper of Good Liquor', 'A Bumper to Erin' and 'Bumper Squire Jones, a New Playhouse Song' sung by Mr Beard. The last one appears in 18thc garlands in the BL.

Subject: RE: What is a 'bumper'?
From: Richard in Manchester
Date: 03 May 11 - 06:27 PM

It's a cricket ball (archaic, colloq,;) of the type which, having pitched, smashes your teeth.