Define: GONGOOZLE

To GONGOOZLE is to stand by the canal and idly watch the passage of boats, especially standing by locks or on bridges.

In his vade mecum on language World Wide Words, Michael Quinion quotes rumour that it was canal worker's slang, first recorded in late Victorian or Edwardian times. He says it was given wider currency by LTC Rolt in the seminal book Narrow Boat, first published in 1944, and "is said to derive from a couple of words in Lincolnshire dialect: gawn and gooze, both meaning to stare or gape." However, he adds, that is largely speculation. I've also heard it might originally be Cumberland dialect. I guess that means we are all experts on the origin of the term.

I find gongoozlers often very helpful on long flights of locks when I am single-handed, although it takes a certain social knack to rope them in and manage them as a team of ANIMALS or lock monkeys, and I've rarely managed this successfully.

When there are children amongst them, all social rules of behaviour are off, and you are allowed to be as silly and juvenile as you like. The grandparents always like to point out the mini-Rosie&Jims in my windows, and the less comprehending and articulate the child, the more childish become the adults.

It's fun to get them waving to the camera, although sometimes you have to prompt them.

There's a mysterious site called Gongoozler which seems to be in the mid-West of America (Iowa?) and is little more than a cooperative of mutual bloggers, who don't say (or betray) much about themselves, except to their own friends. I don't know how they stumbled on the name, or if it had any resonances for them.

The Gongoozler is the magazine of the Canal Card Collectors Circle. They are 'virtual gongoozlers'. Founded in 1978, they simply collect postcards about canals and meet once a year for a swap and a natter, standing around looking at the pictures of boats going by. To me it seems a bit - well, pornographic, in the sense that they grasp their enjoyment by looking at it instead of doing it. But I'm all for that too, if they like it. Whatever floats your boat!

Comments

[Andrew Denny]

Wolfgang, that's interesting about the lady 'in the Scottish Lowlands'. One etymology for 'gongoozle' is that it originally comes from the Lake District and the Borders.

[Wolfgang]

I came across 'gongoozle' in a somewhat different context: an 80 year old lady in the Scottish Lowlands was overlooking the valley and paddocks full of her herd of cattle. She turned to me apologetically: "Och, I am only gongoozling" and gave the feeling that it is an activity which is deeply satisfying.

[Leo]

Surely I can't be the only one who feels that 'gongoozler' could just as easily be a straightforward, mocking corruption of 'onlooker'?

[Andrew Denny]

David,
What a coincidence - I was at the lock cafe at Stenson on Thursday morning,
only mine was one of the boats being gongoozled.

I didn't have an ordinary coffee - I had a 'cappucino' instead!.
Andrew

[David Hudson]

Another good place to gongoozle is Stenson Bubble. I and my mates used to cycle out there from Derby when we were youngsters (I'm now 70+ and living in the West Country)and watch the one boat per year go through the lock in those days! Now with the new marina you can watch dozens of boats for hours! I didn't recognoise the old place. The other week my wife and I sat in the garden of the cafe by the lock (drinking my cup of cocoa, as you do. Why can't you get a cup of cocoa thses days? I went into my local Morrisons the other day and asked the young girl serving in the cafe for a cup of cocoa and she replied, "We don't do cocoa, Sir, we have drinking chocolate....")had a grand old time gongoozling for a hour or so. Nearly started on the road to becoming a multi-millionaire by riding out to Stenson Bubble one day in my early teens, but that's another story, as they say.

David Hudson