* From there, it evolves a second meaning of "remnant".
* The parliament that remains in 1648 after the members opposed to trying Charles I were removed was called the Rump Parliament, i.e. the remnant parliament.
* The phrase "rump parliament", "rump government", "rump senate", "rump state", or just "rump" entered the language as a generic term for what's left over of a political body after a large purge/pruning. E.g. the rump state of Poland after the first and second partitions.
* Because the Rump Parliament of 1648 was linked in Stuart supporters' minds with the execution of C1, it became linked with their anti-Stuart enemies in general.
* It seems the Stuart supporters started renewing the word with its buttock meaning to lampoon their enemies, viz. the Hanovers.
* Other non-Stuart supporters also started doing the same when they wanted to complain about the Hanovers.
Wikipedia tells me:
The Golden Rump is a farcical play of unknown authorship said to have been written in 1737. It acted as the chief trigger for the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737. The play has never been performed on stage or published in print. No manuscript of the play survives, casting some doubt over whether it ever existed in full at all. The authorship of the play has often been ascribed to Henry Fielding, at that time a popular and prolific playwright who often turned his incisive satire against the monarch George II and particularly the "prime minister" Sir Robert Walpole. Modern literary historians, however, increasingly embrace the opinion that The Golden Rump may have been secretly commissioned by Walpole himself in a successful bid to get his Bill for theatrical licensing passed before the legislature.
Plays, prints, pamphlets and journal articles attacking the King, Walpole and the extended Whig faction were not an uncommon feature of early 18th century London. Plays were subjected to the greatest displeasure from royal authority, and individual works like John Gay’s Polly (1729) and Fielding's own Grub-Street Opera (1731) had earlier been prevented from reaching the stage. However the trend itself survived through the 1720s and 1730s, and a number of these satirical works used the devices of physical, sexual and scatological humour to mock the persons of Walpole and George II. Both the king and the prime minister were men of short, corpulent build; George II being the unfortunate possessor of a disproportionately large posterior and an affliction of piles, to which he had acquired a fistula by early 1737. All these personal deficiencies were mercilessly lampooned by Opposition satirists of the period.
Did not know this, thank you for pointing me to that book!
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Rumps
Date: 2021-12-04 04:24 pm (UTC)* The word starts out meaning "buttocks".
* From there, it evolves a second meaning of "remnant".
* The parliament that remains in 1648 after the members opposed to trying Charles I were removed was called the Rump Parliament, i.e. the remnant parliament.
* The phrase "rump parliament", "rump government", "rump senate", "rump state", or just "rump" entered the language as a generic term for what's left over of a political body after a large purge/pruning. E.g. the rump state of Poland after the first and second partitions.
What I have deduced from that book
* Because the Rump Parliament of 1648 was linked in Stuart supporters' minds with the execution of C1, it became linked with their anti-Stuart enemies in general.
* It seems the Stuart supporters started renewing the word with its buttock meaning to lampoon their enemies, viz. the Hanovers.
* Other non-Stuart supporters also started doing the same when they wanted to complain about the Hanovers.
Wikipedia tells me:
The Golden Rump is a farcical play of unknown authorship said to have been written in 1737. It acted as the chief trigger for the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737. The play has never been performed on stage or published in print. No manuscript of the play survives, casting some doubt over whether it ever existed in full at all. The authorship of the play has often been ascribed to Henry Fielding, at that time a popular and prolific playwright who often turned his incisive satire against the monarch George II and particularly the "prime minister" Sir Robert Walpole. Modern literary historians, however, increasingly embrace the opinion that The Golden Rump may have been secretly commissioned by Walpole himself in a successful bid to get his Bill for theatrical licensing passed before the legislature.
Plays, prints, pamphlets and journal articles attacking the King, Walpole and the extended Whig faction were not an uncommon feature of early 18th century London. Plays were subjected to the greatest displeasure from royal authority, and individual works like John Gay’s Polly (1729) and Fielding's own Grub-Street Opera (1731) had earlier been prevented from reaching the stage. However the trend itself survived through the 1720s and 1730s, and a number of these satirical works used the devices of physical, sexual and scatological humour to mock the persons of Walpole and George II. Both the king and the prime minister were men of short, corpulent build; George II being the unfortunate possessor of a disproportionately large posterior and an affliction of piles, to which he had acquired a fistula by early 1737. All these personal deficiencies were mercilessly lampooned by Opposition satirists of the period.
Did not know this, thank you for pointing me to that book!