«
»

Rumble

Last week on one of the quiz shows I usually watch there was a question about the meaning of the medical term borborygmus, which, as I am sure you all know, means “stomach rumbling”. I pronounce it ˌbɔːbəˈrɪɡməs, by the way.

While looking to see what Wikipedia had to say about it, I came across a word new to me: wamble. This is pronounced ˈwɒmbl and means “seethe, boil, rumble, wobble” and a few other things, according to the OED. I think this lovely word should be used more!

All this reminds me of the little poem I have known for years, but have never bothered to find the source of:

I sat next the bishop at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be.
His rumblings abdominal
Were simply abominable
And everyone thought it was me!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Wonderful words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Rumble”

  1. Martin Ball says:
    January 10, 2012 at 2:35 am

    Variant from my mother:

    I sat next the bishop at tea.
    It was just as I feared it would be.
    His rumblings internal
    Were simply infernal
    And everyone thought it was me!

  2. Beatrice Portinari says:
    January 10, 2012 at 7:21 am

    Sorry to spoil the fun, gentlemen, but …
    Would it be all right if the second line of the poem was spoken (in isolation) as “It was just as I FEARED it’d be” -nucleus on “feared” and a reduced “would” in the tail? Or could/should this “would” keep a full vowel and be lightly stressed?

  3. John Maidment says:
    January 10, 2012 at 11:56 am

    Martin,

    I have a variant too where the bishop is replaced by the duchess.

    Beatrice,

    /ɪt wəz ˈdʒʌst əz aɪ ˈfɪəd ɪt əb ˈbiː/ seems fine to me, but there are other possibilities.

Leave a Reply