Possibly Panjandrums, Certainly Cynosures

Our blog begins today in 1753 in Covent Garden, where retired actor Charles Macklin is lecturing on memory. Claiming that his memory enabled him to repeat anything he had read the writer Samuel Foote quickly composed the following nonsense paragraph in an attempt to prove Macklin wrong:


So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

Macklin refused the test, for reasons unknown.

What is known is that the story is likely an invention. While no less a source than the Oxford English dictionary quotes the tale, the first appearance of the story in print didn’t take place until 75 years later, when it was included in a book of children’s stories written by Maria Edgeworth. (See http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pan2.htm for a more complete recounting.) Copies of a children’s book title The Grand Panjandrum (attributed to Samuel Foote) can be found on the internet, including free for download from the Gutenberg site. Is it a later recreation of the Edgeworth story attributed to Foote or an original creation? You be the judge.

What we can be certain of is that the word has come to mean a pompous person, and there’s no reason not to attribute its creation to Foote.

Whether Foote or Macklin was a panjandrum we don’t know, but they may have been cynosures. (Don’t confuse cynosure with sinecure – covered in the blog of 1/3/10; but then why would you? It might be good to remember the two for a poem, though.)

Cynosure came to English in the 1590s from the Middle French word of the same spelling. The Middle French got it from the Latin word cynosura. In those times the constellation we now know as Ursa Minor (which contains the North Star) was known as the Cynosura. That title was taken from the Greek word kynosoura, formed from kyon, the genitive form of the word for dog (from which we get canine) and oura, which means tail. So the word literally means “dog’s tail” and has nothing to do with the Dog Star, or Sirius, which is part of the constellation Canis Major. Siriusly!

So it makes sense that it means something that strongly attracts attention because of its brilliance or beauty or interest, or provides guidance or direction for one of those reasons. Foote and Macklin may fit be cynosures, since those both evinced at least interest that compelled others to pay attention to them. But were they pompous, panjandrums? Possibly pompous panjandrums, and certainly sincere cynosures.