Birminghamize

English Alternative forms en Birminghamise non-Oxford British spelling Etymology Attested since 1856, from en Birmingham ize. From the English city being known for cheap knock-off goods. Coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson.Grose, Howard Bristol. College Composition (1926) p. 446, Scott, Foresman and Company. Konvitz, Milton Ridvas. The Recognition of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Criticism Since 1837 (1972) p. 150, University of Michigan Press. 0472085085. Pronunciation en /ˈbɜː.mɪŋ.əmaɪz/ RP en /ˈbɝ.mɪŋ.əmaɪz/ GA Verb en transitive dated To make ersatz 1856. 1856, Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits, ch. Ⅴ – "Ability". “The manners and customs of society are artificial;—made-up men with made-up manners;—and thus the whole is Birminghamized, and we have a nation whose existence is a work of art;—a cold, barren, almost arctic isle being made the most fruitful, luxurious and imperial land in the whole earth.” en 1972 Milton Ridvas Konvitz The recognition of Ralph Waldo Emerson: selected criticism since 1837 160 University of Michigan Press 0472085085 74185152 He has a relish for unfamiliar words, words of recent coinage or of his own make, or that closely similar type of words to which age has brought a second childhood... After this “Birminhamize” will be a mere peccadillo... yes en 1986 Michael W. Doyle Empires 292 Cornell University Press 0-8014-9334-X “Full Home Rule, first through a powerful system of local government (Chamberlain’s proposal to "Birminghamize" Ireland), later through a wider, national self-government, inexorably became the only Liberal solution.” en 2002 Rachel Crawford Poetry, enclosure, and the vernacular landscape, 1700–1830 160 Cambridge University Press 0521815312 2002067659 The colloquial form of the city’s name thus entered the language as a contemptuous epithet. In 1861 the word was used to describe “The vulgar dandy, strutting along, with his Brummajem jewellry”; to “Birminhamize” was “to artificialize.” yes en Fall 2010 Johns Hopkins University Press Deidre Shauna Lynch "Young ladies are delicate plants": Jane Austen and Greenhouse Romanticism https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/399530 ELH 77 3 The horticultural site where some ladies naturalize is here revealed as a site where, simultaneously, others birminghamize—a nineteenth-century synonym, the OED states, for "artificialize." yes en 2010 Auckland War Memorial Museum Rhys Richards Ceramic Imitation Arm Rings for Indigenous Trade in the Solomon Islands 1880 to 1920 Records of the Auckland Museum 42905915 In the 19th Century, the word Birmingham was used to mean artificial (the associated verb was birminghamize). 47 106 yes en 2020-12-17 2024-10-02 Aurélie Héois When Proper Names Become Verbs: A Semantic Perspective Lexis 10.4000/lexis.4681 Indeed, the comparison of Manchesterize and Birminghamize showed that, from a semantic point of view, there are no differences in the relationship between the verb and the PN etymon even though the former is listed as deriving from a common noun, itself originating from a PN. yes See also en brummagem References