Dot Wordsworth

The mechanics of ‘backlash’

iStock

‘Lashings of ginger beer?’ asked my husband when I mentioned backlash. He thought the phrase came from Enid Blyton, though it occurred only in the television parody Five Go Mad in Dorset, first shown in 1982 — 40 years ago, for heaven’s sake.

Backlash, now in vogue, is often misused. The Guardian wrote about ‘the mass protests in the light of the George Floyd murder and the backlash to this movement’. That usage seems correct. But when it said that Chanel ‘recently faced a backlash online for the contents of their Christmas advent calendar’, backlash was the wrong word.

The metaphor backlash comes from mechanics. It is pretty much a dead metaphor, since some who use it think it has to do with lashing a back. As the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, a backlash is ‘the jarring reaction or striking back of a wheel in a piece of mechanism, when… sudden pressure is applied’.

The mechanism has to be going merrily when the sudden reaction sets in, perhaps mashing cogs and dislocating the operator’s arm. At the Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 in South Kensington (attended by 2.6 million people, treated to displays of flamingos, pelicans, otters, seals and beavers), a maritime steering-gear was on show by which ‘the steersman is relieved from the danger of back-lash on the wheel’.

The metaphor applies just as well to a bandwagon (a term first used literally by Phineas T. Barnum, the showman, in 1855), rolling like a juggernaut until a backlash stalls it. A backlash is not just criticism of an Advent calendar, even if widespread.

Unlock unlimited access, free for a month

then subscribe from as little as £1 a week after that
SUBSCRIBE

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in