This Has To Do With Horses And Eels And Language And Anuses And Not Cars But Hear Me Out: Cold Start

Okay, so I know we’re a car site, and I’ll get a car in here somehow, but this morning a dear friend of mine, understanding my love of etymology, horses, eels, and anuses, sent me an incredible article about the strange and murky origins of the word “fake.” It seems that the word traces its origins to late 1700s/early 1800s British criminal slang, where it could mean, from what I gathered from the article, pretty much anything. But one of the words that is sort of related to it is feague, and that’s the definition I need to tell you about, right now.

Okay, so, here’s the definition from Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

To feague a horse; to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, and formerly, as it is said, a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well; it is said, a forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer’s servant, who shall shew a horse without first feaguing him. Feague is used, figuratively, for encouraging or spiriting one up.

… and in case the use of “fundament” is to hoity-toity for you, here’s the Wiktionary definition:

1. To increase the liveliness of a horse by inserting an irritant, such as a piece of peeled raw ginger or a live eel, in its anus.

What.

What the hell? A live eel? In a horse’s anus? I mean, I guess that would make a horse seem pretty spry, but it also seems like a fantastic way to get kicked across a stable. And the mechanics of it seem incredible to me: a wriggly, slippery eel, a likely uncooperative horse, the process of stuffing and cramming, I’m just astounded. Sure, the ginger method sounds easier, but once you’ve committed to feaguing a horse, why do it half-way? Eel or nothing, I say!

All this, from the word fake? What an amazing world we live in. Okay, let’s figure out what cars I can cram in here in case David ends up reading this. Eel-related cars are not easy to come by, as manufacturers have so far yet to find the appeal of eel imagery as a name or theme. But there are some crossovers, like this time a bunch of slime eels spilled out onto the 101 about seven years ago:

Man, slime eels are not good for your car. I also once tried to compute how many eels it would take to recharge your electric car, and it proved to be a lot:

There also appears to be some renderings done of an EV supercar called the EEL for a design competition, but that’s about it.

Horse-cars, of course, are far more plentiful: Mustangs, Broncos, Pintos, Colts, Starions (kinda), and perhaps most weirdly, the Volkswagen Golf, which was named for a specific horse, named Golf. Seriously!

This is a quote about VW’s then Head Purchaser Hans-Joachim Zimmermann:

Where did the Volkswagen Golf get its name? From the Gulf Stream, which matches the hot winds of the Passat and Scirocco in terms of content? Hans-Joachim Zimmermann, Head Purchaser under the aegis of the Chairmen of the Board Horst Münzner and Ignacio Lopez from 1965 to 1995, revealed the solution to the riddle during a visit to the AutoMuseum: his Hanover gelding, called Golf, which he rode successfully time and again while acting as the long-standing chairman of the Reit- und Fahrverein Wolfsburg (riding and driving club), was expressly praised by Horst Münzer in the summer of 1973. A few days after this conversation on the riding arena, the chairman showed his colleague one of the brand new compact prototypes – with the letter combination of GOLF at the rear. Up to then, names such as Blizzard and Caribe had been discussed. Hans-Joachim Zimmermann, 79 years old now, brought an oil painting of the horse to the AutoMuseum and was delighted: “My horse was the namesake of the Golf – it stands for top-class, elegance, reliability. May the Golf have a long history of success – my horse got to be 27 years old, and in human terms, that meant it reached the ripe old age of 95. That is a pretty good omen!”

There! That’s a car thing you maybe learned today! See, I’m not all about shoving eels up horse anuses!