Blondin
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: Blondins
Etymology: From French Blondin. The noun is after the French tightrope walker Charles Blondin (1824–1897).
Senses: examples: text: My invention has cost me some money, some anxiety, and condemned my little ones to all the miseries of poverty and banishment in the bush, whereas if I had been a successful cricketer, a good bowler, or a rifle shooter without pluck, a Blondin, or an acrobat, I and mine would have escaped these ills.
ref: 1899 November 1, R[ichard] B[owyer] Smith, quotee, “Wheatgrowing in South Australia”, in A[lexander] J[enyns] Boyd, editor, The Queensland Agricultural Journal, […], volume V, Brisbane, Qld.: Edmund Gregory, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 457:
text: A step or two upwards, then one to the right, and my exploring hand was able to touch a small, sloping, scree-covered ledge. This was covered by a film of ice, which I cleared as well as I could with one hand while supporting myself with the other. Having at last decided that a step was justifiable, I balanced up with the delicacy, but scarcely the grace, of a Blondin and a moment later was on the ledge.
ref: 1938, Frank S[ydney] Smythe, “The Mana Peak: The Reconnaissance”, in The Valley of Flowers, uniform edition, London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, published 1947, →OCLC, pages 220–221:
text: A daily newspaper is a great lake in which intellectual elephants can swim and lambs can paddle. Accordingly, the columnist is a Blondin, treading a tightrope over Victoria Falls between obscurity and triviality, condescension and ostentation, and often falling into the foaming minestrone.
ref: 2013, Philip Howard, “What is the correct term?”, in Modern Manners: The Essential Guide to Correct Behaviour and Etiquette, London: The Robson Press, →ISBN, page 273:
text: But the several schemes that I imagined for passing a message from the train were so doubtful of success, or required the sure-footedness of a Blondin, that I discarded each of them in turn.
ref: 2015, Jeremy Kingston, “The Nubile Bachelor”, in Sherlock Holmes and a Scandal in Batavia […], London: Robert Hale, →ISBN, page 79:
glosses: An expert tightrope walker.
examples: text: Incised with painstaking delicacy and strength of vision into the single slab are four scenes: quarry rock-men in a pit with a Blondin (a carrying-cradle running on wire cables) above them; […]
ref: 1997, Jim Perrin, “Heartland”, in Visions of Snowdonia: Landscape and Legend, London: BBC Books, →ISBN, page 130:
text: Thousands and thousands of steel-mesh bags were filled with boulders, swung into place by a Blondin and dumped one by one into the water until the channel was blocked.
ref: 2001, Margaret Aitken, chapter 4, in In My Small Corner: Memories of an Orkney Childhood, Dalkeith, Midlothian: Scottish Cultural Press, →ISBN, page 38:
text: Once material arrived at the Lodge, it was shipped to the site by means of a ‘Blondin’ – an overhead ropeway named after the famous Frenchman Charles Blondin, who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope in 1859.
ref: 2012, James Crawford, “Lowlands”, in Scotland’s Landscapes (The National Collection of Aerial Photography), Edinburgh: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, →ISBN, page 144:
text: There have been stage plays and songs about the French funambulist, street names, and a Welsh device dubbed a Blondin that carries rocks along a cable.
ref: 2015, David Astle, “Why is Blondin like a prizefighter?”, in Riddledom: 101 Riddles and Their Stories, Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, “Famous & Forgettable” section, page 229:
text: [T]he marshy ground is imprinted with the pattern of long gone railway sleepers. A stump of concrete stands high on the hillside. The remains of a Blondin, a cable lift once used to haul stone and rubble and spoil across the river.
ref: 2016, Kellan Macinnes, “The Grave in the Woods”, in The Making of Mickey Bell, Dingwall, Highland: Sandstone Press, →ISBN, page 226:
glosses: Alternative letter-case form of blondin.