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Chris -- 2018-04-11
Seen in an on-line political website … “The army is going full boar after the terrorists”.
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That’s an interesting image, at least. I’m imagining a high-speed, rabid porcine on the trail of international terrorists.
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I’ve heard the expression “Full bore” before, although it is not common in England.
What are it’s origins?
I’m assuming it is connected to shooting, as in the bore of a rifle, and would equate to our ‘going in with both barrells loaded’ as opposed to ‘going off half-cocked’ (which of course could mean something entirely different over there!)
“Your talent is God’s gift to you. Wwhat you do with it is your gift back to God.” Leo Buscaglia
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A very nice find, and a fully-fledged eggcorn it seems to me. Googling ‘going full boar’ gives nearly 1000 citations and Joakim’s image of this is probably everyone else’s too. As to the origin, I think I’d favour the notion of a ‘tidal bore’ – unexpected, powerful, unstoppable.
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bore (Dictionary.com)
The meaning “diameter of a tube” is first recorded 1572; hence fig. slang full bore (1936) “at maximum speed”, from the notion of unchoked carburetor on an engine.
NOTE: I suspect the phrase ‘full bore’ is older and may relate to intense drilling, but this is the best I could find (nothing in the OED).
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The OED has a rather lengthy entry on “full bore,” though the editors seem to be a little cautious about explicitly drawing lines between the various different meanings of the phrase over the years. Here I’ll give just a few excerpts that seem immediately relevant to this thread.
The earliest citation given has to do with the bore size of a gun, but the second oldest suggests that Peter Forster may well be right in thinking that hydraulic pressure is in some way related to the development of the phrase:
A size, diameter, or quantity that exactly fills a particular pipe, tube, etc.; as much as a pipe or similar container can hold.
1635 Early Laws Mass. 4 Mar. in N. B. Shurtleff Rec. Mass. Bay (1853) I. 137 It is likewise ordered, that muskett bulletts, of a full boare, shall passe currantly for a farthing a peece.
c1699 T. SAVERY in Sci. Monthly (1936) Sept. 272/2 My engine at 60, 70, or 80 feet, raises a full bore of water with much ease.
And a few other water-related citations get us closer to the modern, engine-related sense:
Originally: to the full capacity or diameter of a pipe, etc. Hence in later use also gen.: at maximum capacity or full speed.
1755 Philos. Trans. Royal Soc. 49 320 When the water run [sic] full bore, at the rate of a gallon in 17 seconds, the heat of the water was found..to be 80 degrees above the freezing point.
1852 Sci. Amer. 14 Feb. 173/1 The only condition of lead in water-pipes, running full bore, which was not met [etc.].
1890 Manufacturer & Builder Feb. 41/3 If a line of a dozen or more water closets is laid out, the soil pipe is at once increased to five inches in diameter, as if even the simultaneous discharge of ten times that number could begin to fill the soil pipe full bore.
1927 Bulletin (Sydney) 30 June 13/4 If the cord is pulled while on a bridge or other undesirable stopping place, the driver may, by placing his brake-handle in ‘release’ position and working his pump hard and his engine ‘full-bore’, keep going, but only for two or three hundred yards at most.
1936 Motor Man. (ed. 29) ii. 26 When the throttle is lying flat in the direction of gas flow, the engine is running ‘full bore’, the term generally used for this being ‘full throttle’.
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