Words Worth: rubberneck

rubberneck
noun
1. a tourist who is visiting sights of interest [syn: sightseer]
2. a person who stares inquisitively

rubberneck
verb
1. strain to watch; stare curiously;

"The cars slowed down and the drivers rubbernecked after the accident."
--WordNet 3.0, 2006 by Princeton University.

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Put another way, rubberneck is a collocation that asks us to imagine a human head atop a rubberized neck that's able to stretch, crane, turn, twist, (loop ?) and swerve with ease, all in service of the brain and its interfacing portals (the eyes) to focus and dwell upon an ongoing event. In short, rubbernecking is gauking; staring intently; or—if we make an anatomical shift upward—eyeballing (1901).

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IN USE:
ƒ. OED Online

I stood around there on one foot kind o' rubber-neckin to find an openin.--1896

Recent slang has coined the word ‘rubber~neck’ for a gaping fellow in the street, who turns his head this way and that.-1902

Here's a great sight going on that hundreds of rubber-necking tourists would pay anything to see.--1927

The long, vaulted central hall..was crowded with chairs for invited guests with probably five times as many more people standing behind them. Londoners love to rubberneck on tiptoe.--1946

Wisconsin motorists may never see a purple cow, but they are rubbernecking at an enormous piebald blue one emblazoned on Farmer Hilbert Schneider's 75-year-old barn at Johnson Creek.--1977

Large rubberneck buses from travel agencies drive through, packed with sightseers from various States of the Union.--1949 Chicago Daily News 13 Aug. 5/6
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Early 20th Century Brits, loath bend knee or neck before Americans to borrow a term, especially the crude rubberneck wagon, to describe the newest form of tourist transport, sidled, instead, over to the French, who offered char-a-banc— "a carriage with benches, so called because the original horse-drawn charabancs in France had rows of crosswise seats looking forward." The English eschewed rubberneck wagon embracing char-a-banc.

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H. L. MENCKEN'S THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

A useful book to peer into for the early history of "rubber-neck" is H. L. Mencken's
The American Language (1937), a land-mark record of the birth and growth of
English in America. The book is filled with examples of American slang, with all of its sophistication, wit, and social significance. Note the brazen confidence Mencken shows in himself and in his native language in the title of the book: The American Language. There was no room in Mencken's vocabulary for such deferential epithets "American English" or "English in America"

Editors at Bartlbey.com note that The American Language "was written to clarify the discrepancies between British and American English and to define the distinguishing characteristics of American English. Mencken’s groundbreaking study was undoubtedly the most scientific linguistic work on the American language to date."

We might note in passing the praise Mencken has earned as a stylist from past and present critics (this writer included). The eminent 20th Century American critic and essayist Joseph Wood Krutch--who critiqued movies for The Nation; wrote thirty-five books, including biographies of Samuel Johnson and Henry David Thoreau; and taught at Columbia University for sixteen years--referred to Mencken as "the greatest prose stylist of the twentieth century."

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H. L. MENCKEN
ON THE AMERICAN
SLANG TERM, rubberneck:

Mencken observes that rubber-neck entered the American Language in a wave of American compound words invented during the late 1800s and the early 1900s:

"The old American faculty [read skill] for making picturesque compounds shows no sign of abating today [1937]. Many of them come in on the attitude of slang, e.g., road-louse, glad-hand, hop-head, rahrah-boy, coffin-nail (cigarette), hot-spot, bug-house, hang-out, and pin-head, and never attain to polite usage. . . . [B]ut others are taken into the language almost as soon as they appear, e.g., college-widow, (1887), sky-scraper and rubberneck* (c. 1890), loan-shark (c. 1900), highbrow and low brow (c. 1905), hot-dog (1905), joy-ride (1908), love-nest, and jay-walker (c 1890), and brain-trust (1932)".

prose stylist of the twentieth century."
Mencken tells us that the word glowed with no little cachet according to the Scottish philologian, Professor J. Y. T. Greig, who praised rubbernecking in Breaking Priscian's Head (1929) as "one of best words ever coined" (186).--H. L. Mencken. The American Language. New York: Knopf, 1937.
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IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL

Rubberneck eventually took a turn (yes, a pun) toward rock 'n' roll. According to reviewer Mike Davis King in a piece written for Amazon.com, "'Rubberneckin' was the hit song from Elvis Presley's last feature film, 'Change Of Habit.' As the B-side of 'Don't Cry Daddy,' it reached #11 on the charts way back in December of 1969." The song was remixed in 2003 and has enjoyed renewed popularity, both as song-qua-song and as a popular cell-phone ringtone. Here are the lyrics of "Rubbernecking," made famous by a rocker known equally for his singing but also for his on-stage "rubber-leggin'."

"Rubbernecking"

Stop, look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
If your rubberneckin' baby
well that's all right with me
Stop, look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
It's called rubberneckin' baby
but that's all right with me
Some people say I'm wasting time
but they don't really know
I like what I see I see what I like
it gives me such a glow
First thing in the morning, last thing at night
I look, stare everywhere and see everything insight
Stop, look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
If your rubberneckin' baby
well that's all right with me
Some people say I'm wasting time
but they don't really know
I like what I see I see what I like
yer, it gives me such a glow
Sittin' on the back porch all by myself
Along came Mary Jane and I'm with somebody else
Stop, look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
If your rubberneckin' baby
well that's all right with me
Stop, look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
It's called rubberneckin' baby
but that's all right with me
Stop look and listen baby
that's my philosophy
yes it is now

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The following may be a bit of a stretch, but rocker Leon Russell uses the catch phrase "rubber neck," not precisely in the sense that we have been considering the solo word "rubberneck" but close enough for my sensibilities.

In The All-Music Guide to Rock (1995), Rick Clark, comments that Leon Russell's third album "Carney" (1973) became Russell's highest charting album with the aid of the oddball #11 hit "Tightrope," which includes a line aptly perceived as "oddball"— "I'm falling / Like a rubber neck giraffe."

TIGHT ROPE
Leon Russell

I'm up on the tightrope , one sides hate and one is hope
It's a circus game with you and me.
I'm up on the tightwire , linked by life and the funeral pyre
But the tophat on my head is all you see.

And the wire seems to be the only place for me
A comedy of errors and I'm falling
Like a rubber neck giraffe, you look into my past
Well, baby you're just to blind to see.

I'm up in the spotlight, oh does it feel right
The altitude seems to really get to me.
I'm up on the tightwire linked by life and the funeral pyre
Putting on a show for you to see.
Copyright 1972 by Skyhill Publishing Co.

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ON THE ROAD

Finally, rubbernecking is not limited to the ambits of sightseeing and rock 'n' roll. We are now talking about a much more sober signification of the term as we look at how rubbernecking can precipitate roadway accidents.

Following are the conclusions reached in a study made for The Implementation Research Center of the U.S. DOT University Transportation Center, titled

AN ANALYSIS ON THE IMPACT OF RUBBERNECKING ON URBAN FREEWAY TRAFFIC.

Although the modeling of incident traffic in the same direction is important, it deals with only half of the traffic problem. Accidents also have an impact on the opposite direction of traffic. Even though there are no lane blockages in the opposite direction of an accident, there are reasons to believe that an impact exists on traffic. This impact is due to rubbernecking. According to the Webster Dictionary “rubbernecking” means to look about, stare, or listen with exaggerated curiosity. Individuals driving in the opposite direction of an accident are often distracted by the incident. It is the curiosity of the event that leads to distraction, and then causes a reduction in vehicle speeds. This reduction in vehicle speeds begins to create congestion. Although a significant part of rubbernecking is attributed to various human factors, there are other factors such as presence of barriers that influence the form of rubbernecking.

It is also necessary to investigate the role of human factor on rubbernecking. As indicated in the analysis of this study, motorists in peak period tended to create less rubbernecking than in other periods. It seems that human factors were playing roles in the causes of rubbernecking impacts. By understanding the impact of human factors, the rubbernecking issue may be better addressed.--Dr. Hualiang (Harry) Teng Jonathan P. Masinick Principal Investigators Final report of ITS Center project: Rubbernecking impact of incidents A Research Project Report For the National ITS Implementation Research Center, A U.S. DOT University Transportation Center (ImpactofRubbernecking.htm)
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