Sounding like some water-based children’s TV superhero, it’s actually a particularly apt and descriptive word for wintertime, being an 18th-century English Kent dialect noun meaning icicle. It mixes the Latin term for water with paralell slang ‘blob’ as well as bubble, possibly related to the Dutch bobble, and Swedish bubla. Such a definition can be found in the Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, A Supplement to the Dictionaries of the English Language. by Jonathan Boucher, 1832. It’s all logical enough, but where might you find aquabobs in song?
Inevitably they are too immersed under the frozen lake of history to be found in lyrics, but there are many good songs about icicles. After all and Engish writer Henry Williamson, and author of Takar The Otter, wrote rather beautifully:
“Music comes from an icicle as it melts, to live again as spring water.”
So here then are a few aquabob-related songs, but firstly, two not so much about icicles, but with vivid, incidental lyrics:
“You've been cold to me so long, I'm crying icicles instead of tears.” - Meat Loaf. Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad
“There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there'll be sorrow.” – Joni Mitchell, LIttle Green
And here’s Tori Amos, Fleet Foxes, The Cranberries, Girls In Airports, Samantha Whates, Jasmine Rodgers and Daniel Koestner to add some metaphor and musical melting texture to the otherwise termed aquabob:
Want to add further examples of aquabobs? Feel free to share anything more in relation to anything whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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