Hi,
What does the term “gooseneck” mean in the following sentence?
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
“The piece was part of an exhibit that is, according to a release, based on a view that “arts institutions are self-serving mechanisms for their board members, while its visitors gooseneck at the sight of a toilet bowl on Fifth Avenue.”
Another term for “rubberneck” or just plain “gawk”.
It means to look at with interest, but in a stupid way because the thing they’re looking at isn’t that interesting or isn’t any of their business.
We’d be more likely to use the word “rubberneck” in the US, or at least my part of it.
What Chefguy says seems plausible, but I cannot make much sense of that sentence, the part in quotes, anyway, whatever “gooseneck” may be intended to mean.
Incidentally, a quick look at the definitions given by several online dictionaries (via OneLook dictionaries) did not find any that define “gooseneck” in this sense. It does not seem to be any sort of common English usage, not even a dated one.
Chefguy and WhyNot are presumably guessing at the intended meaning based on the context. It is a reasonable guess, but that does not make it an established word. I would guess that the sentence in question was written by an overconfident non-English speaker, or maybe badly translated from the Spanish.
Perhaps people are “craning” their necks to see.
I thought it meant “craning” "or "gawking"but I couldn’t find that definition among the established definitions at all.
davidmich
Huh. Actually, I have one friend in particular I know I’ve heard use it…but now that you mention it, English is his second language. (I’m not sure what his first is. One of the many languages from India, I expect.)
Where I live in the GTA, protected Canada geese are freakin’ everywhere.* Watch them walk sometime and you’ll understand instantly what the writer meant by “goosenecking.”
*They’re nesting now; pretty soon, we’ll have scores of adorable goslings toddling about outdoors.
Certainly not an established meaning, but not out of line with what someone looking for a colorful term to indicate “craning to see” might choose. Given that the artists in question, Paul McCarthy and Mike Bouchet, are both American, I imagine that the release was originally written in English and the word choice was deliberate.
Maybe, but, given that the exhibit in question was in Spain, that American English already has the well established word “rubberneck” for such behavior, and that the sentence as quoted is well nigh incomprehensible quite regardless of its use of “gooseneck”, I think the involvement of a non-English speaker (and, perhaps, Google Translate) at some point in its production is the more likely hypothesis. (It may even have been translated from English to Spanish and back again.)
Not exactly relevant if the press release was in English. There is no indication that it was not.
It’s a statement by two performance artists who are apt to use colorful and unconventional language. Their current exhibit on the Guggenheim Bilbao is entitled “Powered A-Hole Spanish Donkey Sport Dick Drink Donkey Dong Dongs Sunscreen Model.”
I don’t find it incomprehensible at all, but then I work with artists a lot (including Frank Gehry.)
In fact, McCarthy and Bouchethave previously referred to the Guggenheim in New York (which is on Fifth Avenue) as a toilet:
The press release on the Portikus show on that site has similar rhetoric to the quote from the Bilbao release. Given that the toilet comparison is McCarthy and Bouchet’s own, I don’t see any reason to suppose that the language isn’t their own.
As a Spanish speaker, I see no indication of any influence of Spanish on the quoted text. I’ve never heard of any idiom for rubbernecking that would translate to goosenecking, and “cuello de ganso” usually refers to a gooseneck lamp or other curved object. It certainly doesn’t look like Google Translate to me (and I’ve seen lot’s of bad translations of Spanish done with Google Translate). Would you care to point to some evidence in structure or word usage that indicates the original was in Spanish?
I don’t know why this is the subject of any debate just because njtt can’t find it in an online dictionary.
It means exactly what Chefguy and WhyNot said in posts 2 and 3: rubbernecking, gawking, slowing or stopping what you are doing in order to look at something, usually out of morbid curiosity like a car wreck or fire but it could be anything.
[QUOTE=Luckless and the Traveller, Patricia Young]
Goosenecking passersby halted and grouped together like a tutting Greek chorus to pronounce on the cause of it all, then parted as if to make way for the next scene.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Angel, Otis Morphew]
He watched the Sheriff retrieve Bodine’s horse and lead horse and rider down the muddy street toward the jail before looking back at the goosenecking onlookers. “I want two or three men to get this body out a th’ street!” He said loudly…
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Cold Call, Dianne G. Pugh]
He saw a black-and-white on the northbound side with its lights flashing. Gooseneckers on the southbound side slowed down to look at the accident…
[/quote]
[QUOTE=The Color of Angels, Mac McQuagge]
You and Butch get rid of those people up there and cordon off the entire area and see if you can get a couple of the city boys on it to keep out any damn gooseneckers.
[/quote]
etc.
My issue is not in shape or form with the reference to the Guggenheim as a toilet, which did not confuse me at all. I understand that it a way of expressing contempt for the Guggenheim (both its architecture and its policies), and I can see the physical resemblance, even in the photo in the article. I also think I have heard it said before. My issue, apart from the unidiomatic use of “gooseneck”, is the very poor grammar of the quoted sentence, which apparently changes its subject from “art institutions” in general to the Guggenheim in particular in mid-stride (at least, that is the best guess that I can make about what is going on), with the singular pronoun “its” apparently referring to the plural “art institutions”. I had to read the sentence several times to make any sense of it, although I was not much puzzled by “gooseneck” and not at all by “toilet bowl”.
As for “gooseneck”, although it is an easy enough metaphor to understand in the context, it adds nothing in meaning or vividness that could not be attained with a more conventional word that would read more smoothly and have less potential to confuse (as the OP, at least, clearly was confused).
Given that this is such dreadful English, both grammatically and stylistically , I thought that the most charitable explanation was that it was written by a non-English speaker, or was a poor translation (perhaps even a machine translation) from some other language (most likely Spanish, given that the exhibit in question is in Spain). However, I have no inside knowledge of the matter, and I suppose it is possible that it was written by English speaking, but semi-literate, artists, or by an English speaking but semi-literate publicist or journalist (I see no indication that the words come direct from the artists themselves - they are said to be from “a release”, which suggests a publicist to me). Of course, a gallery publicist or other spokesperson would most likely be a Spanish speaker, and is quite likely to have issued their “release” in Spanish. You seem very sure, however, that that the sentence in question is a direct quotation of the words of the artists themselves, so perhaps you know more about the situation than we are actually told in the article. If so, I bow to your superior knowledge; if not, your speculations are no better than mine.
As has been shown by Crazyhorse, there is plenty of precedent for the use of “gooseneck” in English, and the meaning in context really is quite clear. (You even say you understood it yourself.) There is zero evidence that the word is based on a mistranslation of a Spanish text - I can’t even imagine what the Spanish word would be that might have be machine translated (or otherwise mistranslated) by “goosenecking.”
As poor writing, its not nearly as illiterate and unintelligible as you’re making out. With regard to the grammatical error, all we have is a sentence fragment, so it’s not entirely clear what the antecedent of “its” might be. In any case, if we were to use grammatical errors in press releases as evidence that they were not written in English originally, we might conclude that the vast majority of publicists are non-English speakers.
[QUOTE=njtt]
Of course, a gallery publicist or other spokesperson would most likely be a Spanish speaker, and is quite likely to have issued their “release” in Spanish.
[/QUOTE]
We don’t actually know who issued the press release. However, I note that the press release on the artists’ exhibition in Germany on which the billboard in Bilbao is based is in English, and does not appear to be a back-translation from German.
Given that your speculation is based on nothing more than the fact that you personally haven’t encountered the usage before, and a rather common grammatical error in a sentence fragment, I don’t think it’s the most parsimonious explanation. I think you need to provide some actual textual evidence that the original quote was in Spanish (or another language) beyond an unfamiliar idiomatic usage.
“Rubbernecking” and presumably “goosenecking” also imply that the person actually has to turn their head or otherwise strain to see the thing in question, like a long-necked bird. When traffic reporters mention drivers rubbernecking at an accident on the other side of the freeway, it’s because they all have to look sharply to the other side of the road as they pass that it meets the definition of rubbernecking.
Rubbernecking also happens wherever crowded conditions make it hard to see popular exhibits, like the panda enclosure at a zoo or King Tut’s golden death mask. But you can’t “rubberneck” something if it’s completely easy to see; you’d never say you needed some shirts so you decided to go to a shop and rubberneck a few.
Seems to be a slight repeat of the toilet metaphore… , the S bend of the toilet is a gooseneck too.
Its not a significant fact , they are just writing something poetic about the 5th Avenue people… the continual argument… "Gov wants to pay for Art. Finance wants a way to justify it … They want to find the art that people want , even thinking it might make a profit… (not cost the Gov.)…
The artist says, "You take the art that we give! … ".
So the metaphore was the artist putting a toilet on 5th avenue as Installation art. Its metaphoric, it represents all art … If it had to be requested, per-approved, proved to be financially viable, then would you get it ? You’d get what ? some model sky scrapers with water pouring on them.