{"id":1875,"date":"2007-01-27T11:30:23","date_gmt":"2007-01-27T11:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2007-01-27T11:30:23","modified_gmt":"2007-01-27T11:30:23","slug":"wheelbarrows-older-than-youd-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/?p=1875","title":{"rendered":"Wheelbarrows, older than you’d think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had I been forced to guess when wheelbarrows were invented I would have put it as quite recently – perhaps down to some efficiency-seeking Victorian builder – but my daily OED email proves me wrong.<\/p>\n

The oldest usage given is from c.1340:
\nSikeman lith in hors-bere..And the crepul in the wilbarewe.
\n<\/em>
\n(I’m struggling to translate that, though it looks fun… Any thoughts?)<\/p>\n

In fact lots of the early usages seem to refer to escapades. From c. 1600: “To be jaunted up and down London Streets in a lethern wheelbarrow.” But I guess it was more fun to write about that than about builders or stablehands at work.<\/p>\n

For today at least you can read the full entry here<\/a>, where you can also sign up for the email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had I been forced to guess when wheelbarrows were invented I would have put it as quite recently – perhaps down to some efficiency-seeking Victorian builder – but my daily OED email proves me wrong. The oldest usage given is from c.1340: Sikeman lith in hors-bere..And the crepul in the wilbarewe. (I’m struggling to translate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","author-natalieben"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philobiblon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}