I had the opportunity at the weekend to make use of one of my favourite toys, given to me a couple of years ago on a significant birthday. It’s this (for those who like a scale, it’s about 40 cm long):
Photos hosted by Flickr
I was looking forward to impressing those who like interesting words by telling you what it’s used for, but I am a little suspicious as this word isn’t in the OED. But according to some sources it’s called sabrage. (I nearly put down another word ending in ‘age’ and starting with ‘fr’ that I vaguely remembered it to be, but it turns out to be a dubious practice.)
This apparently started in Napoleonic times, when celebrating soldiers whipped the tops off champagne bottles from horseback, using their sabres. The horse, thankfully, is optional – but it’s still great fun removing fizzy wine bottle tops this way. Here’s the end product:
You will note that you don’t, as I first thought when I heard of this practice, cut the top of the cork off. You remove the top of the bottle itself.
What’s remarkable about this is that it takes very little force. You don’t cut the glass, you send a shockwave through it, which has just the right stressing effect to shear it. The gas pressure shoots the top off, and the result is highly dramatic.
Children, please note – don’t try this at home. Really.
Cool! Where does one get stuff like this, my younger brother would totally fall for it. He has a collection of – well, in lack of the proper vocabulary let me say a collection of dangerous looking metal things originally designed to cut other people in half.
Mostly from France, I think. Try putting ‘sabre’ and ‘champagne’ into Google.