Remember that old song “The Happy Wanderer,” sometimes known as “Valderi, valdera”? The lyric oozed pastoral charm:
I
love to go a-wandering
Along
the mountain track,
And
as I go, I love to sing,
My
knapsack on my back.
I’ve
always wondered what a knap was and
why the wanderer had one (or more) in his sack.
Nowadays,
there are no knaps, but when the word knapsack
came into use (the earliest citation in the
Oxford English Dictionary is 1603), it stemmed from the Low German knappsack, which derived from knappen meaning “to make a snapping
noise,” which was interpreted to mean “to eat.” Sack is also Low
German and—guess what—means “sack.” So the knapsack
presumably was where the happy hiker carried food on which he could chomp
away, no doubt making a snapping noise as he smacked his lips.
The
knapsack’s cousin, the backpack, is
pretty much the same thing, except it’s usually mounted on a metal frame. Its use was first noted in 1914.
The
cheeky Urban Dictionary tells us that
the versatile backpack can also mean
a form of hip-hop music that is socially conscious, a person who constantly
hovers too close to his or her mate or dancing partner, a person with muscles
on his back, a nerd who contributes nothing to a gathering but a sour
disposition, a manager who oversupervises, or a few other interesting things
that I would blush to mention.
The
Bard of Buffalo Bayou has been known to blush on rare occasions, when
discovered in flagrante delicto.
Here is one of the more flagrant of his delicta:
I
love to go a-wandering
Along
the Vegas Strip,
And
as I go, I tightly cling
To
one lone poker chip.
That
one chip is all that’s left
Of
all the cash I had,
And
now I’m broke and so bereft,
I
hope Steve Wynn is glad.
But
losing all my hard-earned cash
Was
not so bad a thing
As
when I broke out in a rash
To
hear Wayne Newton sing.
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