58-703: The World Conker Championships (WCC) is a conkers tournament held annually on the second Sunday in October in the county of Northamptonshire , England . Two players use conkers threaded onto a string and take turns to strike the other's nut until it shatters. Players from around the world enter the tournament, competing in a knock-out format in both team and individual formats, with titles for men's, women's and youth categories. Up to 5,000 spectators watch around 400 players participating. from many countries, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Ukraine,
116-509: A "snap, crackle, pop" when one pours on milk. During the 1930s, the illustrator Vernon Grant developed Snap, Crackle and Pop as gnome-like mascots for the Kellogg Company . Sounds appear in road safety advertisements: "clunk click, every trip" (click the seatbelt on after clunking the car door closed; UK campaign) or "click, clack, front and back" (click, clack of connecting the seat belts ; AU campaign) or "make it click" (click of
174-649: A concept mimetically and performatively rather than referentially, but different from onomatopoeia in that they aren't just imitative of sounds. For example, shiinto represents something being silent, just as how an anglophone might say "clatter, crash, bang!" to represent something being noisy. That "representative" or "performative" aspect is the similarity to onomatopoeia. Sometimes Japanese onomatopoeia produces reduplicated words. As in Japanese, onomatopoeia in Hebrew sometimes produces reduplicated verbs: There
232-477: A conker accumulates points, its designation changes to reflect the total: a none-er becomes a one-er , then a two-er , and so on. (In some areas of Scotland, conker victories are counted using the terms bully-one , bully-two , etc. In some areas of the United States and Canada, conker victories are counted using the terms one-kinger , two-kinger , etc. In 1940s Brooklyn, New York , a winning chestnut
290-420: A game of conkers using caravans suspended from cranes. After putting on safety goggles, presenter James May commented "I now feel perfectly happy about being hit in the face by a caravan." Top Gear , along with other media commentators, wrongly stated that the wearing of goggles during the game was due to an official Health and Safety Executive (HSE) edict when it was in fact due to a myth which started when
348-531: A headmaster bought goggles for children to use as a parody of health and safety regulation and sponsored a conkers tournament. In 2004, several schools in Britain banned conkers due to fear of causing anaphylactic shock in pupils with nut allergies. Health advisers said that there were no known dangers from conkers for nut-allergy sufferers, although some may experience a mild rash through handling them. Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism )
406-414: A nail, gimlet , small screwdriver, or electric drill. A piece of string (often a shoelace is used), about 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long, is threaded through it. A large knot at one or both ends of the string secures the conker. The game is played between two people, each with a conker. They take turns hitting each other's conker using their own. One player lets the conker dangle on the full length of
464-727: A particular sound is heard similarly by people of different cultures, it is often expressed through the use of different phonetic strings in different languages. For example, the " snip "of a pair of scissors is cri-cri in Italian , riqui-riqui in Spanish , terre-terre or treque-treque in Portuguese , krits-krits in modern Greek , cëk-cëk in Albanian , and kaṭr-kaṭr in Hindi . Similarly,
522-563: A review of video evidence, by fellow organiser St. John Burkett. Players' Rules of Engagement for the Noble Game of Conkers as follows: All players are British except where indicated with a national flag icon. Shown in alphabetical order by surname in the event of a tie. Conkers Conkers is a traditional children's game in Great Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—the name 'conker'
580-449: A round or angular shape, has been tested to see how languages symbolize sounds. The Japanese language has a large inventory of ideophone words that are symbolic sounds. These are used in contexts ranging from day-to-day conversation to serious news. These words fall into four categories: The two former correspond directly to the concept of onomatopoeia, while the two latter are similar to onomatopoeia in that they are intended to represent
638-466: A sound in a word, or a phoneme , is related to a sound in an environment, and are restricted in part by a language's own phonetic inventory, hence why many languages can have distinct onomatopoeia for the same natural sound. Depending on a language's connection to a sound's meaning, that language's onomatopoeia inventory can differ proportionally. For example, a language like English generally holds little symbolic representation when it comes to sounds, which
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#1732773111403696-670: A villain named Onomatopoeia , an athlete, martial artist, and weapons expert, who is known to verbally speak sounds ( i.e. , to voice onomatopoeic words such as "crash" and "snap" out loud to accompany the applicable event). Advertising uses onomatopoeia for mnemonic purposes, so that consumers will remember their products, as in Alka-Seltzer 's "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. Oh, what a relief it is!" jingle, recorded in two different versions (big band and rock) by Sammy Davis Jr. Rice Krispies (known as Rice Bubbles in Australia) make
754-722: Is a documented correlation within the Malay language of onomatopoeia that begin with the sound bu- and the implication of something that is rounded, as well as with the sound of -lok within a word conveying curvature in such words like lok , kelok and telok ('locomotive', 'cove', and 'curve' respectively). The Qur'an, written in Arabic, documents instances of onomatopoeia. Of about 77,701 words, there are nine words that are onomatopoeic: three are animal sounds (e.g., mooing ), two are sounds of nature (e.g., thunder ), and four that are human sounds (e.g., whisper or groan ). There
812-623: Is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as oink , meow , roar , and chirp . Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: as tick tock in English , tic tac in Spanish and Italian (in both languages "tac"
870-479: Is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks. The first mention of the game is in Robert Southey 's memoirs published in 1821. He describes a similar game, but played with snail shells or hazelnuts . It was only from the 1850s that using horse chestnuts
928-426: Is defined simply as the imitation of some kind of non-vocal sound using the vocal sounds of a language, like the hum of a bee being imitated with a "buzz" sound. In another sense, it is described as the phenomena of making a new word entirely. Onomatopoeia works in the sense of symbolizing an idea in a phonological context, not necessarily constituting a direct meaningful word in the process. The symbolic properties of
986-570: Is named for the sound it makes: the zip (in the UK) or zipper (in the U.S.) Many birds are named after their calls, such as the bobwhite quail , the weero , the morepork , the killdeer , chickadees and jays , the cuckoo , the chiffchaff , the whooping crane , the whip-poor-will , and the kookaburra . In Tamil and Malayalam , the word for crow is kākā . This practice is especially common in certain languages such as Māori , and so in names of animals borrowed from these languages. Although
1044-706: Is often done by keeping them for a year (aged conkers are called laggies in many areas or seasoners in Ireland and Liverpool), baking them briefly, soaking or boiling in vinegar, or painting with clear nail varnish. Such hardening is, however, usually regarded as cheating. At the British Junior Conkers Championships on the Isle of Wight in October 2005, contestants were banned from bringing their own conkers out of fears that they might harden them. The Campaign for Real Conkers claimed this
1102-662: Is pronounced / ˌ ɒ n ə m æ t ə ˈ p iː ə , - m ɑː t -/ . Words that imitate sounds can thus be said to be onomatopoeic , onomatopoetic , imitiative , or echoic . In the case of a frog croaking, the spelling may vary because different frog species around the world make different sounds: Ancient Greek brekekekex koax koax (only in Aristophanes ' comic play The Frogs ) probably for marsh frogs ; English ribbit for species of frog found in North America; English verb croak for
1160-620: Is pronounced like the English "tock"), see photo, dī dā in Mandarin , kachi kachi in Japanese , or ṭik-ṭik in Hindi , Urdu and Bengali . The word onomatopoeia , with rarer spelling variants like onomatopeia and onomatopœia , is an English word from the Ancient Greek compound ὀνοματοποιία, onomatopoiía , meaning 'name-making', composed of ὄνομα, ónoma , meaning "name"; and ποιέω, poiéō , meaning "making". It
1218-544: Is the phrase "furrow followed free" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . The words "followed" and "free" are not onomatopoeic in themselves, but in conjunction with "furrow" they reproduce the sound of ripples following in the wake of a speeding ship. Similarly, alliteration has been used in the line "as the surf surged up the sun swept shore ..." to recreate
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#17327731114031276-410: Is the reason English tends to have a smaller representation of sound mimicry than a language like Japanese, which overall has a much higher amount of symbolism related to the sounds of the language. In ancient Greek philosophy, onomatopoeia was used as evidence for how natural a language was: it was theorized that language itself was derived from natural sounds in the world around us. Symbolism in sounds
1334-416: Is used to reflect an object's state of disarray or separation, and shiiin is the onomatopoetic form of absolute silence (used at the time an English speaker might expect to hear the sound of crickets chirping or a pin dropping in a silent room, or someone coughing). In Albanian, tartarec is used to describe someone who is hasty. It is used in English as well with terms like bling , which describes
1392-400: Is used to represent a kiss. For animal sounds, words like quack (duck), moo (cow), bark or woof (dog), roar (lion), meow / miaow or purr (cat), cluck (chicken) and baa (sheep) are typically used in English (both as nouns and as verbs). Some languages flexibly integrate onomatopoeic words into their structure. This may evolve into a new word, up to the point that
1450-844: Is wide array of objects and animals in the Albanian language that have been named after the sound they produce. Such onomatopoeic words are shkrepse (matches), named after the distinct sound of friction and ignition of the match head; take-tuke (ashtray) mimicking the sound it makes when placed on a table; shi (rain) resembling the continuous sound of pouring rain; kukumjaçkë ( Little owl ) after its "cuckoo" hoot; furçë (brush) for its rustling sound; shapka (slippers and flip-flops); pordhë (loud flatulence) and fëndë (silent flatulence). In Hindi and Urdu , onomatopoeic words like bak-bak, cūr-cūr are used to indicate silly talk. Other examples of onomatopoeic words being used to represent actions are phaṭāphaṭ (to do something fast), dhak-dhak (to represent fear with
1508-550: The common frog . Some other very common English-language examples are hiccup , zoom , bang , beep , moo , and splash . Machines and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia: honk or beep-beep for the horn of an automobile, and vroom or brum for the engine. In speaking of a mishap involving an audible arcing of electricity, the word zap is often used (and its use has been extended to describe non-auditory effects of interference). Human sounds sometimes provide instances of onomatopoeia, as when mwah
1566-672: The " honk " of a car's horn is ba-ba ( Han : 叭叭 ) in Mandarin , tut-tut in French , pu-pu in Japanese , bbang-bbang in Korean , bært-bært in Norwegian , fom-fom in Portuguese and bim-bim in Vietnamese . An onomatopoeic effect can also be produced in a phrase or word string with the help of alliteration and consonance alone, without using any onomatopoeic words. The most famous example
1624-643: The Annapolis Royal Conker Club. The Peckham Conker Championships was first held in October 2017 in Peckham , London , playing a more extreme version of the game with Battle Royale rules which was organised by Peckham Conker Club. In 2023, more than 500 people from different parts of the UK took part in this championship. At the 2024 World Conker Championship, controversy arose when the winner, veteran competitor David Jakins, dubbed "King Conker",
1682-742: The Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and in the 1950s and early 1960s in the amalgamated section of the Bronx and nearby Mt.Vernon. It was also played in Queens, the upper West Side of Manhattan, in the Mohawk Valley area of upstate New York and in Westmount, Quebec and other English-speaking parts of Montreal into the 1970s. It was played in the Catholic areas of North Cambridge, MA in the late 1950s. It
1740-672: The Irish Conker Championships began in Freshford, County Kilkenny , in Ireland. Selma Becker, originally from Austria, was the first ladies' champion from outside the UK, in 2000. The title of Queen of Conkers has remained in the UK, except in 2001 when Frenchwoman Celine Parachou won. Eamonn Dooley from Freshford in County Kilkenny, Ireland broke the world record in 2000 by smashing 306 conkers in one hour. In 2004, an alternative World Conker Championships
1798-607: The United States and the United Kingdom. The World Conker Championships began in 1965 when a group of anglers in Ashton held a conker contest at the Chequered Skipper public house when the weather was too bad to go fishing. At the event, a small collection was made for charity, by Garth Crooks , who was having dinner in the pub with his family. Since then the event has raised over £420,000 for charities supporting
World Conker Championships - Misplaced Pages Continue
1856-479: The World Conker Championships causing a conker shortage, and in 1982 a late frost killed off the horse chestnut blossom resulting in a failed conker harvest. On 6 October 2011, organisers were forced to cancel the event over safety fears with high winds being forecast. In 2012, the championships were cancelled again when a suitable venue couldn't be found in time. Concerns for the future of
1914-470: The bird noise down the centuries, has kept approximately the same pronunciation as in Anglo-Saxon times and its vowels have not changed as they have in the word furrow . Verba dicendi ('words of saying') are a method of integrating onomatopoeic words and ideophones into grammar. Sometimes, things are named from the sounds they make. In English, for example, there is the universal fastener which
1972-566: The defending gallito before the defendant removes it from within the circle. If the defending gallito is struck it must remain in the circle until the attacker misses again. This move is called a " paso de paloma ". In 1965, the World Conker Championships were set up in Ashton (near Oundle ) Northamptonshire , England , and still take place on the second Sunday of October every year. In 2004, an audience of 5,000 turned up to watch more than 500 competitors from all over
2030-413: The event were voiced over the horse-chestnut leaf miner moth, Cameraria ohridella , which has appeared in the region and could have a detrimental effect on the UK's horse chestnut population affecting conker yields. On 9 October 2017, Chelsea pensioner John Riley won the men's tournament at the age of 85, quite possibly making him the oldest world champion on the planet. In 2022, Fee Aylmore won
2088-526: The glinting of light on things like gold, chrome or precious stones. In Japanese, kirakira is used for glittery things. A key component of language is its arbitrariness and what a word can represent, as a word is a sound created by humans with attached meaning to said sound. It is not possible to determine the meaning of a word purely by how it sounds. However, in onomatopoeic words, these sounds are much less arbitrary; they are connected in their imitation of other objects or sounds in nature. Vocal sounds in
2146-426: The imitation of natural sounds does not necessarily gain meaning, but can gain symbolic meaning. An example of this sound symbolism in the English language is the use of words starting with sn- . Some of these words symbolize concepts related to the nose ( sneeze , snot , snore ). This does not mean that all words with that sound relate to the nose, but at some level we recognize a sort of symbolism associated with
2204-411: The more wild-speech features to which they are exposed, compared to more tame and familiar speech features. But the results of such tests are inconclusive. In the context of language acquisition, sound symbolism has been shown to play an important role. The association of foreign words to subjects and how they relate to general objects, such as the association of the words takete and baluma with either
2262-505: The name Conquerors. Another possibility is that it is an onomatopoeia , representing the sound made by a horse chestnut as it hits another hard object, such as a skull (another children's "game", also called conkers, consists of simply throwing the seeds at one another over a fence or wall). Conkers are also known regionally as cheesers , a "cheeser" being a conker with one or more flat sides, which comes about due to it sharing its pod with other conkers (twins or triplets). Also Cheggers
2320-494: The phonetic range of the language(s) most heavily spoken in their environment, which may be called "tame" onomatopoeia, and the full range of sounds that the vocal tract can produce, or "wild" onomatopoeia. As one begins to acquire one's first language, the proportion of "wild" onomatopoeia reduces in favor of sounds which are congruent with those of the language they are acquiring. During the native language acquisition period, it has been documented that infants may react strongly to
2378-402: The process is no longer recognized as onomatopoeia. One example is the English word bleat for sheep noise: in medieval times it was pronounced approximately as blairt (but without an R-component), or blet with the vowel drawled, which more closely resembles a sheep noise than the modern pronunciation. An example of the opposite case is cuckoo , which, due to continuous familiarity with
World Conker Championships - Misplaced Pages Continue
2436-548: The seatbelt; McDonalds campaign) or "click it or ticket" (click of the connecting seat belt, with the implied penalty of a traffic ticket for not using a seat belt; US DOT (Department of Transportation) campaign). The sound of the container opening and closing gives Tic Tac its name. In many of the world's languages, onomatopoeic-like words are used to describe phenomena beyond the purely auditive. Japanese often uses such words to describe feelings or figurative expressions about objects or concepts. For instance, Japanese barabara
2494-400: The smaller seed of the jatobá, Hymenaea courbaril ) is called gallitos (meaning small roosters or cocks, as in cockfighting ). The opponents face each other and the defending gallito is laid in the center of a circle drawn in the dirt. Not until the attacking player misses will the defending player take a turn. Upon missing, if the attacking player is quick enough, they will try to swing at
2552-470: The sound itself. Onomatopoeia, while a facet of language, is also in a sense outside of the confines of language. In linguistics, onomatopoeia is described as the connection, or symbolism, of a sound that is interpreted and reproduced within the context of a language, usually out of mimicry of a sound. It is a figure of speech, in a sense. Considered a vague term on its own, there are a few varying defining factors in classifying onomatopoeia. In one manner, it
2610-511: The sound of breaking waves in the poem "I, She and the Sea". Comic strips and comic books make extensive use of onomatopoeia, often being visually integrated into the images, so that the drawing style emphasizes the sound. Popular culture historian Tim DeForest noted the impact of writer-artist Roy Crane (1901–1977), the creator of Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer : In 2002, DC Comics introduced
2668-439: The string and the other player swings their conker to hit it. A point is scored for a conker surviving a hit that causes the other one to break. The point is scored irrespective of whether the surviving conker was attacking or defending at the time. The scoring of the game is considered to be a property of the conkers themselves. A new conker is a none-er , meaning that it has not defeated any others yet and thus has no score. As
2726-589: The visually impaired and at least £2,500 is donated yearly. The event was held in Ashton for 45 years before moving to a larger venue at the Shuckburgh Arms in Southwick , Northamptonshire in 2009. The tournament has been threatened with conker shortages over the years, in 1976 conkers used in the tournament had to be flown in from Jersey , in 1980 freak spring weather was one of the factors that threatened
2784-401: The women's event after 30 years of trying. In 2024, allegations of cheating were levelled at the men's event winner David Jakins by men's runner-up Alastair Johnson-Ferguson, when a brown-painted fake steel conker was discovered in his pocket. Jakins was also one of the event's organisers, responsible for the handing out of chestnuts used by the competitors. He was cleared of any suspicion after
2842-559: The world. The 2016 Championship was featured on the BBC programme "Countryfile". The first time that a non-British contestant won the Men's World Conker Championship was in 1976. The Mexican Jorge Ramirez Carrillo took the place of a contestant who was unable to arrive on time at Ashton, and defeated the 1975 champion at the finals. The men's champion has been British in every other year except 1998, when Helmut Kern from Nauort, Germany, won. In 1999,
2900-413: Was a dual use building, serving as both town hall and school. There is a large horse chestnut tree located on the town's common (and adjacent to town hall) that was used as a source for the chestnuts. The Leicester variant on the name for the game was "Horse Cobblers"(presumably a variant of "Horse Conkers"). Before the game, each player must prepare a conker. A hole is bored in a large, hard conker using
2958-453: Was accused of cheating. Jakins was alleged to have used a replica conker made from steel. He has been exonerated. In 2000, a survey of British schools by Keele University showed that many were not allowing children to play conkers, as head teachers were afraid of the legal consequences if children were injured while playing the game, or because they thought that the conkers might be used as weapons. The TV programme Top Gear later staged
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#17327731114033016-843: Was an example of over-regulation which was causing a drop in interest in the game. In both the World Conker Championship and the North American Championship, contestants are also restricted to using the conkers provided by the organisers. One factor affecting the strength of a conker is the shape of the hole. A clean cylindrical hole is stronger, as it has no notches or chips that can begin a crack or split. The Peckham Conker Championships allow artificially hardened conkers, with some players even coating their conkers in epoxy resin . This competition follows Battle Royale rules and also allows stampsies and stringies. A similar Puerto Rican game (played with
3074-646: Was being played in the 1960s in Rhode Island, and into the early 1980s in Smithfield, RI. The game was also played in Leicester, Massachusetts in the late 1970s and into the 1980s (and presumably much earlier, given the town's age and predominantly English/Irish settlers) by the children of the Primary School of the town (typically 4th and 5th graders). Leicester's seat of government ("town hall")
3132-623: Was first hosted at Pill Harriers Rugby Club, Newport, Wales. This championship, known as the World Annual National Conker Championships, has been held every year since and is sanctioned by Dogfish Promotions. Contestants from the United States, Italy, England and Wales have taken part. The North American Conker Championship was inaugurated on 20 October 2012 at the Historic Gardens in the town of Annapolis Royal , Nova Scotia , Canada, hosted by
3190-466: Was referred to as a killer and the value of a chestnut was defined by its number of "kills".) In some regions, the winning conker receives all the points accumulated by the losing one, in addition to gaining one more point for the defeat. For example, a two-er that defeats a three-er would become a six-er (2 + 3 + 1). Other regions only award one point to the winner, regardless of the loser's score. The hardest conkers usually win. Hardening conkers
3248-499: Was regularly referred to in certain regions. There is uncertainty of the origins of the name. The name may come from the dialect word conker , meaning "knock out" (perhaps related to French conque meaning a conch , as the game was originally played using snail shells and small bits of string ). The name may also be influenced by the verb conquer , as earlier games involving shells and hazelnuts have also been called conquerors . Compton MacKenzie's 1913 novel Sinister Street uses
3306-413: Was seen as deriving from this. Some linguists hold that onomatopoeia may have been the first form of human language. When first exposed to sound and communication, humans are biologically inclined to mimic the sounds they hear, whether they are actual pieces of language or other natural sounds. Early on in development, an infant will vary his/her utterances between sounds that are well established within
3364-512: Was used in Lancaster, England in the 1920s. In D. H. Lawrence 's book Sons and Lovers , the game is referred to as cobblers by William Morel. The first recorded game of conkers using horse chestnuts was on the Isle of Wight in 1848. The game grew in popularity in the 19th century, and spread beyond England . Conkers was played during the late 1940s and early 1950s in New York in
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