Who was the proverbial "Gordon Bennett", and how did he become an expression of surprise?

Question

( as in "Gordon Bennett! Look at that!"

Answer 1

I believe it stems from motor racing and the Gordon Bennett Cup, named after the driver way back in the day.

BIG UPS gigi, thats a wicked link.

Answer 2

Could have something to do with a famous ballonist......

The Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett, is the most prestigious event in aviation and ultimate challenge for the balloon pilots and equipment. The goal is simple: to fly the farthest distance from the launch site.

This international balloon competition was initiated by adventurer and newspaper tycoon Gordon Bennett in 1906.

Answer 3

At the end of November 1997 Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was elected Parliamentarian of the Year by the Spectator. To add yet further to his sense of achievement, there seemed just a chance for a while that his name might have endured in another way. He seemed to be turning into an eponym.

It started when he was scheduled earlier that year to give a speech at the Guildhall in London, a traditional engagement of the political year at which the Chancellor usually gives useful pointers about his future financial policies. Mr Brown, in the New Labour spirit of accommodating the common man and levelling down, refused to don formal evening wear but instead turned up in a lounge suit. As a result a suit was for a while known in the sharper parts of the City of London as a Gordon Brown. It even turned up a a verb, attributed to a man invited to a society wedding who said he would prefer not to wear the usual morning dress — he’d much rather Gordon Brown it instead. The phrase turned out to be a temporary catchphrase, but it got me thinking about Gordon.

It’s a good emphatic word, with its echoing invocation of God, though its second dying syllable does need a following word to round it off. It may be that Gordon Brown caught on because of various cultural and linguistic echoes, for example that a brown suit is regarded as deeply unfashionable, or that it reminds people of brown trouser, an expressive term for an unfortunate occurrence while under stress. But most probably for most people it brings to mind an older southern British expletive, Gordon Bennett.

This was a real person, named in full James Gordon Bennett. Confusingly, there were two of them. Mr Bennett the elder was born in Scotland in 1795, emigrated to the US, became a journalist, founded the New York Herald in 1835, and instituted many of the methods of modern journalism. His son of the same name (universally known as Gordon Bennett, to start with probably to distinguish him from his father) was also a good journalist (he sent Stanley to Africa to seek out Livingstone) but preferred the good life, mostly in London and Paris. He spent much of the fortune accumulated by him and his father in promoting air and road racing in England and France and generally being the playboy.

There are several surviving pieces of evidence that show the high public profile of Gordon Bennett the younger during his European years, and his impact on sports in particular. He can be said to have started the sport of international motor racing through his sponsorship of the Bennett Trophy races from 1900 to 1905; a trials course in the Isle of Man was named after him. He gave a trophy for long-distance hot-air ballooning in 1906 that started the modern sport (the international Gordon Bennett balloon race still continues). He also gave a cup for powered air racing. So it’s perhaps not surprising that his name become well-known, well enough that he should have become a byword, helped by his eccentric and boorish ways (he is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under “Greatest Engagement Faux Pas” for having his engagement to Caroline May broken off in 1877 after he arrived late and drunk at the May family’s New York mansion and urinated in the living room fireplace in front of his hosts).

The curious thing is that though his high-living European heyday was in the first decade of this century, the phrase only began to appear in print very recently (the OED has traced it back only as far as a cartoon in 1983, though it would be very pleased to hear of verified earlier sightings). For the phrase to have survived until now, it must have been lurking in the spoken language for most of this century. I can remember my sister using it in the late forties, and through such oral usage it must have been kept alive until a greater use of demotic language in the press and elsewhere in the eighties brought it to wider public notice.

Gordon Bennett may have had another influence on the language. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the given name Gordon was unusual. It turns up much more commonly as a family name, originally Scots, deriving ultimately either from the town in Berwickshire or from a similarly-named place in Normandy (experts disagree). Our Gordon Bennett, like his father, had it as his middle name, which had probably been bestowed originally to mark the family name of some relative of influence. The popularity of Gordon as a given name grew as the century waned. It has been suggested that this was through the influence of Charles George Gordon, Gordon of Khartoum, the soldier of the British Empire also known as Chinese Gordon, once hugely famous, who died during the siege of Khartoum in 1885.

But could it be that the popularity of the name was due in part to the publicity given it by Gordon Bennett only a few years later?

Answer 4

At the end of November 1997 Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was elected Parliamentarian of the Year by the Spectator. To add yet further to his sense of achievement, there seemed just a chance for a while that his name might have endured in another way. He seemed to be turning into an eponym.

It started when he was scheduled earlier that year to give a speech at the Guildhall in London, a traditional engagement of the political year at which the Chancellor usually gives useful pointers about his future financial policies. Mr Brown, in the New Labour spirit of accommodating the common man and levelling down, refused to don formal evening wear but instead turned up in a lounge suit. As a result a suit was for a while known in the sharper parts of the City of London as a Gordon Brown. It even turned up a a verb, attributed to a man invited to a society wedding who said he would prefer not to wear the usual morning dress — he’d much rather Gordon Brown it instead. The phrase turned out to be a temporary catchphrase, but it got me thinking about Gordon.

It’s a good emphatic word, with its echoing invocation of God, though its second dying syllable does need a following word to round it off. It may be that Gordon Brown caught on because of various cultural and linguistic echoes, for example that a brown suit is regarded as deeply unfashionable, or that it reminds people of brown trouser, an expressive term for an unfortunate occurrence while under stress. But most probably for most people it brings to mind an older southern British expletive, Gordon Bennett.

This was a real person, named in full James Gordon Bennett. Confusingly, there were two of them. Mr Bennett the elder was born in Scotland in 1795, emigrated to the US, became a journalist, founded the New York Herald in 1835, and instituted many of the methods of modern journalism. His son of the same name (universally known as Gordon Bennett, to start with probably to distinguish him from his father) was also a good journalist (he sent Stanley to Africa to seek out Livingstone) but preferred the good life, mostly in London and Paris. He spent much of the fortune accumulated by him and his father in promoting air and road racing in England and France and generally being the playboy.

There are several surviving pieces of evidence that show the high public profile of Gordon Bennett the younger during his European years, and his impact on sports in particular. He can be said to have started the sport of international motor racing through his sponsorship of the Bennett Trophy races from 1900 to 1905; a trials course in the Isle of Man was named after him. He gave a trophy for long-distance hot-air ballooning in 1906 that started the modern sport (the international Gordon Bennett balloon race still continues). He also gave a cup for powered air racing. So it’s perhaps not surprising that his name become well-known, well enough that he should have become a byword, helped by his eccentric and boorish ways (he is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under “Greatest Engagement Faux Pas” for having his engagement to Caroline May broken off in 1877 after he arrived late and drunk at the May family’s New York mansion and urinated in the living room fireplace in front of his hosts).

The curious thing is that though his high-living European heyday was in the first decade of this century, the phrase only began to appear in print very recently (the OED has traced it back only as far as a cartoon in 1983, though it would be very pleased to hear of verified earlier sightings). For the phrase to have survived until now, it must have been lurking in the spoken language for most of this century. I can remember my sister using it in the late forties, and through such oral usage it must have been kept alive until a greater use of demotic language in the press and elsewhere in the eighties brought it to wider public notice.

Gordon Bennett may have had another influence on the language. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the given name Gordon was unusual. It turns up much more commonly as a family name, originally Scots, deriving ultimately either from the town in Berwickshire or from a similarly-named place in Normandy (experts disagree). Our Gordon Bennett, like his father, had it as his middle name, which had probably been bestowed originally to mark the family name of some relative of influence. The popularity of Gordon as a given name grew as the century waned. It has been suggested that this was through the influence of Charles George Gordon, Gordon of Khartoum, the soldier of the British Empire also known as Chinese Gordon, once hugely famous, who died during the siege of Khartoum in 1885. But could it be that the popularity of the name was due in part to the publicity given it by Gordon Bennett only a few years later?

Answer 5

there you go

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gordon-bennett.html