“With my 76 years, I said: if I don’t become mayor, let them all bomb you”. These are the contextualized words that Xavier Trias uttered in his speech on Saturday at Barcelona City Hall. The Junts candidate would have been able to opt for “so you burst”, “let them hang”, “let them ring”, “let your grandmother laugh” or even some more rude expressions. But the winner of the municipal elections in the Catalan capital opted for “let them bomb you”.
Although it does not have an excessively rude appearance, its origin is comparable to expressions as profane as “fuck you in the ass”. These days many hypotheses have been formulated about its origin, but I think that the one developed by Enric Gomà, and which I will detail below, is the one that makes the most sense.
From the outset, between the two meanings of the bomb, the explosive bomb and the pumping bomb, the former is ruled out. Let’s stay, then, with the meaning of a pump as “a device designed to cause the movement of a fluid along a conduit in a certain direction…”, according to the DIEC. It seems that the movement of the plunger of this bomb is the metaphor that was taken as a synonym for sodomy, which is one of the most prolific insults in our culture.
Precisely not to say it with all the letters, the euphemism has always helped the speakers not to be so explicitly vulgar. Instead of saying “let them give you ass”, it is common to hear “let them give you the sack” or, as in the case of Trias, “let them pump you”. Gomà documents the expression for the first time in the book Diari intim, by Ferran Canyameres (1945). Since then there has been more written documentation, until reaching the Diccionari de renecs, by Pere Verdaguer (1999), which completes it as follows: “Que et bombin, que pel cul et donguin”, but does not reveal its origin.
After what happened on Saturday at the Barcelona City Hall and the false accusations about an account in Switzerland from 2014, it is humanly understandable that someone exploits. His supporters have applauded him and his opponents have reproached him for using an inappropriate expression for a character like him. But we already know that each one looks at it from his own perspective and that if the events had affected the opposing party, the reactions would be the opposite.
In any case, Trias has achieved something that linguists would pay for: revitalizing an expression that was in decline. And that is priceless.
