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It surely comes from bluegrass music, doesn't it? Hill folk didn't have access to a wide variety of musical instruments, so they would play washboards, use tin piepans as cymbals, and instead of bass drums, they'd be tub-thumping. And they'd drink their shine and thump the table in recognition of how powerful it was.
Of course, political rallies were a source of entertainment, and sometimes, a "musician" would use tub-thumping to punctuate forceful statements.
When evangelists came around, they tended to thump on the bible instead of a washtub, and the flock would punctuate forceful statements with cries of "Amen, brother!"
A rabbit thumps when he perceives danger. That fits with preachers and politicians, I suppose, but hillbilly musicians aren'y much danger except to girls who seek it.
I could not find what I considered an adequate origin story of this word, but being that the definition is someone who expresses their opinions loudly, I presume that many could not get the attention they wanted with their voice and resorted to banging on things like tubs to get even more attention.
Thanks. Usage: English author Martin Amis writes this of Adolf Hitler in his current book:
... the mystery, the why, is divisible: first, the Austrian artist manqué turned tub-thumper, second, the German—and Austrian—instruments he carried with him.
'Tub' must have some association with the pulpit, or is another word for it.
A search of tub-thumper under Books on Google yields many references to English clergy of the 19th c, and more recent American politicians; there's also this, from 1662 "a speaker or preacher who thumps the pulpit for emphasis." (Searches for the source of this quote go around in circles; are there any online sources for really old dictionaries?)
I see some modern references to Bluegrass and Jug Band music- Jerry Garcia played banjo in the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers. But I've never seen the term in contemporaneous accounts of either old-time fiddle music or its flashier offspring Bluegrass. The washtub bass certainly was around- called by that name, as far as I can tell.
As to tub, my 1930 Webster's has this: Something shaped like, or likened to a tub, as a) an old form of pulpit or b) a slow moving boat or vessel.
faresomeness said
I see some modern references to Bluegrass and Jug Band music- Jerry Garcia played banjo in the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers. But I've never seen the term in contemporaneous accounts of either old-time fiddle music or its flashier offspring Bluegrass.
Perhaps little was written because little was thought noteworthy. Hillbilly bands - heck, hillybilly anything - got little respect until recently. Eliot Wigginton started Focfire om 1966, and when it got popular about 1972, that was the first time hill folk were treated as other than toothless, drunken, and filthy people, with no skills, minimal intelligence and zero gumption. Consider the early episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies in 1962, and Green Acrres in 1965. The folk singers of the late 1950s had been careful to Disneyfy their songs. John and Alan Lomax weren't exactly embraced by the establishment. Appalshop, founded in 1969, started the June Appal label in 1974 and suddenly, many PBS shows started using hill music for their theme songs.
The Urban Dictionary says in a 2005 entry:
Tubthumping is going out and singing and having drinks after protesting.
I get knocked down, but I get up again...
Martha Barnette
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