On Conks, Conking Out and Punches Up the Conk

“When I try to count the number of times I’ve moved, I start off confidently but conk out at about 26.”

So writes Helen Garner in a piece entitled “Moving Experience” – an essay about shifting house that appeared in the September 2005 issue of that excellent magazine, The Monthly.

Conk out. The phrase pulled me up, took me back to my childhood. I realised that I hadn’t heard it for years. Things used to conk out all the time when I was a kid: cars conked out, refrigerators conked out, even I conked out sometimes. For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it means to cease to operate, to break down, to give up the ghost. But where/ when /how did the phrase arise, this phrasal verb?

The word conk refers to the nose or hooter. It was certainly in common use during my childhood and adolescent years – the forties and fifties. I recall an expression: a punch up the conk, and it was linked in my mind with the Goons. A google search quickly confirmed my recollection; there was a whole program about conk punching. It was called :The Mysterious Punch-up-the-Conker and was first broadcast in February , 1957. The famous Neddy Seagoon threatens the announcer (Wallace Greenslade) :You’ll get a punch up the conk, Wal!

And in his usual suave style, Greenslade responds:
Mr. Seagoon, the practice of punching BBC announcers up the conk was outlawed in 1773.

But what’s the etymology of conk, conk out and “a punch up the conk”? I figured that the terms were of English origin, so I picked the brains of Wendy Bennett, a writer of English origin. Her guess was that conk out derived from the popular pastime of English village boys, the game of conkers. To make a conker, you threaded a string through a horse chestnut. The aim of the game is to smash the other player’s conker – that way, your conker became a “king conker”, a conqueror of others. A king conker was a very hard horse chestnut that could split other conkers.

As with so many folk etymologies – inspired guesses by the folk about how words first arose – Wendy’s explanation was very plausible, but, it turned out, incorrect.

The word conk has been in common use since the early 1800s. The OED records its first appearance in print as 1812. It’s a slang term, and it means nose.

Conkers has been around since 1877. The SOED defines it succinctly as follows:

A boys’ game, orig. played with snail shells, now with horse chestnuts through which a string is threaded, the object being to break that held by the opponent.

But here the plot thickens. Conk out doesn’t rate a mention in the Shorter Oxford. The Funk and Wagnall does mention it, however. Not unsurprisingly, the term is claimed as having US origins, and is defined as an informal expression meaning “to stall or fail”, and as US slang meaning “To suddenly become weak and tired.”

By now, I was conking out myself. With my strength ebbing, I consulted an online Etymological dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com/

It yielded me the following information:

To conk out:

as in conk out, 1918, coined by World War I airmen, perhaps in imitation of the sound of a stalling motor, reinforced by conk (v.) “hit on the head,” originally “punch in the nose” (1821), from conk (n.), slang for “nose” (1812), perhaps from fancied resemblance to a conch shell.

Words – don’t you just love them!