Piltdown
(ˈpɪltdaʊn)
The name of a village in Sussex, England, used attrib. esp. in Piltdown jaw, man, skull, with reference to the fossil remains of a skull found there, or the primitive hominid described as Eoanthropus dawsoni, to which these remains were attributed; the skull was proved fraudulent in 1953 by J. S. Weiner and K. P. Oakley. Also absol.
| 1912 Times 19 Dec. 4/5 He [sc. A. S. Woodward] inclined..to the theory that..surviving modern man might have arisen directly from the primitive source of which the Piltdown skull provided the first discovered evidence. 1913 Q. Jrnl. Geol. Soc. LXIX. 139 It seems reasonable to interpret the Piltdown skull as exhibiting a closer resemblance to the skulls of the truly ancestral mid-tertiary apes than any fossil human skull hitherto found. 1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 23 Apr. 317/1 On comparing her [sc. a female hominid] with the Piltdown man he [sc. Sir A. Keith] makes amends by describing her as Piltdown refined. 1933 A. S. Romer Man & Vertebrates xi. 246 Can it be that the Piltdown jaw does not belong with the skull? 1953 Weiner & Oakley in Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Geol. II. iii. 145 The iron and chromate staining of the Piltdown jaw seems to us to be explicable only as a necessary part of the deliberate matching of the jaw of a modern ape with the mineralized cranial fragments. 1955 Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Geol. III. vi. 228 We are now in a position to give an account of the full extent of the Piltdown hoax... Not one of the Piltdown finds genuinely came from Piltdown. 1955 J. S. Weiner Piltdown Forgery 204 The end of Piltdown man is the end of the most troubled chapter in human palaeontology. 1956 Proc. R. Inst. Gt. Brit. XXXVI. 150 The Piltdown forgery was the greatest archaeological hoax of its kind ever perpetrated. 1957 T. Steele in Time 30 Dec. 48/1 Rock with caveman Roll with caveman... Piltdown poppa sings this song Archaeologist done me wrong The British Museum's got my head Most unfortunate 'cause I ain't dead. 1970 R. Lowell Notebk. 98 The Piltdown Man, first carnivore to laugh. 1973 Listener 10 May 605/3 Man..was not put together from the cranium of one primate and the jaw of another—that misconception..only makes a fake like the Piltdown skull. |
2. transf. and fig.
| 1956 A. Wilson Anglo-Saxon Att. i. i. 27 Alas, we historians have so little scandal. We are not palaeontologists to display our Piltdowns. 1961 Times 9 Nov. 17/1 We must always be beholden to Evans over whom suspicions of a Piltdown sort hang, darkened now by Professor Palmer's discoveries in the Ashmolean. 1971 N. Fleming Hash i. 12 So there is a brain underneath that thatch-covered Piltdown skull of yours. 1976 Spectator 2 Oct. 7/3 Ford..is waiting to be shot full of holes, not only because of his Piltdown Man performance as a congressman, but as the head of a government which is clearly out of administrative control. |
So ˈPiltdowner = Piltdown man (lit. and fig.).
| 1954 A. Huxley in Encounter Feb. 11/1 In the tiny Natural History Museum at Idaho Falls, we found ourselves talking to two people from a far remote past... These were Piltdowners whose reaction to the stuffed grizzly was a remark about sizzling steaks of bear-meat. 1961 C. Willock Death in Covert i. 6 A big-boned, shambling man..with the stance of a Piltdowner. 1978 ‘J. Gash’ Gold from Gemini v. 37 He really talks like this, the Piltdowner. No wonder he's thick. |