What's with all the bowls?

[beckyl]

G'day all, from the sunny antipodes,

I have a question - I am about 75% through Brainiac (fab, thanks for asking), and something has struck me about US terms - why is a competition or a tournament called a "bowl"? I used to think that the Superbowl must relate to the shape of the stadiums it would be played in, so why would a trivia comp be called a bowl? While I was musing on this, I also thought about "bees", in the same sense. A bee is a group working together - a spelling bee is anything but. My Australian Modern Oxford Dictionary offers no relevant, non-vessel like meaning for "bowl", unless you count the sporting usage and "he bowled her over". Here's one for the Commonwealth cricket fans - to bowl a maiden over.

So what's with all the bowls and bees? Can't they just be competitions or tournaments? Or games?

Help me, Obi Wan Ken-obi!

[enielsen]

I think it's probably just an extension of the sports usage of "bowl" (which is derived presumably from the bowl shape of football stadiums). Sort of like how all political (or even nonpolitical) scandals are referred to as something "gate", after Watergate, even though very few of them are related in any way to that hotel.

[Ken Jennings]

Anybody know what the first "Bowl"-named amphitheater was? I have no idea. Hollywood Bowl goes back to 1922.

[skullturfq]

I think it's probably just an extension of the sports usage of "bowl" (which is derived presumably from the bowl shape of football stadiums). Sort of like how all political (or even nonpolitical) scandals are referred to as something "gate", after Watergate, even though very few of them are related in any way to that hotel.

Perhaps a similar phenomenon is when people use the suffix "holic" to refer to addictions to things that don't end in "hol" -- chocoholic, shopaholic.

[Ken Jennings]

It's true, I love to drink shopahol.

[Craig S. Cottingham]

Anybody know what the first "Bowl"-named amphitheater was? I have no idea. Hollywood Bowl goes back to 1922.

Wikipedia sez bowl game comes from the Rose Bowl Stadium (also 1922), which name in turn was derived from the Yale Bowl (1914).

[TheConfessor]

I always figured the "bowl" term was originally based on the shape of the trophy awarded. But I could be mistaken. What's the deal with all the different international sporting "Cups"? Do they actually take place in stadiums shaped like cups?

[skullturfq]

Well, you don't win the Stanley Cup without wearing a cup.

[ArtVark]

I always figured the "bowl" term was originally based on the shape of the trophy awarded. But I could be mistaken. What's the deal with all the different international sporting "Cups"? Do they actually take place in stadiums shaped like cups?

I think some Bowls are named after the shape of the trophy. I doubt if the Bermuda Bowl has anything to do with the shape of the building in which it is played.

[khiddy]

Perhaps a similar phenomenon is when people use the suffix "holic" to refer to addictions to things that don't end in "hol" -- chocoholic, shopaholic.

"I'm a rageaholic! I'm addicted to rageahol!" -- Homer J. Simpson

[Craig S. Cottingham]

I think some Bowls are named after the shape of the trophy. I doubt if the Bermuda Bowl has anything to do with the shape of the building in which it is played.

I suspect that at this point all Bowls are named after the Rose Bowl, whether or not they realize it.

[JLF]

I think it's something to do with Liza Minelli. But aren't most things?

[ginginny]

the coliseum is bowl shaped