Talk:Roaring Meg (cannon)

Why Meg?


The above helps explain why Meg which is short for Margaret was a popular name of cannons. In various parts of Northern Europe women who were seen as "particularly strong, aggressive of spiteful" were nicknamed Margaret.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Meg, n.1 "Chiefly Brit. regional (freq. humorous or derogatory). A coarse, unsophisticated, or unattractive woman. (Long) Meg of Westminster   n. a woman (perh. fictional) famous in 16th-cent. London for having supposedly fought, disguised as a man, in the Anglo-French campaigns of 1544 (now hist.); (allusively) a tall or masculine woman, a virago. (Quot. 1582 in N.E.D. is based on a forged title page.)"

Perhaps someone would like to use the two sources to explain why "Meg" was a popular name for a cannon. -- PBS (talk) 22:47, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

please clean up
the content is completely mixed up. first, the article is half about other meanings. second, these other meanings including other cannons and even rivers is widely distributed throughout the article under different headlines. complete mess. needs complete rewriting