Americans alone spent some $8.4 billion on their lawns in 2000, according
to one study. The lawns we manically manicure today take their name from
the obsolete word laund, which is a borrowing from Old French lande,
moor, and was first recorded in the early 14th century. Laund meant
merely a woodland glade and its first definition in 1548 described a
place void of trees. Lawn is simply a variant spelling of that word, but
it isnt until the early 18th century that we find lawn used to mean a
plot of grass kept closely mowed, usually by gardeners with scythes or by
grazing animals. However, Chinese emperors had lawns as far back as 157
B.C., and the Maya and Aztec royalty made lawns, as did the ancient
Romans, who used sheep to maintain them. Writing in the Smithsonian
magazine (June 1991), Richard Wolkomir remarks on our passion for lawns
despite the backbreaking and mindbending troubles they cause us:
Grassophilia has deep roots. A former Smithsonian ecologist, John H.
Falk, once studied peoples terrain preferences. He found that, whether
they live in the United States, Africa, or India, the great majority
prefer grassy savannas over all other landscapes, even if theyve never
seen a savanna. He had theorized that grasslands were the early humans
preferred habitat and that preference seems to be genetically ingrained in
man today.
The lawnmower, however, is much younger than the lawns it is used to cut.
Lawnmower isnt recorded until 1875, while lawn sprinkler made its
appearance 19 years later. The lawn mower was invented in around 1830 by
English textile plant foreman Edwin Budding, who patterned his invention
on factory machinery used at the time to shear the nap of woven cloth to a
uniform height. Close to a century passed before retired American Army
colonel Edwin George in 1919 invented the first motorized lawnmowers,
using the gasoline engine from the family washing machine for his
invention. Then came the riding or ridem lawnmower upon which all adults
look ridiculous, though some people take them seriously especially the
people who compete in the Twelve-Mile Riding Lawn Mower Race held in
Twelve-Mile, Indiana, on July 4 of every year, the winner usually breaking
45 minutes. Such people might be called mownomaniacs. Mownomaniac is a
new word for someone obsessed with caring for, and especially mowing, his
or her lawn. Mownomaniacs have been around for about a century and a half
now.