Dumbbells

For my Aqua fitness class I needed to buy water dumbbells. I wanted to wait with that until I was sure I'd stick with the class. But yesterday I went to the fitness store to get me a good bathing suit and the dumbbells. I asked the girl, "Why in the world are they called dumbbells?" She did not know. Being "me" I came home and Googled it, and here you go, just in case you were wondering about it too!

Oh, and by the way, there are so many ways to use those things in the water, they remind you of muscles you thought you never had.

Why a dumbbell is called a dumbbell

To be called a “dumbbell” is an insult. It means the name-caller thinks you are a stupid person. So why is a dumbbell called a dumbbell? Is there a connection with the saying “more brawn than brains”? Actually, it has more to do with church bells.

Since it took a fair amount of strength to ring a heavy church bell properly, novice ringers had to develop their arm strength with a rope connected to a metal weight. Swinging the weighted rope against an imaginary bell produced no sound, thus it was silent or dumb. Eventually, the apparatus came to be known as a dumbbell.

By the 16th century, it was fashionable for gentlemen to do “bell” work to develop an impressive physique. In the 1800’s, the short bar replaced the rope and rounded weights were attached at both ends. In the 1920’s, “dumbbell” joined the vocabulary as a slang word for stupidity. Word experts think that “bell” may have meant “head”.

The alternative explanation for the origin of the word “dumbbell” also has to do with church bells. Some fitness history aficionados believe that “silent” church bells without clappers were used as weights at both ends of a bar