BORE, a high tidal wave rushing up a narrow estuary or tidal river. The bore of the Severn is produced by a tide that rises 18 ft. in an hour and a half. This body of water becomes compressed in the narrowing funnel-shaped estuary, and heaped up into an advancing wave extending from bank to bank. The phenomenon is also particularly well illustrated in the Bay of Fundy. The origin of this word is doubtful, but it is usually referred to a Scandinavian word bāra, a wave, billow. The other name by which the phenomenon is known, “eagre,” is also of unknown origin. There is, of course, no connexion with “bore,” to make a hole by piercing or drilling, which is a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. bohren, the Indo-European root being seen in Lat. forare, to pierce, Gr. φάρος, plough. For the making of deep holes for shafts, wells, &c., see [Boring]. The substantival use of this word is generally confined to the circular cavity of objects of tubular shape, particularly of a gun, hence the internal diameter of a gun, its “calibre” (see [Gun]). A “bore” is also a tiresome, wearying person, particularly one who persistently harps on one subject, in or out of season, whatever interest his audience may take in it. This has generally been taken to be merely a metaphorical use of “bore,” to pierce. The earliest sense, however, in which it is found in English (1766, in certain letters printed in Jesse’s Life of George Selwyn) is that of ennui, and a French origin is suggested. The New English Dictionary conjectures a possible source in Fr. bourrer, to stuff, satiate.
BOREAS, in Greek mythology, a personification of the north wind. He was described as the son of Astraeus and Eos, brother of Hesperus, Notus and Zephyrus. His dwelling-place was on Mount Haemus in Thrace, or at Salmydessus, near the country of the Hyperboreans. He was said to have carried off the beautiful Oreithyia, a daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, when he found her leading the dance at a festival, or gathering flowers on the banks of the Ilissus or some other spot in the neighbourhood of Athens. He had before wooed her in vain, and now carried her off to Mount Haemus, where they lived as king and queen of the winds, and had two sons, Zetes and Calaïs, and two daughters, Cleopatra and Chione (Apollodorus iii. 15; Ovid, Metam. vi. 677). For the loss of Oreithyia the Athenians in after times counted on Boreas’s friendliness, and were assured of it when he sent storms which wrecked the Persian fleet at Athos and at Sepias (Herodotus vii. 189). For this they erected to him a sanctuary or altar near the Ilissus, and held a festival (Boreasmos) in his honour. Thurii also, which was a colony of Athens, offered sacrifice to him as Euergetes every year, because he had destroyed the hostile fleet of Dionysius the elder (Aelian, Var. Hist. xii. 61). In works of art Boreas was represented as bearded, powerful, draped against cold, and winged. On the Tower of the Winds at Athens he is figured holding a shell, such as is blown by Tritons. Boreas carrying off Oreithyia is the subject of a beautiful bronze relief in the British Museum, found in the island of Calymna. The same subject occurs frequently on painted Greek vases.
BOREL, PETRUS, whose full name was Pierre Joseph Borel d’Hauterive (1809-1859), French writer, was born at Lyons on the 26th of June 1809. His father had been ruined by taking part in the resistance offered by the Lyonnese royalists against the Convention, and Petrus Borel was educated in Paris to be an architect. He soon abandoned his profession to become one of the most violent partisans of the Romantic movement. His extravagant sentiments were illustrated in various volumes: Rhapsodies (1832), poems; Champavert, contes immoraux (1833); Madame Putiphar (1839), &c. His works did not rescue him from poverty, but through the kindness of Théophile Gautier and Mme de Girardin he obtained a small place in the civil service. He died at Mostaganem in Algeria on the 14th of July 1859.
See Jules Clarétie, Petrus Borel, le Lycanthrope (1865); and Ch. Asselineau, Bibliographie romantique (1872).
BORELLI, GIOVANNI ALFONSO (1608-1679), Italian physiologist and physicist, was born at Naples on the 28th of January 1608. He was appointed professor of mathematics at Messina in 1649 and at Pisa in 1656. In 1667 he returned to Messina, but in 1674 was obliged to retire to Rome, where he lived under the protection of Christina, queen of Sweden, and died on the 31st of December 1679. His best-known work is De motu animalium (Rome, 1680-1681), in which he sought to explain the movements of the animal body on mechanical principles; he thus ranks as the founder of the iatrophysical school. In a letter, Del movimento della cometa apparsa il mese di decembre 1664, published in 1665 under the pseudonym Pier Maria Mutoli, he was the first to suggest the idea of a parabolic path; and another of his astronomical works was Theorica mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deducta (Florence, 1666), in which he considered the influence of attraction on the satellites of Jupiter. He also wrote: Della Causa delle Febbri maligni (Pisa, 1658); De Renum usu Judicium (Strassburg, 1664); Euclides Restitutus (Pisa, 1658); Apollonii Pergaei Conicorum libri v., vi. et vii. (Florence, 1661); De vi percussionis (Bologna, 1667); Meteorologia Aetnea (Reggio, 1669); and De motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus (Bologna, 1670).