Wordwatch: Gazebo

Last week, we’ve been told, our esteemed Prime Minister finally made an honest woman of his long-standing partner Carrie Symons, to the surprise of many Catholics, in no less august surroundings than Westminster Cathedral. And afterwards, the happy pair entertained a Covid-restricted guest list in the garden of 10 Downing Street, where, news reports stated, a “gazebo” had been erected.

I peered at the photographs of this discreet event, curious as to what the “gazebo” might be. By a process of elimination, I deduced that it was a small tent, erected among the rose bushes where last year Dominic Cummings had held his famous press conference after returning from Barnard Castle. Was that tent the “gazebo”? This seemed to me to be a new application of the word.

My understanding has always been that a gazebo is a structure so placed that it commands an interesting view – a vista or panorama, perhaps – something worth “gazing” at.  It often took the form of a cupola situated on the roof of a larger building that would supply the elevation required to afford the view. When gardens began to be lavishly designed and supplied with occasional buildings for purposes of entertainment, a gazebo was often placed on a wall, rather like a summer-house, for the leisurely observation of one’s surroundings.  

I suppose it’s only a short step from such an occasional garden building to a tent pitched in a garden for the entertainment of guests. But here the crucial function of such a building, to facilitate “gazing”, is notably absent. The tent in the garden of Number 10 can’t have afforded any significant view, and it was very temporary into the bargain: by no means an architectural feature. 

The Oxford Dictionary suggests that the word is a playful pseudo-Latinism, pretending that gaze is a verb susceptible of conjugation: “I will gaze”, along the lines of “lavabo”, from the verb meaning “to wash”. Chambers, on the other hand, casts doubt even on the connection with “gaze”, though I’d have thought it was a reasonably convincing derivation. However, the Oxford English Dictionary admits that there is a possibility that the word comes as a corruption from an Arabic source. If so, that source doesn’t seem to have been identified. 

“Gazebo” is nearly always cited as a synonym for “belvedere”, which is a straightforward borrowing from the Italian, deriving from Latin words meaning “beautiful” and “to see”.  The most famous belvedere is in the Vatican, a grand sequence of spaces that house a collection of sculpture including the Apollo named after it. Looking at a view of some kind is integral to the idea of the belvedere, and has been to that of “gazebo” – until now. Is this another heroic innovation to which the Prime Minister can lay claim?