An idiot, a retard, a dork, someone completely lacking in social graces or intelligence.

Alternatively, a mighty hunter of ancient times mentioned in Genesis. Quoth the Everything King James Bible, Genesis 10:

10:8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
10:9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.
10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

He's pretty rare - I've seen perhaps two others references to him. So how exactly did Nimrod the hunter turn into an insult? Just one of those things you wonder about.

I read somewhere a theory that the change of meaning in "nimrod" from hunter to idiot was caused by Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoons, as Bugs jokingly calls Elmer Nimrod a few times in the hunting cartoons, and people who didn't know what it meant would take it as a random insult.

smartalix suggests: 'It could also have devolved into insult the way the term "Einstein" has, an example of hyperbolic sarcasm. Today calling someone "Einstein" usually means that they are a moron.'

The NIMROD is a high-tech military aircraft jointly produced by British Aerospace and Boeing. They are equipped with the latest in radar and other detection and surveillance equipment, as well as being designed to counter threats from nuclear submarines and surface ships.

Obviously most of the NIMRODs' specifications are highly classified, but they were used as surveillance craft by the Royal Air Force during the Falklands Conflict and the Gulf War. They have a variety of antennas above and below the fuselage and wing tanks, as well as ESM pods on the wingtips. Recently they have started carrying chaff and flare dispensers as anti-missile devices.

The ultra-sensitive radar detection devices carried in the nose of the planes enables them to locate and record enemy radar and missile installations: a feature that was used to great effect during both the Cold War and the Gulf War. The newer NIMRODs which are currently on order are believed to have submarine-detection equipment installed as standard.

Nimrod, a character from the Marvel Universe, particularly in the X-Men storylines; a very powerful being that appeared to cause havok, defeated, and returned to menace all once again.

Brought in from one of the many alternate future stories that have slowly eroded the X-Men universe, Nimrod was a pain in the ass to all heroes when he first came to our time. A sentinel from the dark future where mutants are kept in concentration camps and the sentinels are in control, Nimrod attacked the Hellfire Club and the X-Men. Harry Leland, one bishop of said Hellfire Club, died in battle with Nimrod and many injuries were committed to the X-Men. Nightcrawler was nearly mortally wounded with his powers remaining very weak for an extended period.

After the fight with the Club and the X-Men, feeling remorse and immense guilt for his actions, Nimrod disguised himself as a man that worked in a construction site. In disguise, Nimrod would provide acts of service and show heroism to the city of New York. So strong were his acts of kindness, that the population of New York threw their support behind him completely, as he hunted human killing mutants. He still had some encounters with the X-Men but his greatest moment came when he found the 'mini-cerebro' of Master Mold, a giant robot, even bigger than Sentinels. Master Mold is the giant sentinel that created/assembled the smaller (but still huge) Sentinels that roamed the Earth. Upon contact, Nimrod and Master Mold amalgamated, forming a single, even more powerful being. This villain attacked Senator Kelly and his wife, killing her. The X-Men began to fight the sentinel/MasterMold/Nimrod, but he was far too owerful to be defeated. The only plan the X-Men thought had a chance of working was to somehow get him to pass through the Siege Perilous. Rogue came up with an alternate plan that used Master Mold's original programming to corrupt the new being. Claiming that he had mutated from the original Master Mold form, she convinced Master Mold's original programming that the new being itself was unsuitable for existence. Master Mold/Nimrod attacked himself, the Master Mold half battling the Nimrod half for control. This confusion and discombulation allowed the X-Men to force the being through portal. However Master Mold/Nimrod pulled Rogue with.

After this, Nimrod was absent for an extended period. X-Force once fought a new one in the 'normal' timeline, with technology found of the original one. Cable was able to convince the Nimrod that he no longer had to attack mutants, and the facility where he would be built was closed.

In later issues it was revealed that the Nimrod (the original one) half of the Master Mold/Nimrod conglomerate was transformed into an 'almost' human being called Bastion, upon going through the Siege Perilous.

NIMROD
(nim' rod) HEBREW: NIMROD
_______________

The son of Cush, Nimrod was the grandson of Noah's son Ham. Nimrod ruled in Mesopotamia after the Flood, "the first on earth to be a mighty man" (Gen. 10:8). His kingdom was said to have stretched across what would later be Babylonia and Assyria. Renowned as a hunter, he is also by tradition the first to eat meat and to make war. Nimrod was also said to have founded the cities of Babel, Erech, and Accad in Shinar (Babylonia), and then the cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and Resen in Assyria, a country later referred to in the Bible as "the land of Nimrod" (Mic. 5:6).

Scholars have made numerous efforts to identify Nimrod, but there is no consensus. In traditional literature, Nimrod conceived the tower of Babel that rabbis would later call "the house of Nimrod." According to Josephus, Nimrod was "a bold man, and of great strength in hand," who thought to outsmart God by building a tower too high for rising waters in case God "should have a mind to drown the world again."

{E2 Dictionary of Biblical People}

Additionally, a nimrod is a small drum trigger in the shape of a tube. Hitting the nimrod with your drumstick would allow a velocity-sensitive message to be sent to the drum brain.

Nimrod is also the name of the ninth out of the fourteen Enigma Variations written in 1899 by composer Sir Edward Elgar.

Each of the variations, which were based on Elgar's work, Op. 36. was supposed to describe one of Elgar's close friends, and Nimrod was written for August Johannes Jaeger.

The Nimrod variation was written after a summer evening discussion between Elgar and Jaeger about the slow style of which Beethoven was the master. Elgar claims that 'It will be noticed that the opening bars are made to suggest the slow movement of the (Beethoven's) Eighth Sonata, Pathétique.'

This piece is often used in the UK on Remembrance Sunday and other more sombre state occasions.

In Canto XXXI of the Inferno, Dante hears the sound of a horn blast through the pit. As his eyes are drawn towards the source of the sound, he sees what appears to him to be a city of towers.

Virgil assures him that this is not the case, and as they travel closer, the "city" is revealed to be a ring of giants surrounding the final circle of Hell.

His gaze falls upon the first giant, with "His face... as long and large / As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter's / And in proportion were the other bones". This is Nimrod, the mighty hunter.

Raphael mai amech izabi almi.
On noticing the travelers, Nimrod tries to speak. However, his speech is unintelligible, for this is his punishment. Nimrod was the chief engineer of the Tower of Babel, whose destruction caused the language of the world to split into several; now, he is cursed to speak and understand a language that only he knows.

The horn he wears is the symbol of his former profession as a hunter. Virgil reminds him that this is the sole means of expression left to him, and chides him for attempting to use the human languages he destroyed.

The other giants in the ring are the Titans of Greek and Roman mythology, buried beneath the earth as punishment for rising up against the gods. Nimrod is imprisoned with them both for daring to rise up against his god and as a tower himself, symbolic of the device of his undoing.


Sources:

http://www.ukans.edu/~hisite/carrie/dante_inferno.html
http://www.ayan.org/edebi/dante/inferno/lf_notes_31.html
http://www.divinecomedy.org/divine_comedy.php3?display?Italian?Inferno?31?0?0???????1?

Nimrod's coat

Nimrod was a great hunter and not just because he had a coat that allowed him to speak with animals (as well as command them). The coat originated with Adam and somehow worked its way down into the care of Nimrod. It is the same multicolored coat that Yaacov (aka Jacob) eventually gave to Yosef (aka Joseph). How did Yaacov get it?

According to Midrash, Nimrod was the king of Ur Kasdim when Avram (aka Abraham) was a child. Avram discovered God's existence and Nimrod had him thrown in a fiery furnace for the trouble he had caused in doing so. Miraculously, Avram was unharmed by the fire. Haran, Avram's brother jumped in after him and died immediately. At this point Avram and his father, wife and nephew (Lot), fled from Nimrod. They moved to Charan.

Nimrod (refered to here in the text by another name, Amraphel of Shinar) was also the leader of the army of the four kings who defeated the army of the five kings in Emek HaSidim(translated by me as Valley of the tar pits)(Bereshit/Genesis 14:1) The midrash suggests that Nimrod conquered these territories because it was here that Avram's nephew Lot had chosen to live (Bereshit 13:11). According to the story Lot was the spitting image of Avram. Nimrod, a master of propaganda, figured that he could convince people of the triumph of Polytheism by making it seem that he had conquered Avram, the champion of Monotheism.

Avram then came with his faithful servant Eliezer under cover of night and defeated the army of the four kings (Bereishit 14:14), Nimrod included. It was at this battle that Avram picked up sand and dirt and threw it and in the air it became arrows and spears. Presumably Avram got the coat of many colors at this point and passed it down to Yitzhak(aka Isaac) who passed it down to Eisav (aka Esau) his favorite son.

Eisav didn't trust his wives so he gave this coat into his mother Rivka's (aka Rebecca) keeping when he went out to hunt at the behest of his father on that fateful day. This is the garment that Rivka gave to Yaakov when she dressed him up to pretend he was Eisav. Yaakov gave it to his favorite son, Yosef. And so, Yosef came to possess Nimrod's coat. When Yosef's brothers sold him down to Egypt, it was Nimrod's coat they tore up and poured lamb's blood on and brought to their father Yaakov. (Bereishit 37)

Most of the direct biblical references are cited, all other sources come from the Midrash Rabbah and Rashi on these parashioth, exactly which parasha is hard to say because of the style of the midrash. two additional notes: 1) for a look @ the Torah in its original hebrew http://www.mechon-mamre.org/ 2) Avram's name was changed to Avraham in Genesis 17:5 after the events in which he was associated in this write up took place. That is why I refer to him as Avram instead of Avraham.

Nimrod is a British military aircraft with several variants, flown by the RAF. In sum, it is a long-range/high-endurance reconnaissance and search platform, with some variants capable of marine attack roles as well.

The aircraft is based quite closely on an airliner, the de Havilland Comet 4-engine jet. The Comet suffered (famously) from lethal metal fatigue problems, and was retired from service with civil airways after a fairly short life; however, since de Havilland had already done the engineering work to fix said problems, the British military decided that it was an acceptable platform to build their long-range search/surveillance aircraft on. The lack of confidence in the civil aviation world resulting from highly-publicized crashes of earlier Comets made the new model unattractive as a civil product, and de Havilland (by then Hawker Siddeley, I believe) eagerly accepted the opportunity to sell to the RAF.

The original role of the Nimrod (which means 'Hunter', as other writeups note, quite proper for a search/surveillance/attack aircraft) was twofold. The MR.1 model would be the Maritime Reconnaissance version; the R.1 would be used for electronic and photographic surveillance. Between 1968 and 1978, forty-nine aircraft were produced at the Hawker Siddeley / BAe plant at Woodford. Of these, forty-five were MR.1, three were R.1 variants and one was the newer MR.2. The remainder of the MR.2 line, and the new MR.4 versions, were produced by upgrading or remanufacturing original airframes.

Thirty-four aircraft were upgraded to the MR.2 in late 1979 through the early 1980s through the addition of a new radar system (Searchwater) and massive computer system upgrades. The new MRA.4 variant (A for attack), an extension of the Nimrod 2000 upgrade, involves more extensive remanufacturing of the airplane which will result in the lengthening of the fuselage as well as complete ‘zero-lifing’ on all components. New wings will be fitted, which exposed problems in the original manufacture – after building the first wing set prototype, British Aerospace discovered that the original aircraft varied from the blueprints by as much as four inches around the wing measurements; as a result, the wing upgrades had to be manufactured as ‘one-offs’ – adding greatly to the cost. Other structural changes include a changeover to modern turbofan engines for increased efficiency and reliability, as well as completely new control surfaces, external pods, cockpits and more. Boeing and BAe are sharing this contract.

The MR.2 variant sports four Rolls-Royce Spey RB168-20/250 engines. These turbofan plants generate 12,150 lbs. of thrust apiece, or around 55 kilonewtons (kN). The MRA.4 will carry four Rolls-Royce/BMW BR710 engines, generating 66.3 kN each (~15,000 lb).

Systems

MR.2

  • Radar: EMI Searchwater
  • Computer: Ferranti 1600D
  • Sonar Search: two Marconi Avionics acoustic processors and disposable sonobuoys (each processor can handle multiple live buoys)
  • Magnetic Anomaly Detector
  • U.S. AN/UYS-503 data processor
  • Missile Alert warning and IR detection system, with chaff/flare dispensers
  • Link 11 Datalink

MRA.4

The MRA.4’s systems are a bit vaguer; all-glass cockpits, Racal computers, new nav systems, surveillance systems, etc. etc. – essentially, it’s an entirely new airplane as far as avionics and combat systems go. Although the RAF won’t tell us what it carries, the (A) in its new title indicates an attack capability, and the odds are that it will carry ASMs similar to its U.S. cousins the P-3 Orion, which means AGM-84 Harpoons or perhaps Exocet versions…but I can’t see the British buying French arms, can you?


Sources:

  • RAF Kinloss web pages
  • Boeing project web pages
  • David Hastings' Comet enthusiast pages
  • Jane's Combat Fleets 1993

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.