Letter to the OED on Torpedo

I’ve written this letter to the Oxford English Dictionary about part of their entry on torpedo:

 b. figurative. One who or that which has a benumbing influence.

a1593   C. Marlowe Edward II (1594) sig. C2v   Faire Queene forbeare to angle for the fish..I meane that vile Torpedo, Gaueston.

1762   O. Goldsmith Life R. Nash 34   He used to call a pen his torpedo, whenever he grasped it, it numbed all his faculties.

c1855   B. S. Hollis Hymn-bk. C'tess Huntingdon's Connecticut Pref.   The torpedo of formality had benumbed the churches.

Sense 1b of the existing entry ‘torpedo’ does not exist as a coherent category, and the quotations listed under it need to be resolved into at least two clearly distinguishable senses. The first of these is merely ‘numbness’, and is derived directly from the primitive sense of Latin torpēdō, defined by the Oxford Latin Dictionary as ‘A state of inertness, sluggishness, lethargy’. The citation from Hollis belongs plainly to this sense, as ‘torpedo’ does not refer to any agent, abstract or concrete, but is merely in (genitive) apposition to ‘formality’. The citation from Goldsmith about Nash is on the borderline, I think, and might belong to the distinct sense ‘that which has a benumbing influence’; but should probably just be folded into the general sense of ‘numbness’. Torpedo was already conceived of in Latin as having an active benumbing force on a person; cf. Sallust’s ‘si tanta torpedo animos obrepsit’ or Tacitus’ ‘tanta torpedo invaserat animum’. Incidentally, the Goldsmith quotation seems to be related somehow to the following passage in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, which should be added to the list of attestations:

‘It has been circulated, I know not with what authenticity, that Johnson considered Dr. Birch as a dull writer, and said of him, “Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.”’ (ed. 1791, pp. 85–6.)

I think it is highly unlikely that Johnson or Nash (if either of them indeed said this) had the electric ray in mind; far likelier they were just using a Latin word for oppressive numbness. Therefore it is questionable whether the sense of the Nash and Hollis attestations should be described as ‘figurative’, as it has nothing to do with fish and does not rely for its meaning on the abstract application of any concrete image. 

As for the citation from Marlowe, it does not belong to the other two at all, because it is unmistakably a reference to the electric ray. However, that this reference is mischaracterized by the definition ‘one who or that which has a benumbing influence’ is made clear by the full context:

Faire Queene forbeare to angle for the fish,
Which being caught, strikes him that takes it dead,
I mean that vile Torpedo, Gaueston,
That now I hope flotes on the Irish seas.
(ed. 1594, fol. C2 v.)

Marlowe’s torpedo doesn’t benumb you—it strikes you dead! In any case, I am not convinced that this attestation deserves even to be called figurative, as it rather seems to be a literal reference to the fish, to which Gaveston is likened in a simile. Thus it can arguably be listed under sense 1a.